Dr Hojjat Soofi1
1Macquarie University
Vulnerability is a widely used concept in bioethical literature. There are concerns, however, that most uses of vulnerability employ a poorly defined concept of vulnerability. Motivated by such concerns, scholars have mounted two distinct challenges to appeals to vulnerability in bioethics. First, Wrigley and Dawson (2016)* contend that the concept of vulnerability does not function as a primary normative concept and can be reduced to a simple indicator of claims to heightened ethical protection. Second, Wrigley (2015)** calls into question whether we need the concept of vulnerability in our moral vocabulary and argues for an eliminitivist approach, according to which the concept of vulnerability is simply a heuristic tool devoid of (significant) explanatory role. I argue that these are major challenges to four prominent approaches to vulnerability, namely, the autonomy-based approach, welfare-based approach, wrong-based approach, and the needs-based version of the universal/relational approach. I advance the claim that a Nussbaumean version of the universal/relational approach can better respond to the said challenges. According to this alternative approach, being (situationally) vulnerable is a necessary means to secure certain relational goods in healthcare contexts. Construed as such, vulnerability amounts to a particular form of self-regarding and other-regarding moral orientation and vulnerability can function as a distinct moral concept, albeit structurally connected to other concepts such as flourishing, capabilities, and harm. I conclude by noting that not all manifestations of vulnerability can be means to secure relational goods and some ill-devised responses to vulnerability generate pathogenic sources of vulnerability.
* Wrigley, A. & Dawson, A. (2016). Vulnerability and marginalized populations. in D.H.Barrett, L.W. Ortmann, A. Dawson, C. Saenz, A. Reis and Bolan, G. (Eds.), Public Health Ethics: Cases Spanning the Globe (203-240). Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-23847-0_7
**Wrigley, A. (2015). An eliminativist approach to vulnerability. Bioethics, 29(7), 478-487. DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12144
Biography:
I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University. My current research project is on the vulnerabilities of people with dementia in residential aged care facilities.