Philosophies of Blindness and Visual Impairment from The Middle Ages Through to the Enlightenment

Abstract

In this presentation, I examine the evolution of a Western epistemology of blindness and visual impairment after antiquity, and the founding of a contemporary Western understanding of the human experience of blindness and visual impairment. The study used the Epistemological Model of Blindness as its methodology, which was designed to examine the meta-trends in the historical conceptualisation of blindness. This presentation has two aims: to link an ancient and religious conceptualisation of blindness and visual impairment with current thinking on this topic, through what can be called a middle-era of epistemology, an era involving a distinct imperial and religious influence on knowledge and the invention of a materialist Western model of science; and, to examine the philosophical concepts that directly and indirectly affected the foundation of institutions for people who were blind and visually impaired during the enlightenment.