A new look on moral reasoning | James Keenan SJ

Ethicists today are developing the concepts of Vulnerability and Recognition so as to support more responsible and collaborative societies around the world. Judith Butler, for instance, distinguishes precarity from vulnerability; she sees precarity as the context of a person in need but identifies vulnerability as the fundamental capacity of the human being to be open and responsive to another.

Think of the Good Samaritan parable where the Samaritan, unlike the priest and the levite respond to the precarious, wounded man on the road. The first act of vulnerable people is, then, to recognize the other, especially those overlooked. Many contemporary movements are recognition movements, like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, or the Dalit Movement. Putting these two concepts together, it will be argued, is the work of Brotéria in responding to the world in which we live.