ABSTRACT
The mechanisms of vulnerability come into play, mechanisms which call on the social resources of the person concerned, on his social anchorages but also on the chain of experience which constitutes his real-life world. Family socialisation, acquired values, the social trajectory, possible situations of betrayal which lead to a precarious identity, everything can finally converge towards a vulnerability which is not latent but real. Vulnerability is no longer restricted to the domain of the badly-integrated or excluded, it touches the whole of the social world. Vulnerability as being specific to the responsible human being, a vulnerability of a moral nature, as it were, and vulnerability making it impossible for a person to appear to the world, in other words a vulnerability of a social nature. Responding to the potential vulnerability of the other person, is the vulnerability of he who responds and who not only ‘always has one response more to give’ but a responsibility which is inexhaustible.
