Vulnerability and Humanity: Contemporary Crises in Healthcare

In this paper I am concerned with an investigation of vulnerability and its relation to humanity which is indebted to Kantian ethics and post-Kantian approaches; to illustrate and further develop this discussion, I consider ill health and, in particular, mental illness as specific forms of vulnerability, and how contemporary crises in healthcare enhance these vulnerabilities. It can be said that the concept of finitude and, in particular, vulnerability is essentially connected to our understanding of humanity. The lived experience of vulnerability and, in particular, ill health involves physical, mental and social suffering which are often accompanied by experiences of wrongs, harms and injustices many of which are rooted in certain myths about vulnerability. I argue that certain dominant notions of ‘vulnerability’ are not only unclear but unrealistic and ethically problematic, and can enhance current crises in healthcare in general, and mental health, in particular. The paper seeks to offer a contribution to the clarification of these concepts by drawing on post-Kantian accounts of human condition. The aim is to develop a more inclusive and realistic conception of vulnerability which, in its turn, can contribute to understanding our humanity in the contemporary world, and can promote life-enhancing possibilities to exist and be well, which can help remedy current crises in healthcare. The paper pursues a post-Kantian phenomenological analysis which plays a significant role in the proposed investigation of neglected, core aspects of vulnerability; the aim in this context is to shed more light on basic transcendental structures of vulnerability and their significance in connection to certain ethical issues concerning humanity. The basic plan of the paper is this: I consider two concepts of vulnerability (an ontological, transcendental concept and a situational, ‘empirical’ concept, respectively) and point out certain limitations of dominant approaches to them. I offer an alternative understanding of these two concepts of vulnerability, and of the relation between them – an alternative that proposes a way of integrating them. I apply this analysis to discussions concerning illness in order to identify certain life-enhancing transcendental possibilities of vulnerability. As part of the discussion, I point out social, relational aspects of vulnerability, and indicate how the approach I propose can contribute to current ethical discussions about these essential aspects of human existence, and can address certain important issue of contemporary crisis of healthcare.