The Development of Early Philosophies on Deafness and Hearing Impairment in Western Antiquity and Monotheistic Religion

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of Western knowledge on Deafness and Hearing Impairment (DHI) during antiquity (from Ancient Egypt to the end of the Roman Empire) and the foundation of the three monotheistic religions that effected Western culture: Judaism, Christianity and Islam [N.B. although Islam came after antiquity, it is important to include its part in the epistemological development of DHI as it is argued paper theorizes that it had an equally significant influence on the foundation of knowledge of DHI in Western epistemology]. The research questions that guide this paper are: How has DHI been understood in Western culture? How did this conception of DHI effect a general philosophy of mind, and this philosophy of mind influence our knowledge of DHI? This development of this knowledge is seen as a process that represents an evolution of knowledge and a Western epistemological system of studying DHI as an intellectual concept. The aim of this paper therefore is to examine the Western foundational knowledge on DHI that has created our contemporary understanding of the treatment and cultural attitudes towards people with DHI. The objective of this section is to begin a debate on the guiding concepts of our current research on DHI and to question whether these principles are necessarily helpful in the support of people with hearing impairments in the modern world. The methodology used to examine the knowledge development in this paper is termed the epistemological model of examining Western knowledge development on disability, which is shortened to the epistemological model of disability for convenience (Hayhoe 2016). This epistemological development is identified as coming via what is referred to as an archaeology of knowledge, with each major era of knowledge broken down into discrete eras for convenience, and with each one described as an episteme within this archaeology.