Limit Situations: For an existential anthropology of vulnerability

Vulnerability and limit situations both express the fragility of the human and other living beings. Although these two concepts have been a subject of dialogue in the psychopathological tradition, the same has not yet happened in that of the philosophical. The ethics of vulnerability seem to entirely disregard Karl Jaspers’ reflections on limit situations, which have much in common with the structural vulnerability of the human. Commencing with this lack in perspective, this essay attempts to build a bridge between these conceptions by utilising the psychiatric paradigmatic approach to the relationship between vulnerability and limit situations, with the aim of extending this relationship within the broader project of an existential anthropology of vulnerability.