© Philosophy Today, Volume 65, Issue 1 (Winter 2021). ISSN 0031-8256 37–47 Philosophy Today DOI: 10.5840/philtoday202122382 Weak Action: Butler as a Reader of Levinas and Arendt JAN BIERHANZL Abstract: Te notion of “weak action” is developed in this paper in an attempt to overcome the schism between the action of a free political subject on the one hand, and their dependency on the support of others and the environment on the other. Tis paper focuses foremost on Judith Butler’s later work raising two diferent ques- tions. First, following Butler and her critical reading of Levinas, the problem is raised how and at what price the ethics of vulnerability would be able to become not only the source of a critique of politics, but also the source of a concrete political action. Second, through Butler’s reinterpretation of Arendt’s political thinking, the notion of “action” is enriched by the dimension of vulnerability. Key words: weak action, vulnerability, ethics, politics, embodiment, social ontology Introduction T he notion of “weak action” reexamines the relation between the ac- tion of a free political subject, their potential for violence, and their dependence on support of others and the environment in order to be able to act. Te insistence on the weak nature of action is motivated by the attempt to overcome a schism characterized by the following features. On the one side of the schism, the deep grounding of the notion of action in western political thought in the free activity of a transparent and self-foundational subject. On the other side, the dependency of action on the support of others and of the environment. What I call “weak action” is an attempt to reject the implied incompatibility of free action and dependence on others by introducing into the exercise of freedom an ethical acknowledgement of the possibility that one’s actions enact violence on the lives of others, those to which one is bonded as well as the lives that one does not actually know and might not ever know. In