Radical Dependence: Anthropology, Ethics, and Disability

by Mary Jo Iozzio

Overview

Human beings are relationally dependent, regardless of race, gender, or functionality, and while persons with disability may seem to epitomize dependency, they are neither more nor less dependent than those without disabilities. Many people deny, if not absolutely reject, any claim of dependence on others once maturity is reached; however, this position contradicts reality—disabled and nondisabled alike are dependent on others for the provision of both basic and complex services. Acknowledging one's dependence can facilitate relief from the hardships everyone experiences over the course of a lifetime: sickness, injury, disease, and the difficulties of aging.

With Radical Dependence, Mary Jo Iozzio approaches concerns of and for disabled persons by presenting a Trinitarian theological anthropology of relationality and the radical dependence that such a reality presumes. Iozzio demonstrates the influence such a theology can have on the ways that institutions—healthcare, schools, social services, civic organizations, and churches—can practice solidarity and subsidiarity alongside people with disability who have been too long oppressed, sequestered, and forgotten.

Disability studies is increasingly engaging theology and ethics. Colleagues in systematics have offered keen insights and challenges to theological anthropology inclusive of people with disability. This text builds on some of that work, expands it through a Trinitarian lens, and approaches each imago Dei as inherently dependent upon others. Radical Dependence considers the contours of an ethics that uses a disability hermeneutic while it engages the Scriptures, systematic theology, virtue ethics, and Catholic Social Teaching applied to questions that arise in formal, informal, and intimate contexts. This is an ethical vision for people with disability and the nondisabled alike, for all who wish to embrace the radical fullness of human existence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481319539
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2025
Series:	Studies in Religion, Theology, and Disability
Pages:	334
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.21(d)

About the Author

Mary Jo Iozzio is Professor of Moral Theology and Professora Ordinaria at the Gloria L. and Charles I. Clough School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College.

Table of Contents

1 A Trinitarian Anthropology of Relationality: The Basis of Radical Dependence
2 Solidarity with Humankind and Those Who Are Oppressed: Liberation for People with Disability
3 The True Good: Human Flourishing and Virtue
4 Nascent Life Issues: Reproduction, Genetics, Abortion, and Critical Births
5 "Am I My Brother’s (and My Sister’s) Keeper?": Neither Fault nor Disfavor for Congenital and Acquired Disability
6 Complications to Disabling Conditions: Gender, Race, War
7 Epilogue: Hope: The Symbol Functions

What People are Saying About This

Bill Gaventa

In Radical Dependence, Mary Jo Iozzio argues that the dependent components of human life, often symbolized by "disability," are in fact the foundational characteristic of a richly diverse world created by a triune God. The Trinity is relationally dependent as his/her/their very core of being as Creator, Son, and Spirit. Thus, disability/dependence is not a symbol of the brokenness of life, as it so often interpreted, but rather of its richly diverse essence. From that theological starting point, she then reinterprets virtue ethics as a way of dealing faithfully with life in all its forms and with human issues that are magnified in the lives of people with disabilities. In a world full of illusions of independence and reluctant to recognize interdependence, it is a challenging, but very real, starting point.

Brian Brock

This wide ranging and insightful work from a senior scholar in the field is destined to become the new benchmark for Roman Catholic theology of disability. Iozzio understands disability as an eradicable feature of all our lives, given our fundamental relational dependence. Congenital and acquired disabilities will always be with us, and this is no embarrassment but the very condition in which God’s love invites us into more attentive and virtuous ways of receiving all lives, from beginning to end, especially amidst the struggles of those who are most vulnerable to the forces of militarism, poverty, racism and gendered violence.

Darla Schumm

In this sharply written book, Mary Jo Iozzio challenges the commonly held notion that depending on others is an extraordinary experience reserved primarily for people with disability. Iozzio deftly weaves together theological anthropology, Christian ethics, and disability experience to argue forcefully that dependence—indeed radical dependence—is an ordinary and celebrated state of being human. Iozzio ends on a note of hope, proclaiming that the "expression and practice of dependent relationality" leads us to one another, justice, and God.