ABSTRACT
Vulnerability has many forms and facets. This chapter develops a conception of vulnerability as openness which is understood not only as exposure to being wounded but also as openness to transformation and change, which are possible through resilience. The notion of resilience has increasingly come to the fore in numerous recent discussions about human vulnerabilities, but a philosophical systematic account of this concept is still lacking. The chapter begins to address this and provides a starting point for a philosophical approach to resilience. The Dark Myth constructs vulnerability as a mark of inferiority. By enhancing and perpetuating an understanding of vulnerability as a source of shame, fear and violence it has a stigmatizing, disabling and marginalizing impact on what it constructs as the “category” of the vulnerable. It is life-smothering in so far as it reduces or even destroys the possibilities of the vulnerable to be, and live, well.
