Bioethics "Abnormal" Bodies

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Almost all ethical and political theorizing, across the history of philosophy, has simply presumed the able-bodied, ‘normal’, independent and self-sufficient human being as its unit of analysis – and has treated disabled, dependent, and abnormal bodies as fringe cases to be either accommodated post hoc or ignored altogether. However, this model radically misrepresents the human condition. Not only are many of us permanently disabled, dependent, or 'abnormal' in various ways, but almost all of us will spend the first and last decades of our lives highly dependent on caregivers, and will experience temporary disabilities along the way. In this course we will use disability and the concept of 'abnormality' as a lens through which to examine a wide range of ethical, metaphysical, and political questions. We will think about the social meaning and the metaphysical and ethical significance of disability, beauty, fatness, deformity, and other such variations in embodiment.