Steven R. Smith

Equality, identity and the Disability Rights Movement: from policy to practice and from Kant to Nietzsche in more than one uneasy move

Consistent with Social Work Codes of Ethics and mainstream social policy objectives, the Disability Rights Movement (DRM) promotes the universal values of equal rights and individual autonomy, drawing heavily from Kantian philosophy. However, an anti-universalized Nietzschean perspective is also promoted via the ‘social model’ of disability, challenging the political orthodoxy of rights-based social movements, and the aspirations of social workers to ‘empower’ disabled people. I argue that these Kantian and Nietzschean strands within the DRM, whilst incommensurable, permit a radical assertion of disability-identity. That is, without conceding to value-relativism and postmodern particularlism, and allowing a ‘celebration of difference’ through establishing reciprocal social relations.

The Social Construction of Talent: A Defence of Justice as Reciprocity

Debates concerning principles of justice need to be attentive to various types of social process. One concerns the distribution of resources between groups defined as talented and untalented. Another concerns the social mechanisms by which people come to be categorised as talented and untalented. Political philosophers have paid considerable attention to the former issues, much less to the latter. That, I shall argue, represents a significant oversight.

Arguing against cuts in lone parent benefits: reclaiming the desert ground in the UK

Politicians from the centre-left tradition have been highly critical of government policy that has reduced lone parent social security benefits. However, the arguments here are that these critics have undermined distributive justice arguments against the cuts because they have conceded too much to a government which (a) stresses the value of paid over unpaid work and (b) socially constructs lone parents as being ‘welfare dependent’ and ‘non-participators’. Instead, justifications of increased benefits to lone parents would be more securely based on desert arguments, i.e. a lone parents contribution to reproductive labour and social stability deservesto be more fully recognized.

Citizenship and disability: incommensurable lives and well-being

This paper explores a new political consensus promoting ‘active’ as opposed to ‘passive’ conceptions of citizenship, emerging from the late 1970s onwards, and marking the post-settlement/post-Marshellesque era of the welfare state. Reflecting this consensus, the disability rights movement critiques ‘passive’ conceptions, which are, it is claimed, supported by the medical model of disability and so-called objective accounts of ‘special needs’ and well-being – that is, accounts provided by non-disabled professionals and carers who frequently diminish the rights of disabled people to live autonomously. In contrast, ‘active’ conceptions cohere with the social model of disability supporting the values of agency and self-determination – derived, in part, from equalizing opportunities for disabled people’s social participation compared with non-disabled people; but also by promoting subjective accounts of well-being which are often incomparable or incommensurable, both between persons and across one person’s life.

Equality and diversity : value incommensurability and the politics of recognition

Equality, diversity and radical politics Value incommensurability Empathic imagination and its limits Critiquing compassion-based social relations Egalitarianism, disability and monistic ideals Equality, identity and disability Paradox and the limits of reason.

Liberal Ethics and Well-being Promotion in the Disability Rights Movement, Disability Policy, and Welfare Practice

The disability rights movement (DRM) has often been closely associated with the liberal values of individual choice and independence, or the ‘ethics of agency’, where enhancing the capacity to make autonomous decisions in various policy and practice-based contexts is said to facilitate disabled peoples well-being. Nevertheless, other liberal values are derived from what will be termed here the ‘ethics of self-acceptance’. The latter is more disguised in liberalism and the DRM, as rather than emphasising the capacity to make autonomous decisions, self-acceptance focuses on the positive acceptance of individual limitations, but again to enhance well-being. The further argument is that while the ethics of agency and self-acceptance often logically cohere and overlap, through promoting the values of self-respect and relational autonomy, dilemmas arise from our asymmetrical, or uneven, dispositions towards time, and present and future lives and experiences. For example, positively accepting individual limitations allows for a present-oriented immersion in ‘the moment’, but which often requires some suspension of future-oriented goals and aspirations. Understanding some of the implications of this asymmetry, and the dilemmas arising from it, provide important insights concerning approaches to physical and intellectual impairments and the subsequent debates within the DRM, social policy and welfare practice.

