Beyond Respect and Beneficence

Thomas E. Hill, Jr. breaks with two conventional approaches in moral philosophy. Hill eschews the recent tendency to focus either on duties or on virtues, and instead emphasizes the importance of moral attitudes. And Hill specifically steps outside the usual framework of Kantian ethics by developing and defending the importance of a moral attitude besides respect and beneficence, namely the attitude of appreciation. To appreciate something is to recognize and respond appropriately to its value as something worth attending to, observing, admiring, cherishing, or the like, for its own sake. The attitude of appreciation is especially important in personal relationships, although it includes recognizing and responding positively to the distinctive features possessed by many sorts of things, not just persons.

On a Kantian Form of Respect

In this essay, Stephen Darwall first develops a rich set of distinctions of different forms of respect that supplement the fundamental distinction of recognition and appraisal respect. He then applies it to Kant’s dictum from The Critique of Practical Reason that “before a common humble man … my spirit bows.” Darwall is particularly interested in what Kant says about the phenomenology of respect: how it occurs, how it feels, and the like. The framework Darwall developed earlier, allows him to show how respect as a moral feeling is not only a form of appraisal but also recognition respect, and how the moral feeling of respect relates to other forms, such as “social respect” and “honor respect.”

Treating Disabled Adults as Children

Adam Cureton points out that the intuitively plausible claim that it is disrespectful to treat mentally competent adults as if they were children gives rise to a puzzle, within a Kantian framework. It seems possible to fulfill basic Kantian duties of respect toward adults with disabilities (respecting their basic rights, for example, and recognizing their intrinsic worth), while still treating them like children. So how is it disrespectful to offer unwanted paternalistic assistance to a disabled person, or to speak to her condescendingly, if one is otherwise treating her as an end in herself? Cureton answers that Kant not only describes duties of respect toward rational beings in general, but also says that specific forms of respectful treatment are appropriate for particular people because of their situation or station. Cureton proposes that treating disabled adults like children typically involves miscategorizing their “station” of being competent adult decision makers.

Respect and the Dynamics of Finitude

Carla Bagnoli argues that Kant’s conception of respect as a moral feeling is crucial to any constructivist theory of practical reason because it provides the only satisfactory account of how moral commands carry subjective authority—how they are experienced as binding by finite agents endowed with rationality. Without positing a moral feeling of respect, a constructivist theory can account for objective moral obligations, but it cannot explain why finite agents can take an interest in action. This account centered on the moral feeling of respect is defended in contrast to the mechanisms of the “reflective endorsement” of moral ends or actions, which has been proposed by prominent Kantian constructivists. The theory of respect as a moral feeling is an integral and eliminable element of Kantian constructivism, whose absence compromises the constructivist account of practical reason and undermines its objectivist aspirations.

Respect for Persons and Public Justification

Gerald Gaus argues that respect for persons is not an independent ground for requiring that social morality must be publicly justified. Instead, respect is built into the structure of social morality, because social morality involves recognizing one another as sources of a moral summons to follow rules. So mutual respect for persons is a social achievement, not a requirement underlying morality. The authority of rules of social morality derives from this structural nature of social morality. But because one may face a gap between one’s individual moral reasoning and social morality, no particular rule of social morality, including rules about whether coercion is justified, necessarily overrides one’s own moral conclusions.

Self-Respect, Arrogance, and Power

Robin S. Dillon reconsiders her influential previous position, that arrogance involves a failure to recognize the true source of one’s own value, as a rational being with the status to demand equal respect. On this view, arrogance and self-respect are antithetical. In this chapter, Dillon revises her position, taking into account differences in power in societies. For people who are oppressed, arrogance (claiming more than society thinks is appropriate) may be compatible with, or even necessary for, self-respect. Neither people within a society, nor we as observers, can claim an objective perspective in adjudicating the issue of whether these claims are warranted, or excessive. Furthermore, it may be objectively true that, in some circumstances, arrogance is a necessary tool for overcoming oppression.

The Peculiar Idea of Respect for a Capacity

Richard Dean examines the popular strategy of developing a system of moral duties based on respect for some capacity possessed by all persons. Dean argues that not only is there a deep ambiguity in the concept of a “capacity,” as either a mere potential or as a developed and stable ability or characteristic, but that several prominent moral theories based on respect for a capacity trade problematically on this ambiguity. Dean suggests that the prevalence of this mistake, and the apparent absence of theories that avoid it, is evidence that such a strategy for developing moral theories is not viable.

How to Treat Someone with Respect

Oliver Sensen analyses what, more concretely, one must do to respect someone. In order to find a universal criterion of respect, Sensen first distinguishes different usages of “respect,” such as “not using someone as a mere means,” “gaining another’s consent,” feeling esteem for someone, or being polite. Sensen argues that—while these usages are of central importance in our everyday life—they are not the universal respect that we always owe to all others. Rather, he argues, universal respect consists in not exalting oneself above others, which itself consists in not breaking rules that we regard as objectively necessary. The discovery of these necessary rules is largely an empirical matter that involves universal human needs, cultural norms, and giving others a voice in how they are treated. If one does not make an exception to these rules, one’s behavior is respectful toward all others.

Self-Respect under Conditions of Oppression

Serene Khader argues against the widespread view that oppressed people have a self-regarding obligation to resist complying with oppressive norms, in order to preserve their self-respect. Khader notes that the cost of noncompliance is often underestimated. Flouting oppressive norms often poses substantial threats to an agent’s welfare and even her self-respect, and compliance may express self-respect, by affirming a commitment to the importance of her own projects and to gaining the means to pursue them. Khader offers an alternative way of maintaining self-respect in the face of oppression, namely to cultivate knowledge of the oppressive situation faced by oneself and one’s group, and to develop a normative perspective that recognizes and seeks to rectify injustices.

Respect

Remy Debes provides a historical background for the prominent role that respect plays in current moral discussion. But, true to the spirit of this volume as philosophical rather than encyclopedic, Debes does not just describe texts and list dates. Instead, he raises doubts about the standard story about the rising influence of the idea of respect for persons, that it comes mainly and directly from Immanuel Kant. Debes offers evidence that by the time Kant’s writings gained influence in the English-speaking world, the movement toward the importance of respect for all persons already was well underway, albeit often using terminology other than “respect.” This movement grew partly among moral and political philosophers, and political activists, but also in underappreciated literary writing, often written by women and men of color.