Valuing Disability, Causing Disability Author(s): Elizabeth Barnes Source: Ethics , Vol. 125, No. 1 (October 2014), pp. 88-113 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677021 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethics This content downloaded from 74.109.240.5 on Sat, 09 Feb 2019 14:27:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Valuing Disability, Causing Disability* Elizabeth Barnes Disability rights activists often claim that disability is not—by itself—something that makes disabled people worse off. A popular objection to such a view of disability is this: were it correct, it would make it permissible to cause disability and imper- missible to cause nondisability ðor impermissible to “cure” disability, to use the value-laden termÞ. The aim of this article is to show that these twin objections don’t succeed. Disability rights activists often claim that being disabled isn’t something that’s bad for you. Disability is, rather, a natural part of human diversity— something that should be valued and celebrated, rather than pitied and ultimately “cured.” But though this view is common among disability rights activists, many ðperhaps mostÞ philosophers find it implausible and radical.