Keeping Our Distance in Compassion-Based Social Relations

Although responding to ‘bad luck’ through instituting appropriate redistributive principles is a proper part of what justice entails, these principles must also paradoxically include the possibility of an agent-based response to misfortune that transforms adverse contingencies, such that the initial ‘bad luck’ becomes a positive part of the ‘sufferers’ identity. This neo-Kantian accommodation within theories of justice signifies a ‘deep’ egalitarian empathic connectedness between persons, based on an equal respect for persons as agents (and not simply as passive victims of misfortune). Moreover, it is an accommodation that (a) can promote equality as ‘an end in itself’ rather than as merely a means to the end of enhancing a teleological conception of ‘well-being’ and ‘human flourishing’ and (b) can underpin a more robust Rawlsian conception of ‘justice as reciprocity’ than is usually allowed.

Agency and surprise: learning at the limits of empathic‐imagination and liberal egalitarian political philosophy

Liberal egalitarians have been wary of being orientated by the empathetic understanding of others lest it offends the separateness of persons. This worry can be overcome by embracing second‐order as well as first‐order empathetic‐imagination, while doing so strengthens liberal‐egalitarian claims to treat all with equal concern and respect. ‘First‐order’ empathic‐imagination, which accesses objective knowledge about a person’s experience, is a necessary but not sufficient part of relating to others as agents. ‘Second‐order’ empathic‐imagination, encompassing a ‘disposition of surprise’ at an agent’s ability to have a valued life contrary to what is normally and reasonably expected, should also be encouraged. This disposition accepts that making fundamental mistakes in empathic‐imagination is inevitable, but by being disposed to recognize these as mistakes a person is more open to understanding and identifying with ‘disadvantaged others’ who are agents. As a result, policy‐makers and practitioners must recognize a potential tension between promoting social systems that redistribute resources and the image those defined as ‘worse‐off’ hold of themselves. Such interventions need to be sensitive to the positive image those they view as disadvantaged may hold of themselves, while nevertheless recognizing their entitlement to resources to improve their condition.

Revising Wolff’s support for retribution in theories of punishment: desistance, rehabilitation, and accommodating individual and social accounts of responsibility

ABSTRACT Jonathan Wolff supports retribution as a justification for punishment in his book Ethics and Public Policy: A Philosophical Enquiry, arguing that the victim’s status and self-respect has been undermined by a crime committed. Punishment responds to these ‘social violations’, with the criminal justice system acting as a ‘communicative mechanism’ to the offender and victim, restoring the status of the victim by punishing the offender. Consistent with Wolff’s ‘bottom-up’ methodological approach to applied ethics, this paper defends his conclusions supporting retribution, for certain crimes at least, but his position needs qualifying and supplementing. We mount a defence of retribution which, contrary to popular views, seeks to accommodate both individual and social accounts of responsibility. This accommodation is achieved by holding the individual offender responsible via retributive justifications of punishment, while also acknowledging the social responsibility of restoring the status of the offender given the social injustice experienced by many offenders, prior to their offending. Following this analysis, and a consideration of empirical studies concerning probation practice, we recommend the practice of desistance as most likely to help reduce re-offending, alongside the social responsibility of other state representatives and social institutions for building socio-economic capital for the offender.

Melancholy and happiness

This paper explores an under-theorised phenomenon – the experience of melancholy as an enhancer of happiness. Drawing from philosophy and literature, I define melancholy as an experience that combines the pleasure of feeling sad with sober self-reflection. Despite expectations to the contrary, two potentially positive outcomes of melancholy are identified – insightful pensiveness, and emotional connectedness with loss and pain. These outcomes can enhance happiness as understood in key texts of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, and, consistent with findings in psychology, also have important implications for wider debates in social policy and welfare practice. First, the pensiveness associated with melancholy can make unique contributions to personal insights, and help develop and fulfill ‘authentic happiness’ and ‘informed desires’. These contributions oppose hedonist accounts of happiness, but are conducive to enhancing happiness properly understood. Second, melancholy can also provide a psychologically safe arena for experiencing loss and pain, where a person can more positively accept the limits of the human condition. This acceptance enhances her happiness, as she is better able to live ‘in the moment’ and so derive satisfaction from her presently-orientated activities and commitments.