The article establishes a contrast between approaches in ethical and political theory from vulnerability and approaches which require an account of the perfect conditions of morality or of the flourishing of human life. The stage is set by offering various example of approaches from vulnerability, then the Wittgensteinian perspective – especially elaborated by Stanley Cavell – is presented as one fruitful approach within this family of views. Human life in its naturalness, easiness and happiness is seen as the overcoming and reparation of episodes of crisis and blocks: it is achieved as a condition inherently open to vulnerability. This is also connected to the notion of forms of life as the work involved in such a reparation requires a redefinition of who we are from the point of view of other beings, and of various sorts of others.
