Embodying the Ethical— Editors’ Introduction DEBRA BERGOFFEN AND GAIL WEISS Over the years, feminist scholars have developed a multifaceted analysis of what it means to embody (or to fail to embody) a given gender, race, and social class. They have examined the price people and groups pay when their bodies are seen as transgressing social norms. They have analyzed how people’s bodily differ- ences, including differences in comportment, styles of dress, and ways of speaking, mark them for oppression. In addressing these issues, feminist philos- ophers have alerted us to the ethical meanings of embodiment—to the ways that our bodies function as grounds for ethical theorizing, as the subjects of eth- ical demands, and as the means by which these demands are articulated. Entering this conversation, the essays in this Special Issue introduce paradigms of embodiment that expose the blind spots of prevailing ethical norms. Collected under the title ‘‘Ethics of Embodiment,’’ they pursue the implications of situating bodies at the center of ethical theory. Drawing from diverse philosophical tradi- tions, they problematize the ways our bodies are currently valued and lived. They deal with such questions as: How does bodily vulnerability inform ethical de- mands? How does a focus on embodiment re-align existing ethical theories and practices (for example, medical practices and public policy)? What current bodily norms are challenged by an ethics of embodiment? How does an embodied ethics contribute to new ways of thinking about space, time, and intersubjectivity? Attending to these questions and the issues they raise, we have arranged this body of work into four sections: Erotic Ethical Encounters; Creating Ethical Spaces; Freedom, Dependency, and Vulnerability; and Confronting Dis- Abling Norms. Each section highlights the different directions an ethics of embodiment may take. Reading the sections together, we discover the lim- itations of any single perspective. Placing the sections in dialogue with each other, we hope to show that an ethics of embodiment must be open to disparate voices, concerns, and challenges. EROTIC ETHICAL ENCOUNTERS In Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty asserts that there is an ‘‘interfusion between sexuality and existence, which means that existence permeates sexuality and vice versa, so that it is impossible to determine, in a given Hypatia vol. 26, no. 3 (Summer, 2011) r by Hypatia, Inc.