This is an amazing little book that explores the nature of humans and it’s intersection with the virtues and philosophy.

"To this it may be said that so far I may have argued a relatively uncontroversial case, but one that could not be made out in respect of more extreme forms of disability and dependence, such as those in which the physically and mentally incapacitated are incapable of all or all but the most minimal responses to others, human beings who do not or no longer achieve the status of Lockean persons, human beings whose potentialities for rationality or affective response have been permanently frustrated. It will be urged that of such we can only say that at most they can be passive objects of benevolence designed to limit their suffering, beings whose existence can only be a cost, but not in any way a benefit to others. How could they be our teachers? This is a powerful and widely influential view."

"Its presupposition is that caring for and giving to those others who can make no voluntary return to me can only be costs and burdens. Towards them I may adopt an attitude of benevolence, but my relationship to them must be one-sided. But this is a mistake. What they give us is the possibility of learning something essential, what it is for someone else to be wholly entrusted to our care, so that we are answerable for their well-being. Everyone of us has, as an infant, been wholly entrusted to someone else's care, so that they were answerable for our well-being. Now we have the opportunity to learn just what it is that we owe to such individuals by learning for ourselves what it is to be so entrusted."

"There are two aspects of any such relationship. One involves the actual giving of life-sustaining and pain-abating physical and sometimes psychological care, the whole messy and immensely fatiguing business of bedpans and vomit and changing sheets, of dealing with sores or tantrums or wandering incoherence, of giving medicines and bandaging wounds. The other is a matter of the role of the proxy for those disabled who are unable to speak for themselves. The proxy's role is to speak for those thus disabled both inside and outside the community in just the way that that particular disabled individual would have done so for her or himself, had she or he still been able to speak. The radically disabled individual needs someone who will speak for her or him as, so to speak, a second self. And, since we are all potentially liable to this extreme condition, we all of us now or later may need someone to be our second self, to speak for us."

"Yet no one will be able to speak adequately for me who does not already know me. Such an individual will generally need to know how I have judged my good in various situations in the past and what the reasoning was by which I supported my judgments. For, only if they know this, will they be able to speak for me, as I would have done for myself."