Sapere Aude 17:281-299. 2026This article proposes a phenomenological approach to disability in critical dialogue with the social model and political-identity conceptions, aiming to rethink identity through the distinction between subject and person. It argues that the centrality attributed to the category of person remains tied to the bioethical paradigms of personhood and personality, which are insufficient to account for the corporeal experience of disability. Inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, the analysis repositions the body as the subject of the lived bodily dimension. Within this framework, the paper proposes a distinction between the disabled subject and the subject with disability, articulated through corporeal experience, diagnostic language, and intersubjective recognition. On the basis of this framework, the article develops a phenomenological typology of identity constitution in the experience of disability, understood as a possible –rather than normative –mode of subject formation. Finally, it discusses the implications of this approach for law, especially with regard to the notion of the legal subject, legal language, and the right to speech