Rights, Justice and the Retarded

Abstract

Is proper treatment for the retarded a matter of justice or of charity? — That is the issue, raised by Professor Woozley [8], on which I want to comment, but I shall start at some distance from anything he discusses. There is an idea which can be found in quite a lot of recent writing about the rights of the retarded: the idea that we are finally getting away from the myths and ideologies and irrational fears which distorted our ancestors’ ways of thinking about the mentally retarded. This idea is, for example, expressed by Paul Friedman, well known for his legal work on behalf of the retarded, and by Issam Amary, in a book on the rights of the retarded ([3], p. 16; cf. [6]; [1], pp. 3–4). Amary states that traditionally the retarded have been regarded as outcasts of their societies and as individuals who brought shame to their families; and Friedman says that traditionally the mentally retarded have been viewed as subhuman organisms or as menaces to society or as eternal children or as irreversibly diseased persons. The view that you get then in writers like Amary and Friedman is that while there still are people who think in terms of such stereotypes, we have at least made a beginning at getting away from such false views. We have at least begun to recognize retarded people as our fellow human beings; we have begun to recognize their rights, and to modify and reshape our social institutions to accord them their rights.