Martha C. Nussbaum · Deep Essay · Chapter 03
The Blessing and Risk of Vulnerability
If we removed the possibility of being hurt, would love and a good human life disappear with it?
The short answer
To love another as a separate person is to care about a good one cannot fully command. Vulnerability is therefore not an accidental weakness added to love; it is built into valuing finite lives and relationships.
Read more deeply
A perfectly self-sufficient being would never grieve, but it would also have no irreplaceable other whose fate mattered. Human flourishing includes goods—friendship, family, citizenship, health—that depend on fortune and other agents. Emotion registers this dependence.
The ethical task is not to maximize exposure or glorify suffering. It is to build resilience and institutions that protect people without demanding emotional armor. Boundaries can honor vulnerability by preserving the conditions in which mutual care remains possible.
Context and caution
Vulnerability is unequally distributed. Praising openness while ignoring violence, poverty, discrimination, or care burdens turns a humane insight into privilege.
Primary-source guide
Primary guide: Upheavals of Thought, Parts I–III; Political Emotions; related capability-approach works.
Pathos Editorial · Reviewed 2026-09-12