The hereditary error. Adopting the perspective of the UN Convention: philosophical assumptions and pedagogical tools

Abstract

This work is intended as an educational aid to fully understand the innovative and radical alternative proposed by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities compared to traditional models (see Curto, Marchisio 2020, Griffo 2015). In particular, it aims to demonstrate how the misunderstandings and failure to apply the Convention are based on a ‘hereditary error’ inherent in Western tradition, common sense, and science, which Friedrich Nietzsche had already identified in one aphorism of Human, All Too Human (Nietzsche 1879). The error that continues to be made is to consider phenomenal reality as an objective ‘aeterna veritas’ on which to base and found practices, rather than considering it as a contingent product of situated practices (Sini 2014). The difference between the two approaches is decisive both in theory and in the development of practices.

This paper analyzes the two methodological alternatives and proposes one narrative device—metaphor of the house and the workers—conceived as pedagogical tool to clarify the difference between an ontological and positivist approach and a constructivist or genealogical approach.

The aim is to provide readers with new and additional tools for understanding a point in the UN Convention that is as fundamental as it is difficult to grasp due to its unconventional nature.