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For Dina Abou Salem and Serena Dean. For Lily Sensen.
III. APPLICATIONS OF RESPECT
11. Self-Respect, Arrogance, and Power: A Feminist Analysis
Robin S. Dillon
12. Self-Respect under Conditions of Oppression
Serene J. Khader
13. A Lack of Respect in Bioethics
Samuel J. Kerstein
14. Treating Disabled Adults as Children: An Application of Kant’s Conception of Respect
Adam Cureton
15. Species Egalitarianism and Respect for Nature: Of Mice and Carrots
Lucia Schwarz
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Dina Abou Salem for her assistance with many technical details in the preparation of this book. Richard Dean would like to thank the Office of the Provost and the Office of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities at California State University Los Angeles for providing reduced teaching hours, through a RSCA assigned time award, during part of the production of this volume.
List of Contributors
Carla Bagnoli is Professor of Philosophy, University of Modena & Reggio Emilia.
Adam Cureton is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Stephen Darwall is Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale University.
Richard Dean is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles.
Remy Debes is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis.
Robin S. Dillon is Professor Emerita at Lehigh University.
Gerald Gaus is the late James E. Rogers Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona.
Thomas E. Hill, Jr. is Emeritus Kenan Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Samuel J. Kerstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland.
Serene J. Khader is Jay Newman Chair in the Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College and Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Christine M. Korsgaard is Arthur Kingsley Porter Research Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University.
Uriah Kriegel is Professor of Philosophy at Rice University and Director of Research at the Jean Nicod Institute.
Philip Pettit is Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton University and also Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University.
Lucia Schwarz is a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona.
Oliver Sensen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University.
Mark Timmons is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona.
Introduction
Richard Dean and Oliver Sensen
Respect plays a prominent role in both everyday pre-philosophical moral thinking and in contemporary moral philosophy.
Ordinary moral discussion is often framed in terms of demands for respect or complaints about being disrespected. A recognition of the status a person has due to her personhood, accomplishments, or position, as well as concerns about people being “used” or undervalued, all draw on a broader recognition of the importance of respect. Furthermore, arguments for expanding the sphere of moral concern to include non-human animals, nature, or artistic creations are often presented in terms of respect.
Respect also is a fundamental concept in recent moral philosophy. It is a widely held view that there is a characteristic typical of competent human adults, such as autonomy, rationality, or the capacity for morality, that grounds a requirement to respect them. This respect for persons is often thought to be the basis for a variety of more particular duties, or even the basis of all duties. This is especially the case in practical ethics, when, for instance, debates in bioethics appeal to a requirement of respect for the autonomy of patients. And respect is invoked as often in philosophy as it is in everyday arguments, when it comes to expanding the scope of morality beyond competent, adult human beings.
Yet basic questions about the concept and role of respect have received less attention than might be expected, given the centrality of respect in moral discourse.
The aim of this volume is to further the research on this crucial moral concept of respect. The goal is not to offer a comprehensive, encyclopedic handbook that covers all aspects of the topic, nor is the focus of the book mainly historical. Rather, the aim is to give some leading experts in the field, as well as some younger thinkers with fresh approaches, a chance to give their thoughts, and to point the research on respect in new directions. There is no expectation that the authors will all arrive at any consensus in the end, but the hope is that the arguments offered for different views will spark further exploration of the topic of respect.
Of course, some influential ideas about respect loom large in many of the essays (Stephen Darwall’s distinction between recognition respect and appraisal respect is a conspicuous example), and Immanuel Kant undeniably casts a long shadow over the volume. But it is worth saying explicitly that the essays do not all presuppose a shared starting point about the importance of respect, or what
respect is, and still less do they assume the infallibility of the views on respect of any particular philosopher, even Kant. The discussions of respect in this book include many diverging ideas, and significant doses of various types of skepticism.
The volume will be divided into three parts, following an introductory historical essay. The three parts are not presumed to encompass all possible areas of interest regarding respect, but just comprise a rough grouping of essays by theme.
Part I deals roughly with the question of what respect is, its nature and its basis. Part II deals with questions about the proper role of respect in moral theory. Does respect serve as a unique foundation for morality or is it one moral concern among many? What exactly ought to be respected, and which different types of respect are appropriate and morally significant? Part III deals with more practical issues of applying requirements of respect.
The short descriptions below capture the main issues dealt with in each chapter, but of course do not lay out the authors’ arguments in detail.
Chapter 1. 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 Debes emphasizes that it also arose in underappreciated literary writing, often written by women and men of color.
Part I. On What Respect Is
Chapter 2. Philip Pettit develops an account of the fundamental nature and basis of respect. Pettit’s “conversive” theory of respect draws on the fact that our unique command of language provides us with a “special means of mutual influence,” making us accessible to each other’s understanding. Our conversive nature is necessarily accompanied by some shared standards for what ought to count as reasons for believing something, and for what one ought to desire or intend. To act respectfully is to act from a robust commitment to treat you as a conversive partner, to present you with reasons for forming beliefs and intentions, rather than just trying to elicit these through any means that are causally effective.
