Abstract
Considering the normative functions of autonomy and vulnerability leads in a deontological perspective to the question for how to weigh the duties of the respect for autonomy and the duty to care for the other. Considered as moral goods or evils autonomy and vulnerability represent different ideals of how to live a good human life. Both ethical questions, though, rely on normative anthropological considerations: Is living a human life primarily about achieving the greatest possible autonomyor is it rather about arranging oneself with vulnerabilities? By considering the bodily metaphor of the wound (lat. vulnus) I argue that vulnerability is a phenomenon of the embodied existence of human persons. Referring to a phenomenology of embodiment I argue that a normative concept of vulnerability relies on the normative idea of autonomous personhood and that the moral good of autonomy presupposes that autonomous persons exist as embodied persons which are always vulnerable.
Coors, Michael