What My Sister Taught Me About Humanity

Lee Clarke argues that we need a more inclusive view of moral personhood.

- Lee Clarke

On 21st April 2022, the then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison answered the question of a lady with an autistic son during an election debate by saying that he was 'blessed' not to have had children with disabilities. The comment caused controversy, with many calling it upsetting and insensitive. What his comment also did, though, was get me to think about my own experiences with disability from a philosophical perspective. I am not disabled myself, and I specialise in Comparative Philosophy, not Philosophy of Disability. What experience of disability, then, do I have? It is rather, the experience I had with someone else that explains why I feel that I have a genuine stake in this debate.

My younger sister, Laura, who passed away in 2018, had severe mental and physical disabilities. After reading the literature around the Philosophy of Disability, it occurred to me, mainly as a result of the work of Eva Feder Kittay, that many philosophers get things about cognitively disabled people wrong. Some even exclude them from the moral community through the claim they lack certain attributes which make them a 'person', such as rationality. I wish to comment on these issues from a perspective derived from growing up with Laura, and argue not only that it can be a blessing to have a disabled child in the family but that cognitively disabled people should be said to have an equal moral status by challenging the idea that reason is the unique arbiter of what constitutes personhood. Instead, we require a much more inclusive view.

Laura's Story

Laura was born on September 8th 1999 with the condition known as