Disability in Practice

Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships

Edited by Adam Cureton and Thomas E. Hill, Jr.

Engaging Philosophy

New philosophical perspectives on disability
Investigates personal attitudes and relationships as well as public policies
At the centre is the question how to interpret and apply the idea of respect for persons in real-world contexts involving disability
Most of the contributors have personal experience involving disabilities
Promises to reset the agenda for philosophical work in this area
One of the launch volumes of the series Engaging Philosophy: a new forum for collective philosophical engagement with controversial issues in contemporary society

Disability in Practice

Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships

Edited by Adam Cureton and Thomas E. Hill, Jr.

Description

Everyone is disabled in some respect, at least in the sense that others can do things that we cannot. But significant limitations on pursuing major life activities due to severely limited eyesight, hearing, mobility, cognitive functioning and so on pose special problems that fortunately have been recognized (to some extent) in our public policies. Public policy is important, as are the deliberative frameworks that we use to justify them, and the essays in the second and third sections of this volume have significant implications for public policy and offer new proposals for justifying frameworks. Underlying public policies and their assessment, however, are the attitudes, good and bad, that we bring to them, and our attitudes as well deeply affect our interpersonal relationships. The essays here, especially in the first section, reveal how complex and problematic our attitudes towards persons with disabilities are when we are in relationships with them as care-givers, friends, family members, or briefly encountered strangers. Our attitudes towards ourselves as persons with (or without) disabilities are implicated in these discussions as well. Among the special highlights of this volume are its focus on moral attitudes and relationships involving disabilities and its contributors' recognition of the multi-faceted nature of disability problems. The importance of respect for persons as a necessary complement to beneficence is an underlying theme, and a deeper understanding of respect is made possible by considering closely its implications for relationships with persons with disabilities. Awareness of the common and uncommon human vulnerabilities also makes clear the need for modifying traditional deliberative frameworks for assessing policies, and several essays make constructive proposals for the changes that are needed.

Disability in Practice

Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships

Edited by Adam Cureton and Thomas E. Hill, Jr.

Engaging Philosophy

Introduction, Adam Cureton and Thomas E. Hill, Jr.
Part I. Attitudes and Relationships
1. Hiding a Disability and Passing as Non-Disabled, Adam Cureton
2. Beneficence and Disability, Sarah Holtman
3. Pretending Not to Notice: Respect, Attention, and Disability, Karen Stohr
4. Respect for Human Beings with Intellectual Disabilities, Oliver Sensen
Part II. Attitudes and Policies
5. Not Alive Yet, J. David Velleman
6. Respect, Regret, and Reproductive Choice, David Sussman
7. Neurodiversity and the Rejection of Cures, Richard Dean
8. "I Would Rather Die Than Live Like This": When the Newly Disabled Refuse Life Sustaining Treatment, Andrew M. Courtwright
Part III. Justifying Frameworks
9. Disability, Basic Justice, and Habilitation into Basic Good Health, Lawrence C. Becker
10. Contractarian Justice and Severe Cognitive Disabilities, Samuel Freeman
11. Obligations to the Cognitively Impaired in Nonstructured Contexts, Richard Galvin
12. Moral Disability, Moral Injury and the Flight from Vulnerability, Virginia L. Warren

Disability in Practice

Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships

Edited by Adam Cureton and Thomas E. Hill, Jr.

Engaging Philosophy

Author Information

Adam Cureton, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, works primarily on ethics, Kant, and disability. He co-edited (with Kimberley Brownlee) Disability and Disadvantage (2009) and he is currently co-editing (with David Wasserman) the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. He is the President of the Society for Philosophy and Disability.

Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is author of essays in moral and political philosophy collected in Autonomy and Self-Respect (1991), Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant's Moral Theory (1992), Respect, Pluralism, and Justice (2000), Human Welfare and Moral Worth (2002), and Virtue, Rules, and Justice (2012).

Contributors:

Lawrence C. Becker, Fellow of Hollins University and the College of William & Mary
Andrew M. Courtwright, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Adam Cureton, University of Tennessee
Richard Dean, California State University Los Angeles
Samuel Freeman, University of Pennsylvania
Richard Galvin, Texas Christian University
Thomas E. Hill, Jr., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Sarah Holtman, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Oliver Sensen, Tulane University
Karen Stohr, Georgetown University
David Sussman, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
J. David Velleman, New York University
Virginia L. Warren, Chapman University