Eva Feder Kittay’s Learning from My Daughter presents an argument worth considering as notions of “anti-human” and “post-human” have gained currency. The daughter to whom she refers is cognitively disabled.
First, notice her use of the preposition “from” in the title. It acknowledges a relation in which, marked by learning, she receives something that suggests, as education offers, growth.
Susan J. Brison, who wrote the foreword, spells out the experience of moving from how one tends to relate or “reach” to a significantly physical and cognitively disabled person (SPCDP). The problematic structure is where (a) = “not-disabled” and (b) = “disabled.” In formal terms, where “” refers to an ordinary conditional, the project becomes moving from
(a) –> (b)
in which the not-disabled care for the disabled, though not always so, to what is structurally
(a) <– (b)
where not-disabled learns from the disabled. Notice the term “not-disabled” instead of “abled.” By using this formulation, the term “disabled” takes on a different valence, since to be disabled is not identical to unable or inability. As, short of being comatose, everyone has abilities, so, too, does everyone have a disability and, over the course of time, a potential disability or ability. Understanding the formerly “abled” as “not-disabled” occasions reflection through which a different understanding of the disabled could emerge—for, instance, making the effort to gain the perspective of how, in the end, all human beings ultimately depend on other human beings, as we live in human reality.
Appealing to human reality raises the question of human relationships. We should bear in mind that what we often seek in human relationships is, in formal terms:
(an…) <—-> (an1…).)
The use of “a” and “n” here is to signify embodied referents whose actions are signified by “n…”. The bilateral condition signifies reciprocity. The additional right parenthesis on the second side of the conditional signifies a specific direction of learning, which is open. It could be formulated:
…)
Thus, we have a complex formula:
(*) For (a): (a) <—-> (a) + (a) –> (b) + (a) <– (b)
This is another way of stating the initial point of a reciprocal relationship in which one realizes that one is learning from another—in this case, the disabled.
Now, among the not-disabled, there are those who realize (*). We can formalize them as:
(**) There are: (b) who experience (*),
which we could call human relations. This suggests another way of stating human reality through bringing the two formulations together:
(*) + (**)
or simply: (***)
These formal points take a profound, existentially rich turn in Kittay’s analysis. Already suggested in the formulation is that they are open, which means they reach for other possibilities. For instance, there are forms of communicative environments in which silence has many manifestations. How do we formally signify that? We could create something to signify it, but that would be reductive, since silence has forms, moods, and manifestations, all of which depend, as Brison attests in agreement with Kittay, on how they make us “feel.” Indeed, our memories of other human beings tend to be marked most by how they make us feel and how we feel about them.
This raises questions about the not-disabled’s interactions with and responses to knowledge of SPCDP and what they reveal about people who are not- SPCDP. Think, for example, of parenting, where the parent or parents are not disabled. The ordinary view of parenting is to raise a self-sufficient adult, but, Kittay reflects, her view is “to socialize the community to accept her [(b) daughter] as an individual worthy of moral parity with all human beings” (3)—that is: (***).
Kittay argues “for human dignity [(***)], not for the claim that only humans have dignity.”
There are many more turns in Kittay’s arguments, but I will conclude here with a focus on this culminating point about human dignity, which I just stated as coextensive with (***). I used formalism in this reflection because of how it both addresses and stands as a critique, at the meta-level, of a familiar Kantian formulation of dignity premised on rationality in a kingdom of ends in which they manifest what Immanuel Kant called the Categorical Imperative. Kittay’s argument offers a twist on the Kantian argument of dignity premised on “rational beings.” She argues that “human dignity” doesn’t require the other human being to be interpreted as “rational.” She articulates a specific obligation human beings have for other human beings premised on their humanity, not their rationality. This would account for an understanding of dignity between the not-disabled and the cognitively disabled.
Additionally, Kittay does not preclude obligations we have or may have to nonhuman beings. Her argument about rationality not functioning as a sole factor in deserving dignity has implications beyond human beings. But for this short reflection, suffice it to say that anti-human and post-human narratives may warrant reflection on the conditions to which they appeal for articulating notions of dignity and respect. Some could, of course, reject those values as hopelessly wrapped in humanistic discourses. Kittay’s argument combined with Kant’s formalism, however, raises an important challenge, since Kant’s transcends human beings and Kittay’s is specific to us. If rationality and non-rationality could entail dignity, how, then, can the anti-humanist and the post-humanist reject dignity on the basis of either a claimed humanism or a constrained rationalism?
What is clear is that Kittay’s analysis offers much food for thought for philosophical ethics in which the approach is to address realities in which we live. It is also a contribution, although not intentionally so, to philosophy of race and racism. As racism is a form of dehumanization, it is also an attack on the dignity of racialized peoples. This makes her analysis highly relevant to studies of antiblack racism.
Lewis Gordon
Lewis R. Gordon is Chairperson of the Awards Committee of the Caribbean Philosophical Association and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Global Affairs and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He is also Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies and Distinguished Scholar at The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy at The University of the West Indies, Mona. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021); Fear of Black Consciousness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the USA, and Penguin-UK 2022); Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge: Writings of Lewis R. Gordon, edited by Rozena Maart and Sayan Dey (Bloomsbury, 2023); and “Not Bad for an N—, No?”/ «Pas mal pour un N—, n'est-ce pas? » (Daraja Press, 2023).
