Timothy Speed (2026)
The increasing visibility of neurodivergent forms of existence—particularly autistic and ADHD-shaped ways of living—confronts existing legal, social, and epistemic systems with a fundamental structural problem. These systems rest implicitly on the assumption of a uniform human form of existence, whose perception, self-regulation, communication, and productivity are treated as universally valid standards. Deviations from these standards are legally addressed predominantly either as illness or as functional deviation to be corrected through adaptation, activation, or therapy. This paper argues that, under conditions of ontological diversity, this order is not merely inadequate but structurally violent. The dichotomy “ill or capable of work” operates as a coercive architecture that either pathologizes neurodivergent people or forces them to adapt to neurotypical norms. An autonomous form of existence that is neither pathologized nor rendered economically exploitable is largely not provided for within current law. The resulting phenomena—enforced masking, chronic exhaustion, health destabilization, institutional escalation, and social marginalization—are not recognized as systemic effects but are individualized and medicalized. Starting from an ontological determination of neurodivergent existence as autonomous, stable, and non-reducible modes of human world- and meaning-relation, the paper develops the concept of the right to ontological coexistence. This right denotes the claim of different human forms of existence to exist in legal equal worth without subordination, normalization, pathologization, or coercive valorization. Equal worth is not understood as uniformity, but as protection against forced integration into a structurally incompatible order. The paper derives legal consequences including the inadmissibility of abstract standards of reasonableness, the qualification of subsistence-conditioned adaptation requirements as coercion, institutional responsibility for masking-related harms, preventive protection duties independent of visible breakdown, and a two-tiered state obligation toward systemic transformation or—where this does not (yet) occur in fact—subsistence-securing compensation without pathologization, activation compulsion, or psychiatric dominance. The paper functions as a foundational text for the further development of international human rights standards under conditions of real ontological plurality.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18208432
Keywords: Ontological Coexistence, Neurodivergence, Autism, ADHD, Structural Violence, Human Rights, Legal Theory, Masking, Ontological Pluralism, State Obligations
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