L’homme agissant and Self-understanding: Pamela Sue Anderson on Capability and Vulnerability

Abstract

This article addresses Pamela Sue Anderson’s philosophy of capability and vulnerability as an important contribution to the advancement of today’s feminist ethics. Following Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics of l’homme capable, Anderson extends the phenomenological perspective of the capable human subject to embrace the distinctly feminine capability. She advocates for women’s recognizing and re-inventing of themselves as capable subjects, and claims that the perturbing initial loss of confidence in their reflective capacities can be redeemed via the transformations in women’s emotional and religious lives, as well as through their creative impulse. Locating in hermeneutics’ openness to ambiguity, incompleteness and insecurity a potential to unveil the non-transparent aspects of the assumed male-female equality, Anderson focuses on the interlocking aspect of human capability and vulnerability. She calls for transforming an ignorance of vulnerability into an ethical avowal of it. In reconfiguring patriarchal culture myths, Anderson sees the possibility of re-shaping our approach to vulnerability and capability, especially the human capacity for love.