John Haldane
University of St Andrews

Professor Haldane on the scope of the lecture:

James Madison wrote of the need to devise political institutions that would protect the freedom of individuals from the intrusive encroachment and tyrannical tendencies of the state and other large-scale corporate bodies. In doing so, and in common with most political theorists from Plato to Rawls, he thought of citizens as intelligent, healthy and mobile adults capable of fashioning rewarding lives consisting of largely unimpeded activities.

Yet as a young man (and again in old age) Madison was aware of the vulnerability and limits of human competence. In a letter of November 1772 to William Bradford, Jr., he wrote:

“I am too dull and infirm now to look out for any extraordinary things in this world, for I think my sensations for many months past have intimated to me not to expect a long and healthy life; though it may be better with me after some time, [but] I hardly dare expect it, and therefore have little spirit and to set about anything that is difficult in acquiring and useless in possessing after one has exchanged time for eternity” (Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Vol. I, Edited by Philip R. Fendall [Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1865], page 6.)

That sense of personal disempowerment proved short-lived, but it serves as a reminder of the fact that human beings are vulnerable, and prone to disabling conditions. This is something that mainstream political philosophy needs to take note of, not just attending to it at the margins but drawing it in more centrally to its ordinary business.

Fortunately, however, there are recent indications that this is beginning to happen, and in this lecture I shall focus largely on a single example, though connecting it incidentally with a second, and peripherally with a third.

In her recent book Hiding from Humanity (2004) Martha Nussbaum links the philosophical understanding of emotion with important issues in ethics, law, and political philosophy, and engages with empirical material in a manner that provides a model for open and practically oriented moral philosophy. Here I shall explore four areas in which I believe the discussion now needs to be carried forward:

1. The connections between Nussbaum’s work and other contributions to recent moral philosophy, principally that of Alasdair MacIntyre in Dependent Rational Animals (1999) but also that of David Wiggins in Ethics (2006).
2. The conceptual understanding of notions of disability, impairment, and normal human functioning, and the standards against which these are determined and judged.
3. The nature of mental disorder and the harm done to sufferers by the stigma attaching to it.
4. The implications of following Nussbaum’s lead in recognizing humanity in the vulnerable, as these bear upon ‘ending life’ issues, especially that of abortion.
   
   

   Updated April 28, 2008