A Thick Dispositional Analysis
from Part I - Conceptions of Vulnerability and Relational Equality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2026
This chapter articulates two new forms of vulnerability – distributive and relational – which occur respectively in situations of distributive and relational inequality. It argues that a dispositional analysis of the concept of vulnerability is needed to explain these forms of vulnerability. Vulnerability is not harm that is actualised but rather the susceptibility, risk, or potential to suffer harm under certain conditions. Distributive vulnerabilities are ‘intrinsic’ dispositions grounded in bodily properties that manifest under social conditions, whereas relational vulnerabilities are ‘extrinsic’ dispositions that obtain only because people occupy subordinated positions in unjust social hierarchies. The chapter then argues that vulnerability is a thick ethical concept that has both descriptive and evaluative elements. The descriptive elements of distributive and relational vulnerability are that people have the respective dispositions. Distributive and relational vulnerability both entail moral obligations due to their connection to inequality. However, in general, vulnerability does not entail moral obligations but weaker normative inferences.
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