La dipendenza condivisa

Talking about disability requires a reformulation of our imagine of the human being that should include his vulnerability and constitutive dependency. Age, pathology or impairment can increase our dependency, but dependency itself is one of the defining features of any human being. At the same time, we have to understand that disability does not correspond to pathology or impairment, because it is a relational concept. in fact, disability is the reverse of functioning, which is the result of the interaction between an individual with a certain health conditions and the environment. Therefore it is not an exclusive medical nor social issue. This is the setting on which ICF, one of the WHO classification instruments (2001), is based. Thinking about human being’s constitutive dependency affects our self-understanding as members of the species; it also changes the perspective of our sight on disability. In this sense it gets clear that taking care of those who are more dependent is a matter of justice and not only of generosity. We need to rethink rights not as the claim of groups, but as human rights. Furthemore, we have to value the different capacity of individuals to transform a resource in a functioning, and to understand and respond to the need of care of those who are, in turn, dependent on the people they are taking care of.