Exploring Vulnerability

Vulnerability is an essential but also an intriguing ambiguous part of the human condition. This book con-ceptualizes vulnerability to be a fundamental threat and deficit and at the same time to be a powerful resource for transformation. The exploration is undertaken in multidisciplinary perspectives and approaches the human condition in fruitful conversations with medical, psychological, legal, theological, political and philosophical investiga-tions of vulnerability. The multidisciplinary approach opens the space for a broad variety of deeply interrelated topics. Thus, vulnerability is analyzed with respect to diverse aspects of human and social life, such as violence and power, the body and social institutions. Theologically questions of sin and redemption and eventually the nature of the Divine are taken up. Throughout the book phenomenological descriptions are combined with necessary conceptual clarifications. The contributions seek to illuminate the relation between vulnerability as a fundamental unavoidable condition and contingent actualizations related to specific dangers and risks. The core thesis of the book can be seen within its multi-perspectivity: A sound concept of vulnerability is key to a realistic, that is to say neither negative nor illusionary anthropology, to an honest post-theistic understanding of God and eventually to a deeply humanistic understanding of social life.