Dependency and vulnerability: Jewish and feminist existentialist constructions of the human

Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas describe the human being as dependent and vulnerable. Significantly, each of these philosophers uses gendered terms to make his arguments. This essay describes the ways in which their Jewish existentialist accounts of what it means to be human have a number of important affinities with contemporary "womencentered" feminist philosophies, and feminist philosophies of care more specifically.