MOVIMIENTOS DE TIERRAS 1 Generalidades

In Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (1999) Alasdair MacIntyre argues that philosophers and political theorists have failed to

adequately consider the nature and extent of disability and dependence as central features of human life. MacIntyre begins his book by insisting that “it is important to remember that there is a scale of disability on which we all find ourselves... and at different periods of our lives we find ourselves, often unpredictably, at very different points on the scale” (DRA, 73). From the outset he assumes that human beings are intrinsically vulnerable, that this vulnerability is constant, and that we are all prone to some extent to illness, impairment, disease, aging, and dependency, either permanently or in various phases of our lives. MacIntyre maintains that scholars should replace the autonomous and

subject who is far more representative of actual lived experience. In “The Need for a Standard of Care” (2000), he explains why political theorists should position a vulnerable subject at the heart of our political theorizing:

We are all too apt to think of the disabled as a special, especially unfortunate class of human beings, and we are most apt to think of that class as one to which we do not belong… But to think in this way is to ignore central features of all our lives. For…we are all disabled for extended periods of those lives: as infants and small children, when old and when ill or injured, physically or mentally. And we are always vulnerable to further disability (SC, 84).

MacIntyre’s understanding of vulnerability has serious implications for the way we think about dominant political concepts, especially equality. According to MacIntyre, we are equal to the extent that we are equally vulnerable to the unpredictable fate of mortal animals. Nobody can escape the risk of impairment, disease, aging, and dying. In addition, the equality found in our common vulnerability introduces strong commitments for collective political change. If none of us are exempt from the potential ills wrought by human vulnerability, then none of us is exempt from creating structural safeguards

against human vulnerability. In other words, MacIntyre’s understanding of vulnerability gives rise to an alternative understanding of solidarity and collective responsibility.

Second, vulnerability demands solidarity. In order to simultaneously respect the virtues of dependence and independence, MacIntyre argues that we must collectively design and foster patterns of social relationships of “giving and receiving.” He envisions a form of political society that allows the “virtues of acknowledged dependence” to flourish.7 In his words,

The networks of giving and receiving in which we participate can be sustained only by a shared recognition of each other’s needs and a shared                                                                                                                          

allegiance to a standard of care. And what a standard of care measures is not only the quality and quantity of the care offered to those who are disabled relative to their needs, but also the success or failure in the exercise of the virtues… (SC, 84).

MacIntyre is admittedly vague about what this type of political society— a society that fosters patterns of “giving and receiving” and is committed to a “shared allegiance to standard of care”— looks like in practice. However, he is clear that the nation-state and the family are both ill-equipped to meet the needs created by human vulnerability and dependency. In his view, the modern liberal state is too large and contaminated by exploitative power relationships and competing economic interests to achieve the

egalitarianism he desires. He also assumes that the family is too confining and limited to make lasting social change. As he put it, “…the common good of a family can only be achieved in and with the course of achieving the common goods of the local community of which it is a part.” Macintyre therefore concludes that the virtues of acknowledged dependence will primarily be exercised in some form of local community setting where vulnerable citizens are Aristotelian friends— looking out for each other by reasoning together about what is good. In these local communities, citizens will acknowledge that vulnerability is “an ineliminable feature of the contemporary landscape” and therefore will not resent the resources that the political society affords the alleviation of

vulnerability (DRA, 133-135).

Third, MacIntyre’s appeal to vulnerability has implications for our understanding of reciprocity. Accepting that some people are going to be more dependent than others at different stages of life, he insists that we must acknowledge that life is not a zero-sum game. Unlike many liberal theorists who envision social relationships in terms of mutual

more resources and that others are obligated to provide more when they are able to do so. It follows that reciprocity is often asymmetrical. Here MacIntyre goes so far as to appeal to Karl Marx: “Between those capable of giving and those who are most dependent and in the most need of receiving—children, the old, the disabled,” he writes, “the norms will have to satisfy the revised version of Marx’s formula for justice in a communist society, ‘From each according to her or his ability, to each, so far as possible, according to her or his needs’” (DRA, 130, emphasis added).

What reasons does MacIntyre provide to persuade us to potentially give more than we receive? He acknowledges that “what I am called upon to give may be quite

disproportionate to what I have received” (DRA, 108). But why then are we supposed to accept this reality? Here MacIntyre’s formulation ultimately asks us to engage in

collective action and structural reform out of our own self regard. MacIntyre calls us to action by arguing that we have various duties and obligations towards others, even strangers. For example, because we are all dependent as infants, we need to provide care to others (our elderly parents, for example) when we are able to do so: “It is nonetheless in virtue of what we have received,” he writes, “that we owe” (DRA, 101). However, he also asks us to think of ourselves. He spends a significant amount of time elaborating on the virtue of misericordia. Drawing from Aquinas, MacIntyre describes the term as “grief or sorrow over someone else’s distress... just insofar as one understands the other’s distress as one’s own” (DRA, 125). A concrete example is the obligation to provide costly care to severely disabled individuals who will never return the favor. He writes, “Of the brain-damaged, of those almost incapable of movement, of the autistic, all of such we have to say: this could have been us. Their mischances could have been ours, our good

fortune could have been theirs” (DRA, 100-101). Although MacIntyre uses the past tense here, it is important to bear in mind that the person with severe brain damage could be ourselves in the future. As a disability activist in a wheelchair once said to me, “When you get in your car, you could become me in a matter of just three seconds in the event of a crash— this is why you should care about whether or not buildings have ramps.”

A major shortcoming of MacIntyre’s understanding of vulnerability is that he does not seriously consider how vulnerability is already unequally distributed in political life. While human vulnerability is a shared condition, it is not shared equally in a context of political inequality.The world is structured to respond to some people’s vulnerabilities better than others, so risk and exposure is manifested in uneven ways. Put simply, our political arrangements make some populations more vulnerable than others. Poor nutrition, dangerous living and working conditions, limited access to health care and vaccine programs, poor sanitation systems, and violent wars and conflicts exacerbate and produce physical, mental, and psycho-emotional impairments. It is not simply random that some people have disabilities (though chance certainly plays a role in developing many physical, mental, and psycho-emotional impairments). Rather, structural

inequalities also produce impairments. When we take social standing into account, therefore, it comes as no surprise that disability tracks with social status, and that women and people of color disproportionately experience disabilities in the United States.8 That                                                                                                                          

8 _{Vulnerabilities disproportionately cluster around identity markers. Dr. Leiyu Shi analyzes health} disparities and vulnerable populations. In “The Convergence of Vulnerable Characteristics and Health Insurance in the US” (2001), he conducted an important study about health insurance coverage and found that race and income were the most significant predictors of health insurance coverage. This study suggests that the access to health care (or lack thereof) ultimately influences individuals’ risk of contracting illness. The findings reveal that racial minorities are disproportionately over-represented in bad health groups and that the adverse association between income, insurance status, and bad health affects minorities

said, MacIntyre challenges us to think seriously about the human condition more seriously than liberal theorists have traditionally thought, so that political systems and practices can be effectively designed to accommodate vulnerable subjects.