From protection to helplessness: a phenomenological reading of responsiveness, vulnerability and strangeness in the contemporary crisis of guarantees

Abstract

This article phenomenologically analyzes the contemporary crisis of guarantees based on the concepts of protection, vulnerability, and helplessness. Following Husserl, it argues that protection should not be understood primarily as a legal or technical device, but as a pre-reflective structure of experience, inscribed in the life-world as the ground of validity, trust, and orientation. The crisis of guarantees thus expresses the collapse of this horizon that sustained everyday normality and the predictability of the social world. Secondly, it draws on Waldenfels' phenomenology to analyze corporeality as the original site of vulnerability and exposure to the stranger. The body is understood as an instance of pathos, making protection an ever-late response to the event. Finally, it examines the European crisis of protection, highlighting the figure of the refugee as an expression of contemporary helplessness and proposing the figure of the third party as a mediation between response and responsibility.