The capacity contract: Locke, disability, and the political exclusion of “Idiots”

Abstract

Underlying Locke's social compact is a capacity contract that hinges political membership on rational capacity. Unlike the sexual and racial contracts that enforce domination, Locke's capacity contract promises both exclusion and democratic solidarity. This twofold interpretation follows from Locke's treatment of disability and, in particular, his construction of idiocy as both fundamentally human and analogous to nonhuman animals. As a domination contract, the capacity contract marks some bodies as more vulnerable than others and strips them of political membership to safeguard political legitimacy. The democratic capacity contract, however, sees vulnerability as an essential marker of human life that prompts men to form the social compact to counteract everyday injustices.

Keywords:

• Locke
• social contract
• disability
• vulnerability
• corporeality
• reason
• democracy
• equality

Notes

1. For analysis of Locke's worldview according to a great chain of being, see McClure (1996).

2. My understanding of the idiot's epistemological role builds on Dilts's (2012) analysis of the thief in Locke's Treatise.

3. See Mehta on the link and risks between madness and passion.

4. Oxford English Dictionary. Accessed July 15, 2011 http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/30479?redirectedFrom=changeling#eid.

5. Online Oxford English Dictionary. Accessed July 15, 2011 http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/91049?rskey=9oBNs8&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid.

6. It may seem appropriate to look for solutions in Some Thoughts on Education, as Locke outlines how to avoid the miscarriages of reason that the Essay documents, but his education advice is problematic. First, Locke targets his educational reform at the sons of gentlemen only and the individualized instruction makes it impossible to universalize (Bradizza 2008). Scholars also raise problems concerning the ways in which Locke's educational regimen requires fathers' to indoctrinate their sons into the love of reason based on internal desires for recognition (Grant 2012; Mehta 1992; Tully 1993).

7. Retrieved from http://www.ada.gov/2010_regs.htm