The location of this event has been changed. It will now be held at the Hunter Centre in Dunedin, as well as online via Zoom.

The Bioethics Centre and the Department of Philosophy are pleased to host a joint seminar from visiting academic Dr Joel Michael Reynolds.

More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle proclaimed, “Let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.” This idea is alive and well today.

During the past century, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. argued that the United States can forcibly sterilize intellectually disabled women, philosopher Peter Singer argued for the right of parents to euthanize certain disabled infants, and most recently, multiple nation-states actively chose to let populations of disabled people die during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I provide an overview of the arguments in The Life Worth Living, showing how the history of Western moral philosophy has excluded and discriminated against disabled people. Especially thanks to the conflation of lived experiences of disability with those of pain and suffering, I explain why longstanding views of disability are both misguided and unjust. I then explore the rich and complex meaning of disability and conclude by discussing what an anti-ableist moral future requires.

Zoom details

Join from PC, Mac, iOS or Android: https://otago.zoom.us/j/922351556?pwd=NGZIZEFJendvcTdNVHVzbHlMY1JPQT09
Meeting ID: 922 351 556
Password: 595584