ABSTRACT
Of course, any attempt to picture the experience of vulnerability as life-enhancing may initially strike the reader as fanciful, or as lacking in sensitivity to life’s “harsh realities.” It’s arguable, then, that the theme of vulnerability or precarity has been – at least implicitly – present in European philosophy almost from the beginning. A reawakening of that curiosity today might be signalled by some fresh thinking of a practical, Le Doeuffian nature about what actually constitutes the vulnerability of women (and other non-privileged participants) in the current context of philosophical discourse. But with regard to philosophy as a self-conscious exercise, the question to which the people seem to be directed by Pamela’s discussions is that of the relationship between a more purely epistemological and a more empirical interpretation which can be given to the terms “vulnerable” and “invulnerable.”.
