Fellowship Board Member Catherine Peters has been working on disability from a philosophical perspective. Dr. Peters, a philosopher at Loyola Marymount University, has recently made available an article titled “Aquinas and Disability” that demonstrates the difference made to a subject fraught with problems when one has a proper anthropology. Her work argues that St. Thomas’s understanding of the human person provides this anthropology, with the result that both the difficulties of impaired operations and the proper respect that is owed to persons with impairments are both respected.
She concludes her article with a summary that gives a taste of the “Thomistic model” and its goods.
“In order to guard against mistaken conflations of nature and operation – such that persons with disabilities are regarded as inferior disabled persons rather than respected as persons with disabilities – one must begin with a correct anthropology. The present chapter has argued that it is only within this context that ‘disability’ can be adequately defined and appropriately treated. In the Thomistic anthropology just offered, a human being is an individual of a particular kind of nature. Given this nature, the person has certain natural abilities that, if requisite conditions are met, allow the individual to perform certain operations. Should there be some impediment to natural operations, the individual has an ‘impairment’ and, subsequently, has a ‘disability’ inasmuch as this impairment leads to inequalities. Although persons, in this anthropological account, have inali- enable dignity and deserve regard insofar as they are the kind of being that they are, the ‘Thomistic Model’ recognizes that inabilities to perform natural operations can pose significant challenges to human flourishing. As such, disability must be acknowledged and understood if one is to treat others with appropriate respect and remedy certain injustices. Given the complexity of disability, there are, indubitably, related issues that remain unaddressed by the present chapter. Nonetheless, this ‘Thomistic model’ offers resources to anyone concerned with this aspect of human life and, in so doing, evidences the value of revisiting Thomism.”
To see the entire article, find it on her page at Academia.edu.