Vulnerability and non-domination: a republican perspective on natural limits

A politics that affirms natural limits - either ecological limits or limits posed by the human constitution - is subject to certain criticisms. One of these suggests that a focus on natural limits unduly constrains politics, crowding out deliberation and self-government in favour of expert management. This paper considers how the civic republican tradition approaches the concept of natural limits. The republican tradition offers two arguments for affirming natural limits, one emphasizing the value of vulnerability and the other emphasizing the ideal of liberty as non-domination. However, the two arguments are in tension with one another. An emphasis on vulnerability suggests a natural, pre-political set of constraints on politics (thus seemingly validating the very criticism levelled at a politics of limits), whereas an emphasis on non-domination suggests a more open-ended, contested politics. This tension points to deeper tensions between the communitarian and Italian-Atlantic strands of the republican tradition. In the end, the paper tries to address these tensions by showing that an egalitarian approach to vulnerability actually supports the ideal of non-domination and that a respect for natural limits is consistent with a robust, deliberative republican politics emphasizing contestation and self-government. In developing the concept of vulnerability, the paper draws upon not only republican thought, but also feminist theory.