Oliver Sachs: Seeing voices
Going back to Aristotle’s article read in class, humans differ from animals due to their inherent ability to think and grasp abstract concepts such as justice and injustice. Oliver Sachs in Seeing Voices mentions that the prelingually deaf are reduced to the status of subhuman by the society by denying them the freedom to speak in their own language, the sign language. He writes that the sign language is capable of expressing coherent and abstract thoughts just like any other language that is spoken. And what makes us human is also the sharing of our knowledge and participating in discourse with each other. Today, the deaf may learn the sign language and communicate with those who can sign, but their integration in the larger society is still stalled. In this sense, as a society, we are silencing them because the sharing of knowledge between the deaf and the hearing is still at a minimal.
Aristotle believed in order to live well one must develop his/her reasoning powers which could be cultivated through discourse, and being able to relate ideas. By not learning the sign language, and inadvertently silencing the deaf population, hindering their mental development, are we do blame for this injustice or is this simply as Aristotle mentioned, unfortunate luck of the deaf.
