L’autonomia vulnerabile. Un’analisi fenomenologica ed etica del corpo malato a partire da Jean-Paul Sartre

The Vulnerable Autonomy. A Phenomenological and Ethical Analysis of the Ill Body starting from Jean-Paul Sartre. Human experience can be conceived as a constant activity of manifestation of the world in different spatio-temporal modes, aspects, meanings, and references, where the body acts as a necessary centre of orientation. This prereflective condition of embodied-being-in-the-world becomes uncomfortable and complicated when the world-body relationship is disrupted (as, for example, in illness), revealing the delicate interconnection between vulnerability and autonomy concerning corporeality. In this essay, I will first outline the different manifestations of corporeality through Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenology; then, I will link the three dimensions of corporeality (body-for-itself, body-for-others, body-for-self-for-others) with the concepts of illness, disease, and sickness. Lastly, the autonomy-vulnerability dyad will be analysed to formulate the conditions for rethinking the relationship between the two concepts in terms of duality in tension rather than radical opposition.