ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ontology of disability, ethics and the moral significance of disability and, finally, political philosophy and its implications for disabled people’s social status. Social constructionism is one crucial ontological and epistemological basis of disability studies and, consequently, it has become the framework for understanding what disability is all about, how one construes information about it. Social constructionism has been a politically liberating stance because it has provided a basis to question the dominance of medicine in explaining disability. Ethical issues related to disability fall into applied normative ethics whereby normative moral theories and concepts are applied to ethical issues with practical significance. The concept of disability reflects the idea that persons considered to be disabled lack certain abilities, or possibilities, that could contribute to their individual well-being or to their social adequacy. Disability seems to be considered an undesirable state of functioning, or phenomenon, arising primarily or at least in part from unjust social arrangements.
