  Nussbaum (2006) suggests that the source of political philosophy's ignoring the disabled lies in a foundational assumption of social contract theory. She criticizes Rawls for casting citizens in the role of rough equals who relate because they can benefit each other, saying “Instead of picturing one another as rough equals making a bargain, we may be better off thinking of one another as people with varying degrees of capacity and disability, in a variety of different relationships of interdependency with one another” (2001, B9). Construing reciprocal bargaining as the foundational and therefore paradigmatic social connection among citizens “effaces the more asymmetrical forms of dependency that human life contains: the need for care in infancy, extreme age, and periods of severe illness or a lifetime of severe disability,” she objects (2001, B9).