Ethics of Respect and Human Dignity. A Responsive Reading

Int'l Phil. Q., 2004

In this essay, we notice that the priority of persons, the unbridgeable political gap between persons and mere things, corresponds to a special sort of moral and legal treatment for persons, namely, as irreplaceable individuals. Normative language that confl ates the category of person with fungible kinds of being can thus appear to justify destroying and replacing human beings, just as we do with things. Lethal consequences may result, for example, from a common but improper extension of the word "value" to persons. The attitude and act called "respect" brings forth much more adequately than "value" the distinctively individual priority of persons, allowing our common humanity to be a reason for each person's separate signifi cance. Unless we focus on the respect-worthiness of human life rather than on its value, we will not be able to argue coherently against those who think its destruction permissible.

International Philosophical Quarterly, 2004

In this essay, we notice that the priority of persons, the unbridgeable political gap between persons and mere things, corresponds to a special sort of moral and legal treatment for persons, namely, as irreplaceable individuals. Normative language that confl ates the category of person with fungible kinds of being can thus appear to justify destroying and replacing human beings, just as we do with things. Lethal consequences may result, for example, from a common but improper extension of the word "value" to persons. The attitude and act called "respect" brings forth much more adequately than "value" the distinctively individual priority of persons, allowing our common humanity to be a reason for each person's separate signifi cance. Unless we focus on the respect-worthiness of human life rather than on its value, we will not be able to argue coherently against those who think its destruction permissible.

Dialogue, 2013

I argue that failing to fulfill the Kantian obligation to protect one’s rational nature might actually vitiate future instances of this obligation. To avoid this conclusion, I argue that, contrary to the received view among Kant scholars, the feature in virtue of which someone has unconditional and incomparable value is not the same feature in virtue of which she is owed the respect that constrains how she may be treated. Even though someone who fails to attempt to protect her rational nature fails to respect herself, and even though this moral failing does make her lose a certain kind of value, her obligations to respect herself remain.

2014

This dissertation aims to examine the notion of ‘human dignity’ in Kant by means of a conversation with three Kantian scholars. One cannot understand Kant’s notion of human dignity without placing it in the context of his moral thought. For this reason we look in Chapter One at the philosopher Roger Sullivan. His major work Immanuel Kant’s moral theory includes a highly detailed treatment of human dignity. I shall present an analysis of his understanding within the context of his methodology and his general approach to Kant’s moral philosophy. We look in Chapter Two at Susan Shell’s ‘Kant on Human Dignity.’ In addition to this, we consider Shell’s methodology and some of her work on the early Kant where we find the roots of Kant’s conception of dignity. Chapter Three addresses Oliver Sensen’s novel interpretation of Kant’s use of the term ‘dignity.’ Utilizing the tools of Analytical Philosophy, he enters into dialogue with Kantian interpreters, suggesting that their understanding of...

In this article, I intend to reframe and qualify Kant's moral philosophy for the understanding human dignity. Some Kant's formulas seem to grant to the human being an inherent and absolute worthiness, when they are read (often) in a very decontextualized way. To achieve this objective, I identify the basic characteristics we commonly attribute to the contemporary model of human dignity. This model has some expressions in the axio-logical field (inherent and absolute worth), and, at the same time, in the legal-political field (cornerstone of human rights and guiding principle of the Rule of law). I intend to see if we can find some of these latter characteristics in the mentioned usages that Kant gives to the term " dignity " and of formulas supposedly connected (" end in itself " , " autonomy " , " humanity "). When contextualizing these expressions, either in the motivations or in the results of Kant's philosophy, I arrived to the conclusion that Kant was less concerned with the intrinsic worthiness of the human beings, than with establishing the authority of morality.

