Human dignity and intellectual disability: Thinking with Beauvoir over the influence of the Kantian view

“Kant is generally taken to be the locus situ of the intimate connection between personhood, dignity, and autonomy” (Kittay and Carlson 2010, 4). In this thesis, I consider how the Kantian view of morality influenced the creation of a framework for our concepts and treatment of human dignity which contributes to the discrimination of people with intellectual disabilities. I will argue that we need to conceptualize human dignity outside of a framework of autonomous agency because it becomes exclusive of some people with intellectual disabilities. Guided by the thought of Simone de Beauvoir I attempt to formulate, instead, a phenomenological-existential model of human dignity, to approach the concept in a way that includes all human beings, and thus of necessity, people with intellectual disabilities. Beauvoir uses a concept of ontological freedom, which I believe is a suitable and solid ground for us to consider dignity for everyone. She argues that each human freedom carries responsibility (Beauvoir 1948, 15) and is tied to the freedom of other individuals (Beauvoir 1948, 17). Such a tie to others is so fundamental to human beings that I need others to realize my own freedom (Beauvoir 1948, 72). After presenting a brief overview of the Kantian formulation of human dignity, I present the existential notions of ambiguity, situatedness, intentionality, and of freedom as responsibility, through Beauvoir’s lens. By doing so, I offer an existential background for the project of an alternative for a model for conceiving of human dignity that is unlike the dominant Kantian model, which I present at the conclusion of this thesis. In a Beauvoirean way, the needs that intellectually disabled people possess are not out of the ordinary for what we understand about human freedom. My philosophical conception of human dignity is that it is both a quality and a capacity: the former as a cause, which flows from our existence, for which I say that dignity is the worthiness of existing in being human; the latter as a capacity to be externally recognized and attended to by others. I argue that our concept of human dignity needs to reflect the situatedness of different people in their own particularity, including the particularities of intellectual ability and disability.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Master's

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Dos Santos, Marco Aurélio

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Mudde, Anna

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Piercey, Robert

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://doi.org/10.82465/4832

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uregina.scholaris.ca:10294/16064