Volume 2, 2022
Johnathan Flowers

Pages 79-111
https://doi.org/10.5840/jpd2022213
Against Philosophy, Against Disability
This paper argues that the field of philosophy, and bioethics spe?cifically, engages in a series of speech acts that identify scholarship advocating for increased philosophical engagement with the experiences of disability as ¡°activism.¡± In doing so, the field of philosophy treats these calls as not worthy of consideration, and therefore, to be ignored in ¡°serious scholarship.¡± Further, this paper makes clear the ways that philosophy relies upon ableism through what Peter Railton calls the ¡°culture of smartness,¡± which serves as a form of ableist apologia as defined by Jay Dolmage. The paper concludes by using the example of ADHD to indicate how the prevalence of this ¡°culture of smartness¡± serves to exclude disabled philosophers within the field.