Welcome to the fifth IES

Is disability a burning issue? After the Fourth International Symposium on Ethics (IES), which focused on the ethical questions surrounding ageing, it is timely to hold an international and multi-disciplinary colloquium on the many issues associated with disability... After all, it is by no means only age that disables. We can be born disabled, sometimes we can be disabled in an accident or by disease, or even by a failure of medical science... But is having a disabling condition the same thing as being  disabled? What does it mean to be ‘other’ when we are all different? Is it sometimes not enough just to be there for the other person to give them back their full capacity?

Accessibility, inclusion or integration in education or society, access to work, to cultural and social life, the prospects for therapy and technological support etc. are all pointing in the right direction. But does this not all flow from a long struggle, which is far from over, to say the least, in the name of ethics? After all, to be  someone regarded as disabled always means having to accept the unacceptable in order to learn to live as a subject with one’s body and with reality.

Professor Marie-Jo THIEL

Download : Newsletter N°6 - March 2013

Next Newsletter : mid-April!