Accountability, autism, and friendship with God
Abstract
David Shoemaker has argued that autistic persons cannot be held accountable and are not members of the moral community. Arguing against this conclusion, this article both corrects the view of autism contained in Shoemaker’s paper and resituates his theory of accountability within a Christian virtue ethic based on the gift of friendship. The call to be accountable to God for one’s life contains within it the gift of God’s friendship and does not require the capacity for empathy (contra Shoemaker) or joint attention (contra Pinsent) as a prerequisite. Instead, the inclusion of autistic people within the moral community created by the call of God highlights that accountability is a grace given for the flourishing of all persons.
Citation
Leidenhag , J 2021 , ' Accountability, autism, and friendship with God ' , Studies in Christian Ethics , vol. 34 , no. 3 , pp. 347-359 . https://doi.org/10.1177/09539468211009759
Publication
Studies in Christian Ethics
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0953-9468Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Lficense (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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