A Constructive Theology of Intellectual Disability:Human Being as Mutuality and Response: Human Being as Mutuality and Response

3. Human Being in Relational Terms: A Phenomenology

53 3. Human Being in Relational Terms: A Phenomenology as an alternative to defining human beings as creatures who possess the capacity for conceptualization, in the next two chapters I claim that human being is better understood in relational terms, as participation in relationships of mutual responsiveness. This anthropology locates human being not in some capacity possessed by an individual, whether that is the ability for conceptualization, the freedom to choose, or upright stature. Human being is not defined by some capacity located in the individual in isolation from the world around her. Rather, human being is considered here as participation in the meeting between responsive partners. Granted that such participation requires the capacity to respond, this capacity alone is not sufficient for understanding human being as I see it, for mutual responsiveness requires a partner who responds to us and to whom one responds. This alternative anthropology is significant for my purposes, since it is broad enough to accord full humanity to individuals with profound intellectual disabilities for whom relationships of mutual responsiveness are a possibility, while the capacity for conceptualization is not.1 To demonstrate my point, in this chapter I give a phenomenological description of the responsive relations of an individual with a profound intellectual disability. This individual, whom I name Chan, is constructed based on my experience of relationship with individuals with profound intellectual disabilities, accumulated over the years of my clinical practice as a physical therapist. This phenomenological description will show that Chan does not possess the capacity to employ concepts of self and other required for intentional agency—a capacity central to Kaufman’s understanding of what it means to be human. Similarly, his behavior does not reflect an ability to express himself 54 ‡ human being in relational terms: a phenomenology symbolically using public gestures, words, or actions with the intent to give meaning to experience—an ability that Lindbeck considers central to defining what it means to be human.2 However, as the case study will show, Chan is an individual who does participate in responsive relations with his caregivers and friends, and it is this participation in mutually responsive relations that is expressive of what it means to be human. As a resource for my interpretation of the responsive relations of Chan as expressive of his full humanity, I turn in the next chapter to the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. Although Buber does not elaborate on the significance of his philosophy for understanding the full humanity of such individuals, I find his thought especially helpful, since for Buber human being is a dialogical concept. To be human, for Buber, is not to possess a particular capacity but rather to meet the other in a relationship of mutual responsiveness, totalization, and immediacy.3 Such meeting takes place not on one or the other side of the subject/object dichotomy, but in the realm of “the between”—“the other side of the subjective, this side of the objective, on the narrow ridge at which I and Thou meet one another.”4 There is no place for conceptualization here, since conceptualization involves a departure from the immediacy of the relation as one categorizes, compares , and evaluates particular aspects of the other. Rather, when I and Thou meet, they engage in the sheer presence of the other, aware of the other as Thou and freed from the objectification of the other through a reflective effort to evaluate and categorize. Buber’s efforts here to conceive of human being in terms of the aspect of human relationships that is free from rationalization and conceptualization, rather than in terms of the possession of a particular capacity, I find are helpful in understanding the relationality of individuals with profound intellectual disabilities and thus their humanity. a framework for communication Before I begin a phenomenological description of the relationality of Chan, let me first offer a theoretical framework to describe the developmental process of the emergence of communication and human being in relational terms: a phenomenology ‡ 55 language. This framework will provide concepts that are helpful in identifying the level of communication and intentionality of individuals like Chan. Ellen Siegel and Amy Wetherby employ a three-staged model for understanding the development of communication and language.5 From birth to about nine months of age, the infant is in the perlocutionary (preintentional) stage in which his or her behavior...