harmability

We have seen that the will-rights conception seems more vulnerable to the non-existence challenge than the interest-rights one. It is possible however that the will-rights conception could actually be less vulnerable to the non-identity challenge than the interest-rights one, insofar as the former relies less directly on a concept of interest and on the underlying assumption of harmability.

2010 March 8, Axel Gosseries, “On Future Generations’ Future Rights”, in James S. Fishkin, Robert E. Goodin, editors, Population and Political Theory (Philosophy, Politics and Society; 8), Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN, page 120

Schematically, then, we may: (a) foreground vulnerability as a primarily negative condition of harmability; (b) take vulnerability to be primarily negative but therefore caution against focussing on it (as does, e.g. [Bonnie] Honig); (c) re-interpret vulnerability as an ambiguous condition (e.g. [Erinn] Gilson); (d) take our condition to be ambiguous but call it something other than vulnerability (‘openness’, perhaps).

2019 September 26, Alison Stone, “Vulnerability and Negativity”, in Being Born: Birth and Philosophy, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, chapter 2 (History, Inheritance, and Vulnerability), page 78

Vulnerability is, as [Edward] Farley made clear, tied to the capacity to be harmed: to be vulnerable is to be harmable. But vulnerability is not necessarily lived or encountered as harmability all the time, because vulnerability is often negotiated through the possibilities, the goods, that specific vulnerabilities accompany – the goods, not the vulnerability, are the point, the focus – at least until the point of loss.

2019 December 26 (indicated as 2020), Linn Tonstad, “On Vulnerability”, in Karen Kilby, Rachel Davies, editors, Suffering and the Christian Life, London: T&T Clark, →ISBN, page 181

The vulnerability or ‘harmability’ of other beings is recognized as a security issue only insofar as it directly contributes to the intrinsic uncertainty of human existence (see, e.g., [Andrew] Linklater 2011).

2020 May 21, Carolin Kaltofen, “Posthuman security”, in Birgit Schippers, editor, The Routledge Handbook to Rethinking Ethics in International Relations (Routledge Handbooks), Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, part V (The ethics of global security)

Against these discourses, the volume Tranquilas addresses the patriarchal normalisation of violence against women and attempts to undo some of the structures that make it prevalent. Firstly, it fights against the consideration of violence as a sort of ‘manifest destiny’, in Sayak Valencia’s words, that condemns girls and women to always exist under conditions of ‘vulnerabilidad y dañabilidad’ [vulnerability and harmability] (2018) through narration and characterisation.

2024 April 9, Inés Ordiz, “Tranquilas: Monstrous Resistance and Feminist Storytelling”, in Simon Bacon, editor, Heroic Girls as Figures of Resistance and Futurity in Popular Culture (Interdisciplinary Research in Gender), Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →DOI, →ISBN, part II (Cross-Cultural Heroes)