The state of a person whose actualization of one or more dimensions depends on the help of others. It concerns in particular: embryos, children, the elderly, people with dementia or severe illness. Vulnerability does not diminish ontological dignity — on the contrary: it calls the Personalist Norm into play in a special way.
Vulnerability and art
The vulnerability of the artist — their finitude, their dependence, their experience of suffering — is not a deficiency but a source of depth. AI knows no vulnerability and therefore has no existential stake: nothing is at stake for it. The urgency that distinguishes great art springs from the experience that one’s own being is finite and not necessary.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Entity
- Related concepts: Contingency, Suffering
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (German)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology. Bexten 2017, pp. 239, 254 (vulnerability and the First Dimension).