The focus of the paper is the distance between the experience of vulnerability lived by all the
people in their social practices and the social conditions of vulnerability resulting from the
institution of legal orders. The social practices of mutual trust and recognition among social
actors become a neutral object of legal norms; nevertheless only from these practices of
entrustment/recognition can arise the subject’s difficult path of emancipatory autonomy. In this
sense, legal and political institution are grounded in - and preceded by - ethics and politics of
recognition of human otherness.
