52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
44. Responsibility for devalued persons: ethical interactions between society, the family and the retarded.
A symposium of speakers on the ethical challenges of responsibility for retarded persons, held in 1980 — the twilight between deinstitutionalization and well established social and advocacy programs for the same. Barry Hoffmaster presents the logical inconsistency of holding to opposing moral positions about the mentally retarded: that their retardation is not morally relevant, and so they should hold the same opportunity rights as everyone else; and that their retardation *is* morally relevant, and so they should hold certain *outcome* rights (the right to particular types of support and care) that aren’t generally available to everyone else. Hauerwas, in writing about “The Dilemma of Care,” explains the double bind we create for the retarded by ‘medicalizing’ their condition: that we rob them of the political power to themselves determine — and advocate for — what they are and aren’t capable of. And the parent forum that closes the collection was revealing of the thought processes and motivations behind Hauerwas’s interests, as well as (probably intentionally) a striking contrast between the approaches of the morally sensitive atheist and the morally sensitive Christian. An interesting read; probably not for everyone.
