I was unable to hear last night's transmission, and am grateful for the
reports that have been published on this page.
I just don't get it. I've read this guy's stuff, and gone back to it again
and again, to see if I'd missed something that made other people take him
seriously. And yes, I think Phyllis is right -- he's slick. I wonder if
that isn't the reason for his success. His discussion of ethics is, at
face value, much more accessible than that of other writers (ok, in itself,
but not if it consists of over-simplifications, as I contend it does). He
doesn't read like other ethicists I've read (not even the contemptible
H.Tristan Englehart III, who comes up with some really awful ideas, too).
He's polemic. I've yet to read anything in which he has really developed
or defended his model of the general good on which his utilitarianism is
based. And he's simply *not* all that well-informed. The sources he
cites to support his arguments that infanticide has been an accepted
practice throughout history are slovenly. I'd kick the proverbial out of a
student who used them in a paper for me.
It just really perplexes and appals me that he has acquired so much cred.
I'm afraid that what he is, is a very facile, hence very dangerous,
populariser. Very very good at self promotion. A Nazi -- well, yes, there
are certainly similarities between his style of argument and presentation
and some of the anti-disability rhetoric that the Third Reich produced. A
monster? No, I don't think so, but I suspect that the degree to which he's
accepted may signal a monster lurking in the society that's put him where
he is. I'm quite disturbed that academe has let him assume the position he
has, between the superficiality of his scholarship and the ugliness of
what he recommends. It suggests to me that mean timidity has more sway
than I would have liked to think.
Should people from disability studies debate with him? Yes, I think so.
Somebody certainly ought to. And somebody certainly ought to call him on
the practice of reading letters from parents to support his arguments.
That's cheap, and not particularly good logic, either. It just doesn't
seem like he plays be the rules he sets for others.
Liz
Elizabeth Bredberg, PhD
Department of Educational Counselling and Psychology and Special Education
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4
Phone: 604-822-4589
Fax: 604-822-3302
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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