2)+What+the+Research+Tells+Us+(Brief+Overview)



"Understanding begins when something addresses us." (Gadamer 1989)

Vulnerable:

I s vulnerability a bad thing or a good thing? Or is our way of living, seeing, hearing, being inevitably vulnerable in the face of another?

The word vulnerable means to have one’s guard down, to be open to censure or criticism. It is from the Latin word vulnerare, which means to wound. It speaks to a person’s state of being liable to succumb to their emotions, surroundings and memories and is something that is difficult to defend. In his book Radical Hope, Lear would argue that vulnerability is something we share "simply in virtue of being human…." and that "we are familiar with the thought that as humans creatures we are by nature vulnerable: to bodily injury, disease, ageing, death--and all sorts of insults from environment...We seem to acquire it as a result of the fact that we essentially inhabit a way of life. Humans are by nature cultural animals: we necessarily inhabit a way of life that is expressed in culture. But our way of life--whatever it is--is vulnerable in various ways. And we, as participants in that way of life, thereby inherit a vulnerability.” (Radical Hope by Lear) Hans George Gadamer's popular quote, "understanding begins when something addresses us" further suggests that in order to be addressed, one needs to be prepared to reveal ones own vulnerability. If vulnerability is to be defined by openness to being challenged, then does there not also have to be an openness to being changed?

There is a duality in essence of the word vulnerability, in one way it speaks to an intimate opening to gain experience, in another way it represents a risk or danger to our being. It is within this duality that the complexity of collaboration and mentoring lies.