Though the concept of "respect for persons" has its original home in Kant's moral philosophy, it also has a wider intuitive appeal which survives its detachment from that original context. In this paper I shall try to locate that appeal. I shall sketch what I take to be a tenable version of the concept and the role which it can play in ethical thinking, and I shall then spell out some of its implications for political thought, especially through its connections with the concepts of "autonomy" and "equality". PRIMITIVE RESPONSES I begin by invoking an important element in the Wittgensteinian account of language, namely the existence of what I shall call the "pri-mitive responses" which we share as human beings and which underlie, and make possible, our possession of a shared language and shared meanings. Some examples from Wittgenstein are the following : i) The fact that we find it natural to respond to the gesture of pointing by looking in the direction of the line from wrist to fingertip rather than, say, the opposite direction. No further reason can be given for taking this to be the correct interpretation of the gesture, but since we do in fact share this response the gesture can have a fixed meaning, and this in turn makes possible the process of ostensive definition and its role in the acquisition of language. ii) The behaviour of crying as a response to pain. Because we share this and other similar primitive responses, we can also employ a shared vocabulary of pains and other sensations. A child learns the meaning of the word "pain" by learning to apply it to those physcial sensations which prompt the response of crying.

This article explicates the concept of respect as philosophers discuss and utilize it. After identifying the main questions about respect which philosophers have raised and addressed, including questions about the nature, importance, objects, grounds, psychological and behavioral elements, and implications of respect, I sketch an account of the most general elements of the attitude of respect and identify different kinds of respect and their connections to and differences from similar attitudes such as esteem and honor. I then discuss the most influential account of respect for persons, that of Immanuel Kant. The final section explores the importance of respect in moral, social and political life and in moral, social, and political theory, and highlights some implications for issues in applied ethics and social and political theory.

International Philosophical Quarterly, 2019

It has become common, following Stephen Darwall's "Two Kinds of Respect" (1977), to distinguish between "appraisal respect" and "recognition respect." I propose, rather, to distinguish between hierarchical and egalitarian respect. The way the two meanings interact and the way they either support or contrast with each other have yet to be made clear. The meanings gathered under the broad rubric of respect can be highlighted by a genealogy that convincingly shows that the hierarchical notion is fundamental and that the definition of an egalitarian meaning is a decisive shift made mainly by the Enlightenment movement, particularly by Kant. Furthermore, the notion of respect is currently being extended beyond persons-to animals, other living beings, and the environment. I argue that we can justifiably do so on the basis of the interaction between the hierarchical and egalitarian notions of respect.

Philosophy Today 52 (1): 52-59 (2008)

According to Immanuel Kant, moral experience is made possible by respect, an absolutely unique feeling in which the sensible and the intelligible are given immediately together. This paper argues that Kant's moral philosophy underemphasizes the role of this sensibility at the heart of moral experience and that a more rigorous conception of respect, grounded in Michel Serres's concepts of the parasite, the excluded/included third, and noise would yield a moral philosophy more consistent with Kant's own basic insights.

HELLENIC-SERBIAN PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE SERIES, 2022

This paper aims at showing that Human Dignity is neither something that exists separately from human being, nor a property, or an abstract idea, but as a relation between a human being and their own knowledge of the form of human existence, which can be expressed as the form 'I.' In other words, human dignity means that a person acknowledges that they owe the formed aspect of her existence to the form 'I.' Because human beings cannot actualise the form 'I' in a self-sufficient manner, the violation of the dignity of one person derogates also the dignity of the person or the persons who are causing it. This means that if I debase someone, I debase also myself because I impair my own knowledge of the form 'I.' In other words, my dignity relation to the form 'I' obliges me to acknowledge and to respect the dignity relation of any other human being. The problems arising from the cognitivist concept of dignity disappear if one takes into account that this concept only says that in order for dignity to exist there must exist at least one full-fledged cognizing person. As long as one human being in the world is able to have direct knowledge of the form 'I' every other human is entitled to dignity, even if the rest of humanity were not in position to realise this fact. Human dignity cannot thus be determined as an individual human right, but as a duty of every person against herself and any other human being.