1.1 Introduction
As a discipline, philosophy pursues reason and logic with the purpose of examining reality, that is, real life and fundamental questions including the notion of ‘persons’, ‘disability’ and if persons living with an intellectual disability can be considered as human ‘persons’. Indeed, more recently, the concept of how to treat persons who live with an intellectual disability has been scrutinized in western nations (e.g., Kristeva, 2010; Clapton, 2009; Carlson, 2010; Kittay & Carlson, 2009; Krall McCray, 2017). The latter offers insightful reflections on the concepts of independence and community and how this impacts the lives of persons living with an intellectual disability. The scholars writing on these topics are generally persons living without an intellectual disability, which may be seen as an advantage, as they are able to present an objective view. Conversely, their views may be assessed as ignorant, since they may fail to account for the actual lived experiences of persons living with an intellectual disability. There is a middle ground: academic rigour can assess historical patterns of behaviour and warn of potential pitfalls, with lived experiences offering the most meaningful insights into personal lives. This book where possible uses both sources of research.
There are many persons with a physical disability (e.g., Oliver, 1990) or psychiatric/psych-social disability (e.g., Moeller, 2016), who can offer insights from the perspective of cultural barriers qua culture and qua barriers that impact upon personal lives. However, the insights of culture and barriers of persons living with an intellectual disability are typically articulated by family members, for example, De Vinck (1990), friends; Nouwen (1997), academics; Reinders (2008), held in narrative forms. Disability is not monolithic and indeed “even [in] the same diagnosis, two people’s experience are unique” (Moeller, 2016, p. 230) and a personalist approach will always focus on each person’s individual experience and cultural context. Understanding disability from this perspective also reinforces Sherry’s (2008) contention that definitions of disability are “unstable and open to contestations” (p. 11) and they occur “alongside multiple other identities (such as, sexuality, ‘race’, and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc.” (2008, p. 75). Thus “disability” is a generic word that incorporates a range of conditions and Complex aicethologies that do not follow an exact trajectory for each person diagnosed, (Burke & Fell, 2007; Rothman, 2003).
This chapter introduces an alternative philosophical lens to critique international contemporary policies of social inclusion as they are implemented in and through neoliberal paradigms and the phases that have been used to research the goals of social inclusion. It also permits the reader to understand the complexity of the lived experience of intellectual disability. This philosophical approach posits that intellectual disability is appropriately understood when personal and cultural perceptions of impairment and the actual lived experiences of persons are integrated. This form of analysis is presented in later chapters. The survey reveals that a person’s experiences and how non-peers treat them emanates from the social and cultural reactions to intellectual disability.
1.2 Philosophical Lens
Striker (1997) argues that to investigate the impact of social inclusion on the lives of persons living with an intellectual disability in society requires “a method more critical, even more militant, than to address [disability] in terms of exclusion” (1997, p. 15). Some scholars have developed terms such as ‘ableism’ and ‘disablism’ to understand the phenomenon of why persons living with a disability hold a secondary status to persons who do not live with any form of disability. ‘Ableism’ refers to “the widespread policies and practices that perpetuate certain ways of being human as “‘the perfect species-typical’ and therefore essential human” (Campbell, 2001). ‘Disablism’ draws our attention to the “discriminatory, oppressive or abusive behaviours arising from the belief that disabled people are inferior to others” (Miller, Parker, & Gillinson, 2004). These approaches share a similarity with the technique used in this book to address social inclusion, even though the methodology in this book emanates from philosophy of personalism and in particular from the work of philosophers who can be associated with “continental philosophy”.
The term, “continental philosophy” itself is a disputed concept—although it is a well-defined domain of philosophy, it may not accurately define the subject matter (Critchley, 2001; Glendinning, 2006). Regardless of how the critical thinking is named or if ‘continental philosophy’ is a separate branch of philosophy, this approach to analysing western policies of social inclusion scrutinizes with the intention of providing wisdom and knowledge for the future practice. The means of investigating is through an “emphasis on social, cultural and historical conditions of thought and existence” (West, 2010, p. ix) that focuses on persons, social interactions, ideology and structures. Critchley (2001, pp. 54–74) suggests that a model can be deduced from “continental philosophy” that the methodology differentiates it from “analytic philosophy” and explains how it has been used to critique “social practices” (p. 54) whilst aiming to initiate positive social changes.
Critchley’s (2001) model is reliant on three concepts: critique , praxis and emancipation . Praxis has a history in philosophy that extends from Aristotle (trans. Irwin, 1999, 1094a-13b) to contemporary theorists such as Habermas ([1996] 2007) and refers to action, activity and practice. Critique , then, is the detailed assessment and analysis of a social practice (or praxis ) using history, culture and tradition in such a way that it demolishes what is perceived as knowledge and best practices for the existing traditions or best practices. The purpose of critique is that existing practices are unjust and thus unable to positively influence and impact fully on social practices. This approach identifies what type of transformation is needed to emancipate the social practice and create something different. The transformation challenges individuals and/or collective praxis to become emancipated or “liberated” from the unjust praxis to conceive new possibilities. The desired outcomes include improving personal lives.
The emphasis in critique is to assess the ambitions of social inclusion policies. Scholars have established different sets of priorities that can be used to assess how successful social inclusion policies are for persons living with an intellectual disability. The indicators developed by Emerson and McVilly (2004) serve a useful purpose of understanding, how the majority of persons living with an intellectual disability are socially included or are part of “mainstreaming” (Department of Health, 2001, p. 24), that is, part of the social fabric of society. The indicators include:
- 1.The number of friends a person has outside his/her home. A friend in this context is defined as a person with whom the person living with an intellectual disability meets on a regular basis and shares activities. Friends are also perso...