Human Flourishing, Disability, and Technology

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter, Eleanor McLaughlin assesses the role of technology in the flourishing of disabled persons in two steps. First, she defines human flourishing as depending in large part on our relationships with others. The author suggests that, despite Christian theology’s historical failure to understand this relational core of human flourishing (evidenced by the church’s supporting the us/them divide between people with and without disabilities), there are nevertheless resources within theology—e.g., Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s and Deborah Creamer’s treatments of ontological limitedness—that can help overcome this divide and thus strengthen relationships between all people. Having distinguished between ontological limitedness which enables flourishing and limits that prevent it, McLaughlin secondly assesses the value of technological enhancement for disabled persons. This distinction allows an evaluation of technology which is positive when technology’s role is to help us overcome specific limits preventing us from flourishing (particularly in helping us build relationships with others), but which is negative when technology seeks to eradicate the ontological ‘limitness’ (cf. Creamer) that gives us the potential to experience God’s grace in our embodied life.