Abstract
In the nineteenth century, there lived a monk known as Brother William, who was a man of very limited intellectual abilities. Brother William believed he was in constant contact with God. His life was so exemplary in its kindness, compassion and love that he was greatly honored in his community.1 Brother William sounds as if he was a person who deserved esteem, and whom we should hesitate to call handicapped even though he was, by present criteria, mentally retarded. But language itself shows, despite what we like to think, that (outside of families) we rarely give retarded persons respect in the sense of esteem.
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Kopelman, L. (1984). Respect and the Retarded: Issues of Valuing and Labeling. In: Kopelman, L., Moskop, J.C. (eds) Ethics and Mental Retardation. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1480-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1480-8_7
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