This book rethinks the anthropology of friendship from the perspective of theology and disability, and suggests the respect for human dignity and the person´s vulnerability as the criterion in reconsidering such an anthropology. The reality of disability is not only the reality of being in the world, but also concerns the concept of the meaning of otherness and being created as an image of God. The constructive critique that the emergence of disability as a human condition posits to theo-anthropological and ethical concepts is the quest of the renewal of theo-anthropological and ethical knowledge on the meaning of disability, otherness and friendship. The theological and anthropological entities, such as disability and friendship, are interconnected in a sense that the meaning of the one needs to be explained in the light of the other, and vice versa. The renewal of certain anthropological categories in such regard is a search for a deeper understanding of humanity, not apart from, butin light of, the presence of disability.

Martina Vuk is a theologian and a scientific collaborator at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Interdisciplinary Institute of Ethics and Human Rights and associate lecturer at Department of Nursing at Catholic University in Zagreb, Croatia. She specializes in disability, vulnerability,  ethics and personalistic and  integrative bioethics. Her research utilizes the concept of vulnerability and the concept of interdependency.