Disability, Virtue, and the Good Life

Sparked by the profound disruption of spinal cord injury, this research challenges traditional ideas of a good life to explore how we can flourish when we confront life-changing disability. Drawing on virtue ethics, it offers a framework that embraces our shared vulnerability and locates joy within our embodied limits.

What makes a good life? For centuries, philosophy has linked human flourishing to physical autonomy, health, and independence. But this idea falls short when faced with the universal realities of vulnerability, illness, and limitation.

While this research began with the lived reality of quadriplegia, its lessons go beyond a single diagnosis. As explored in Crippled Grace and a growing body of collaborative research, disability is a fundamental part of the human condition. Sooner or later, every body encounters its limits.

Drawing on the ancient tradition of virtue ethics, this collective writing and research reclaims vulnerability not as a tragic deficit, but as a site for the cultivation of meaning, interdependence, and joy. Through books, multi-authored journal articles, and cross-disciplinary projects spanning ethics, policy, and disability studies, this work challenges the myth of the self-sufficient individual. Instead, it offers a framework for the good life that embraces shared fragility and locates flourishing within our embodied boundaries.