The 7th Meeting of the Study Group “Philosophy of Disability and Co-existence”

Speakers
Denisa Butnaru (Universität Augsburg, Germany)
Title: Phenomenology of Body Disability and the Logos of Life

Abstract:
The phenomenology of the body has been since long considered as being mostly the legacy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty rather than that of any other phenomenologist. However, such a theme as the disabled body has not been that much considered in the Merleau-Pontyan writings. Doubtlessly the body is our way of being-in-the-world. It is “the common texture of all objects and it is – at least in as far as the perceived world is concerned – the general instrument of my “understanding””(Merleau-Ponty, 1945: 272).

Under such circumstances how can meaning be transcribed by a “broken body”, by an immobile body or by a body that escapes control as it is the case in cerebral palsy? These questions are not only an inquiry on the status of the body, on the “body schema” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945: 114) of the persons with disabilities, but on the subject’s life and on how her/his body is lived.

Following the above mentioned ideas, I intend to develop an inquiry on how the subject’s lived experience is reframed and constructed within the boundaries of a dysfunctional body. Such a project shall focus on the retraction of the body intentionality and on the disabled body conceived not anymore in terms of an alternative “logic of the world” but as a possibility in itself that challenges the prospect for a “logic of life”.

Michael Gillan Peckitt (The University of Hull, UK)
Title: Between Two Worlds: A Phenomenological Critique of the Medical and Social Models of Disability

Abstract:
Research into disability is guided by two models. The first model is the medical model, which states that disability is a medical condition to be catalogued and if possible, treated. The social model, which was initially advanced by advocates of disability rights in the 1970’s, states the disability is a social condition, not something to be ‘fixed’ by medicine. These two models, or a version of them guides all research into disability, and yet each model leaves some aspect of disability out, the medical ignores the social aspects, and at its strongest variant, the social model denies the disability has anything to do with medicine. In this talk I shall argue that whilst both models have been useful, since both ignore crucial aspects of disability, both ultimately fail to provide an accurate picture of disability. Using the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, and drawing upon the work of the neurologist Jonathan Cole, I shall present a phenomenological description of two people with cerebral palsy, an umbrella term for a condition which affects them socially in entirely different ways. By presenting such a phenomenology, I aim to show that phenomenology may offer a third way of understanding disability, that can take the best of the social and the medical models and arrive at a more accurate depiction of disability.
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Language: English

Admission free | No registration required

Contact: cishi08{at}mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp (K. Ishihara)