Introduction to Lecture 4

Equality as an overarching aspiration (like liberty and autonomy) is grounded on a particular uncontextualized vision of the individual and an impoverished sense of the human condition that distorts our aspiration for justice and our expectations for collective responsibility.

Beginning with the body, Vulnerability Theory brings the temporal dimension of the life course into consideration, altering and complicating any discussion of what is the appropriate nature and extent of state responsibility for the wellbeing of the individual. A life-course perspective provides important insights into the totality of the human condition, and forces us to confront the illusion of equality as an organizing aspiration for a truly just society. It also urges us to consider how changes in the body over time should affect the ways in which we define our social institutions and relationships.

This discussion of inevitable inequality is fundamentally a discussion about the function and nature of social institutions and relationships and the role they play in shaping the individual. This discussion is not focused on the demographic differences or variations among individuals that are the focus of traditional anti-discrimination models of justice, but on the developmental changes that occur within every body. These inherent differences, which are biological and developmental, emerging over time, are largely ignored in constructing traditional theories about the appropriate relationship between the state and the legal or political subject.