By vulnerability we tend to understand everything that has to do with our pain and suffering dimension. Being vulnerable, though, mainly means being affected. Therefore, all what has to do with being human, no matter if positive and joyful or the opposite, is deeply related to our being, always and any time, vulnerable beings.

This is the starting point of this book, which encourages the reader to think about vulnerability on an existential note. The philosophical itinerary orbits around two fundamental areas: the existential reality of vulnerability (its pathos), and the decision to integrate it and live it as an ethical and political gear (its ethos). The author relies on René Descartes' work, whose philosophy he considers a propitious one to meditate on vulnerability, inasmuch it stimulates a reflection on vulnerability as a condition of human life, in all its magnitudes.