ABSTRACT
As mentioned in the introduction, the topics discussed in the three parts of this book may appear unrelated, or related only tenuously. But this is not so. The concept of narrative provides a unifying theme which can fruitfully be brought to bear on the three parts of our discussion. To see this, recall that in Part One we offered general support for the account of disablement provided by Lennart Norden-felt. In this, as we saw, the question of whether a person has an impairment can, in principle, be answered without any reference to the view of the person concerned. But this is not so in relation to the question of whether or not the person is disabled. If the person is capable of expressing a view, then the answer to the question must pay close attention to, and give great weight to, the view of the person concerned. If they say they can attain their vital goals, and if they can indeed attain them, and their necessary conditions, they are not disabled according to Nordenfelt’s theory. The vital goals of a person will be goals which provide an overriding purpose for a person. They are aims which, in that person’s eyes, are central components of their life. Put in narrative terms, they are key components of the person’s self-conception. If the presence of impairment, in concert with external factors such as absence of social support or wheelchair-inaccessible public transport systems, obstructs a person’s pursuance of their self-conception, they are plausibly regarded as disabled. Determination of whether they actually are disabled, as we saw, must pay great weight to the view of the person concerned, the person whose disability is in question. So it can be seen that the idea of a vital goal dovetails with the idea of a self-conception. A goal is ‘vital’ to a person since it connects up with their view of the kind of person they aspire to be, of the kind of life they wish to lead, of the kind of narrative they want to exemplify. It is evident, then, that the theory of disablement championed in Part One is itself parasitic upon the notion of a narrative. For the question of whether or not a person is disabled is inseparable from the question of whether that person can lead the kind of life they wish to lead.
