‘As if my eye were still growing’: Living Disability

Abstract

This article sets disability discourse within the context of two foundational ideas. Our Western tradition has inherited these two ideas from the Christian understanding of the human condition, and they need to be taken together if we are to realize a wholesome humanism. The first is the incommensurable value of every individual human being, which, however, if taken on its own as a foundation, can lead to severe isolationism. It requires the corrective of the second; namely, the realization that humanity itself is a substantial unity. We cannot stand absolutely apart, and knowing this raises the crucial issue of our relationship to those who in certain circumstances are self-helpless.