The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax

Generally speaking, philosophers have avoided discussing the topic of disability. Some believe that issues involving disability are to "be addressed outside the realm of justice, through charity or acts of benevolence" (Riddle and Bickenbach 4). Others believe that disability studies are an ". . . exploration solely for disability advocates or theor ists . . ." (Riddle and Bickenbach 2). Regardless of the reasoning, the consequences are the same: disability, disability studies, and disabled philosophers continue to be left out of philosophical discussions as a whole. However, there have been some phil osophical discussions that gently skirt around the idea of disabled people. In Book One of the disability -whether he intended to or not -Politics , Aristotle implicitly references when he says that "he who is unable to live in society, or who has no ne ed because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god . . ." (Aristotle and Jowett 3). In other words, a person that functions in a way that differs from most of the culture around them must be something other than human. It is completel y impossible, according to Aristotle, that a human behave, look, or think differently than those around them. Therefore, disabled people must be either "a beast or a god." Both ends of this statement are problematic because no matter what, the disabled sub ject is no longer a person. As a god, the disabled subject is incapable of being viewed as a part of human society, and will inevitably fail to live up to the extraordinarily high expectations set -due to the fact that they are not actually a god. As a b east, the disabled subject is still incapable of being a full member of human society, but has no autonomy to create the world in which they want to live.