Narrative Autonomy as Means of Vulnerability Management

The COVID-19 pandemic that has spread rapidly and affected the world at large represents a shock, from which society can either recover by radically changing its presumptions or slowly fade away. The pandemic has highlighted the weaknesses of particular conceptual constellations that seemed to have been definitely acquired in our social, ethical, and relational environments. This shock calls for a brand-new reframing of certain moral categories, as they have been recently connected together. This contribution focuses on two concepts that have gained increased attention in ethics and moral philosophy in the last few decades, namely autonomy and vulnerability. It tries to refigure them in light of the pandemic experience, since the COVID-19 emergency as well as the policies of containment and lockdown have let other ways of being autonomous and vulnerable emerge, and have hastened the affirmation of new meanings for both concepts, which could have barely been imagined before. The two concepts are often understood as problematically linked, if not opposed to each other. This relationship needs to be articulated and explained, as it can be useful not only from a theoretical perspective, but also from practical and political ones.