ABSTRACT
Disability should be of interest to philosophers because it raises fundamental issues about the significance of variations in physical and mental functioning for human performance and well-being, for personal and social identity, and for justice in the allocation of resources and the design of the physical and social environment. This chapter outlines several areas of philosophy that are relevant to the conceptualization and social response to disability. It focuses on a subset of issues that highlights the tensions between two aspects of disability: as functional limitation or deficiency and as stigma or social marker. The chapter examines the meaning and the implications of the impairment classification, the causal role of impairments in personal and social limitations, and the significance of impairments for well-being. Then, it turns to political philosophy, where the tension between the two aspects of disability has been most explicit and most acute.
