Just as freedom is necessary, so it is also limitless. Not limitless in the sense that a person is free to do anything, fly unaided, walk on water or lick his elbow, but limitless in the sense that his obligation to be free, his obligation to choose a response in every situation, is unremitting. Even if a person is disabled and unable to walk, for example, his free- dom is still unlimited. He is not free to walk in the sense of being at liberty to walk, but he is still free to choose the meaning of his disability and hence responsible for his response to it. Controversially, Sartre says, ‘I can not be crippled without choosing myself as crippled. This means that I choose the way in which I constitute my disability (as “unbeara- ble,” “humiliating,” “to be hidden,” “to be revealed to all,” “an object of pride,” “the justification for my failures,” etc.)’ (Being and Nothing- ness, p. 352). If a disabled person considers his disability the ruination of his life then that is a choice he has made for which he alone is responsible. He is free to choose his disability positively. To strive, for example, to be a successful para-athlete or to spend the time he used to spend playing football writing a book or fundraising.
The Hollywood actor, Christopher Reeve, who played Superman in the movies, was paralysed from the neck down in a horse riding acci- dent in 1995. By a sustained act of will worthy of Superman himself Reeve refused to be ruined by his quadriplegia. He remained positive and active and campaigned tirelessly for the rights of disabled people, raising tens of millions of dollars for research into paralysis. Reeve died young as a result of his paralysis, but that’s not the point. Everyone dies sooner or later. The point is how he lived his life. He once said, ‘I think that setting challenges is a great motivator, because too many people with disabilities allow that to become the dominating factor in their lives, and I refuse to allow a disability to determine how I live my life.’ I don’t know if Reeve was a student of existentialism but he certainly had some of the qualities that make a true existentialist.
I recently climbed Mt. Snowdon in North Wales. Half way up I passed a man inching his way down the mountain on elbow crutches.
He had a hunchback and his lower legs were so splayed that he walked on the sides of his feet. I nodded hello as I trudged past aiming for the top, wondering how he had got there. On my way down nearly two hours later I caught up with him less than a mile from where I had first seen him and we walked down together for a while. His condition made every small step he took down the mountain a major task. He was obliged to individually negotiate with painful slowness each rock that made up the rough path and his progress was as dangerous as it was slow as his crutches occasionally slipped on wet rocks or sank in mud. He had little power to save himself from falling and had fallen several times. It emerged that he had spina bifida. As it was physically impossible for him to climb up mountains he had taken the train to the top of Snowdon and set himself the awesome challenge of walking down. It would take him many exhausting hours to descend the five mile Llanberis Path on his deformed legs and his elbow crutches but he was determined to do it. Despite the difficulty and the pain he was enjoying himself and would accept no help. He was happy to be mastering the situation in which he had placed himself, happy to be mastering his disability and choosing its meaning.
I found myself comparing him to couch-potatoes I know, who through greed, laziness and general self-neglect, have made themselves unhealthy and hugely overweight. They would struggle to get down Snowdon almost as much as the man with spina bifida, except that they wouldn’t bother to attempt the hike in the first place. It would definitely be a return ticket on the mountain railway for those slobs. It made me won- der, who in this world is really disabled? The ‘cripple’ who always chooses to push himself and do as much as he can, or the lazy, obese person who always chooses the soft option and does as little as possible except when it comes to eating crap and making excuses? Perhaps the only truly disabled people in this world are those who have a disabling attitude.
To insist that a disabled person is, existentially speaking, responsible for his disability, is certainly a tough and uncompromising view. It even seems harsh and politically incorrect in our contemporary excuse cul- ture that consistently undervalues individual responsibility and consist-
ently overvalues the blaming of circumstances and facticity. This view should, however, be seen as empowering and very much politically cor- rect in terms of the respect it shows disabled people. To tell a so-called disabled person that he is, existentially speaking, responsible for his disability, is not to insult him or to show him a callous lack of considera- tion, it is to inspire him and to offer him the only real hope available if his disability is incurable. Any disabled person who is not wallowing in self-pity – choosing to wallow in self-pity as Sartre would have it – would surely embrace Sartre’s description of his situation. No disabled person wants to be reduced to their disability; considered as ‘just a quadriplegic in a wheelchair’ or ‘just a spastic on crutches’. Sartre is saying precisely that a disabled person is not his disability but instead his freely chosen response to his disability and his transcend- ence of it.
The man I met on Snowdon with spina bifida was not disabled but definitely differently able. He was doing the utmost the facticity of his body allowed him to do; a damned sight more than some people with- out his congenital disadvantages can be bothered to do. I got back to my hotel at the foot of Snowdon, showered then went out for a well deserved cup of tea. All afternoon and into the evening, looking up at the mountains, I wondered if he was still descending at his snail’s pace. I guess he got down OK and I never heard anything to the contrary, but if he died trying then he died transcending the awful facticity of his so- called disability. A good death I guess. Unlike a lot of public buildings, existentialism has always been equipped for disabled access, although, on the other hand, it offers the disabled no special concessions.