The recognition of vulnerability for an interspecies and intersectional justice based on care

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to establish a right to be cared as part of an interspecies and intersectional concept of justice. This approach recognizes vulnerability as an intrinsic characteristic of all living beings, regardless of gender, class, race, capacity, or species. Therefore, vulnerability is considered general, comprehensive, and fundamental to humans and other-than-humans, differently from modern ethical, political, and ontological theories that usually presuppose a paradigm of ‘invulnerability,’ albeit undeclared. The ideal of invulnerability does not represent the inner condition of living beings but sustains it as a foundation for systems of domination based on hierarchical value dualisms. Acknowledging the vulnerability related to interdependence without rejecting or misrepresenting it, is essential to overcoming these dualisms. Also, it demands recognizing that the distribution of care activities is limited and affects individuals differently depending on their social position, considering race, class, gender, capacity, and species. The right to be cared for due to the vulnerability aims to protect individuals and political minority groups from inequalities and injustices. Beyond negative rights, it requires protective measures imposing care duties on moral agents, social institutions, and the State for which we have proposed an universal interspecies guidelines. To be recognized as someone with moral and political value means having one’s vulnerability taken into account. Consequently, not being cared for in one’s vulnerability at the right time and to the proper extent, taking singularity and the contextual analysis into consideration so the particularities of the situation and specificities of the individual are adequately addressed, is to be the object of injustice. We conclude that a right to be cared for is part of a pluralistic concept of justice that encompasses an interspecies and intersectional perspective opposing the logic of domination and building the path of the logic of care.

Keywords

• Care
• Ecofeminism
• Intersectionality
• Interspecies Justice
• Vulnerability