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In
Disability through the Lens of Justice, Jessica Begon considers how disabled individuals should be justly treated in the public policy of liberal democratic states. She seeks to create an account of disability which takes seriously the diversity of disabled lives, an approach that enables individuals to exercise broadly-specified opportunities
List of contents
- 1.: What Disability Is Not
- 2.: Disability: A Justice-Based Account
- 3.: Disability and Distribution: A Capability Approach
- 4.: Capabilities for Control
- 5.: Neutral Impairment, Disadvantageous Disability
- 6.: Disambiguating Adaptive Preferences: When, and Why, Should Testimony Be Trusted?
- 7.: Don't Do It For My Sake: Providing Control, Avoiding Paternalism, and Applying the Justice Account of Disability
About the author
Jessica Begon is an Associate Professor in Political Theory in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, having joined Durham in 2018. Between 2015-2018 she was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and before that worked for a year each at the University of York, and the University of Sheffield. She completed her PhD, entitled 'Policy without Paternalism: A Capability Approach to Legitimate State Action', at the University of Sheffield. Jessica's research interests are in the area of moral and political philosophy, with a particular focus on justice and inequality, disability, paternalism, and epistemic injustice.
Summary
Disability through the Lens of Justice offers a contextual framework for considering the limitations that disability places on individuals. Specifically, those that prevent individuals from having control in certain domains of their life, by restricting the availability of acceptable options or the ability to choose between them. Begon argues that our theory of justice should be concerned with the lives individuals can lead, and not with whether their bodies and minds function typically. The problem that disability raises is not the mere fact of difference, but the ways in which that difference is accommodated (or not) and the limitations it may cause. In Disability Through the Lens of Justice, Begon offers a new framework to the disability and justice model. She argues that achieving justice does not require 'normalisation', or the elimination of difference, but through implementating a model which enables all individuals to control their lives as they choose.
