ABSTRACT
I n following the history of changing interpretations of blindness, and of changing attitudes toward the blind themselves, we have seen that two basic approaches coexisted in all periods. To be sure, they did not attain an equal degree of explicit articulation. In literature and art, one interpretation is frequently expressed and crystallized in various motifs; the other, one feels, is mostly passed over in silence. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that both have existed, side by side, throughout history. The one attitude that is not so predominant in literature and art would seem to us to be the natural reaction. The blind
person is understood primarily as unfortunate, disabled, a human being deprived of what has always been considered the most precious gift man has received. Though not powerfully expressed, compassion for a suffering human being must always have existed. Even though poets and painters were not particularly concerned with it, people must always have felt pity for those who cannot see and cannot find their way without assistance. The simple fact that for many periods the blind lived on alms that individuals gave them shows clearly the continuous existence of compassion as a major factor determining the attitude to the sightless. The other approach conceived of the blind person as a human being who has some mysterious link with a supernatural reality. Most often this supernatural reality was felt as hostile and threatening; the blind, who are somehow linked with it, were therefore perceived as demonic. In rare cases the mysterious reality to which the blind were believed to have access was understood as divine; here the blind person was considered a prophet, one endowed with grace, sometimes with the gift of divination. Since the early modern
age, with the beginning of seculatization, a third approach to the blind, and particularly to their spiritual world, began to take shape. In the mid-eighteenth century this new attitude reached a high point, and this moment in history was marked by an important document, Diderot's Lettre sur les aveugles. To understand the formation of the new approach, it will be best to concentrate on the text of the Lettre.
