ABSTRACT
That we have duties to protect those most vulnerable from our actions, choices and policies is difficult to deny. The concept of vulnerability has thus come to play a central role in applied ethics and political philosophy, and it has been relied upon to articulate the ethical duties owed to patients, research subjects, children, the elderly, women, future generations and the global precariat. Importantly for our purposes, it has also been engaged to ground the collective duties of justice owed to recipients of liberal welfare and social insurance programs. Philosophers who appeal to the concept of vulnerability see it as a valuable tool, not only for identifying a class of individuals who are particularly susceptible to the harmful actions and choices of specific others, or institutions, but also for grounding the normative duties owed to them.
