Disability Through the Lens of Justice (Jessica Begon, OUP, 2023)

Disability Through the Lens of Justice

When thinking about disability in the context of justice, our focus should not be on the ways in which people’s bodies and minds function differently. Instead, we should shift our focus to the limitations that this leads to – for particular people, in particular contexts. And, at least from the perspective of justice, only a subset of these limitations matter. 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. Our theory of justice should be concerned with the lives individuals can lead, and not with whether their bodies and minds function typically. What matters is that people can be mobile, form relationships, engage in leisure, and so on – not how they achieve these things.

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. Indeed, on my definition of disability, to be disabled just is to be unable to exercise the control over our life that everyone should be able to. Our focus, then, should not be on whether someone has received a particular diagnosis, or on the most visible deviations from what we take to be the species norm, but on whether people have access to central capabilities. Achieving justice does not require ‘normalisation’, or the elimination of difference, but enabling all individuals to control their lives as they choose.