Chapter 3. 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.
Chapter 4. Uriah Kriegel and Mark Timmons apply to the feeling of respect an approach that has become common in understanding other mental phenomena, such as emotions. They distinguish the functional role of respect in moral philosophy (for instance, the types of treatment that respect leads to), which is described third-personally, from the phenomenological account of what it feels like to experience respect, which is described first-personally. Since discussions of respect in analytic philosophy have focused almost entirely on its third-person functional role, shifting our attention to the phenomenological experience of respect may provide valuable new insights.
Chapter 5. 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.” 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.
Part II. Respect in Moral Theory
Chapter 6. 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 motivate moral agents. Without positing a feeling of respect, a constructivist theory can explain objective reasons for action, but not why they are subjectively binding. In particular, a feeling of respect plays this role of accounting for subjective authority better than the “reflective endorsement” of moral ends or actions that has been proposed by prominent Kantian constructivists.
Chapter 7. 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 is evidence that such a strategy for developing moral theories is not viable.
Chapter 8. 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. 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.
Chapter 9. Christine Korsgaard reexamines her earlier positions on the value of humanity, and the treatment and respect that befit an end in itself. She articulates a version of these ideas in which one can see non-human animals as ends in themselves. Korsgaard first points out that we can value our own moral nature without thinking that beings without such a nature are of lesser value, just as one can value one’s identity as a parent without thinking less of non-parents. She then distinguishes different ways of understanding what is involved in valuing humanity or rational nature, and proposes that one aspect of valuing a being as an end in itself is thinking that the being’s good matters and is worthy of consideration. This sense of being an end in oneself can apply to non-human animals, even if they do not share the rationality of typical human beings.
Chapter 10. Stephen Darwall returns to a recurring theme in his work, addressing the problem of how respect for persons as such is compatible with special respect for people with good moral character. Darwall draws on Kant’s texts, especially the passage from The Critique of Practical Reason about a “humble common man” of upright character, to develop a rich account of various types of respect, supplementing his now-familiar distinction between recognition and appraisal respect with finer distinctions like “social respect” and “honor.”
Part III. Applications of Respect
Chapter 11. Robin Dillon reconsiders the question of whether arrogance is compatible with self-respect. Dillon’s previous position on the issue was 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. So 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.
Chapter 12. 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.
Chapter 13. Samuel Kerstein points out that although respect is a commonly deployed concept in bioethics, requirements of respect usually amount to respect for autonomy, or for giving proper weight to the choices made by competent persons. Kerstein argues that increased emphasis on another sense of respect, respect for the worth of persons, will greatly enrich discussions in several areas of bioethics, including physician-assisted dying, distribution of medical resources, and ethical considerations regarding procreation.
Chapter 14. 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, by 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 points out that Kant not only describes duties of respect toward rational beings in general, but also suggests that specific forms of respectful treatment may be appropriate for particular people because of their particular situation or station. Cureton proposes that treating disabled adults like children typically involves miscategorizing their “station” of being competent adult decision makers.
Chapter 15. Lucia Schwarz urges a reconsideration of the implications of species egalitarianism, which is an essential element of the position in environmental ethics that Paul Taylor calls “respect for nature.” Species egalitarianism’s claim that
every living thing has equal inherent worth appears to lead to counterintuitive conclusions, such as that killing a human being is no worse than killing a dandelion. Species egalitarians have generally responded by explaining that species egalitarianism is compatible with recognizing moral differences between killing different types of living things, and that some killing is morally permissible. Schwarz raises doubts about whether this deflationary defensive strategy is philosophically justified, and suggests that taking seriously the supposedly repugnant implications of species egalitarianism may have a salutary effect on the overall debate.
Taken together, we hope that this loose collection of innovative essays on respect will encourage further research on this central topic in moral philosophy.
1 Respect A History
Remy Debes
Respect is a knotty concept. Derived from the Latin respicere (“to look round or back,” “to notice,” “to pay attention to”), its English-language lifespan is marked by scores of connotations, some of which cut in distinctly different directions.1 Even after we delimit our interest to the subject of this volume, respect for persons, we must still work through the much-discussed distinction between “appraisal” and “recognition” forms of respect (Darwall 1977). The first names a positive evaluative attitude expressed towards a person for some character merit, moral or non-moral, such as her chess skills or industry or benevolence. In this sense, respect is similar to admiration or esteem, and carries connotations of honor and awe. It is something we feel towards another person. The second, by contrast, names a way of thinking about others. It is a deliberative disposition to give appropriate weight to some feature of a person in deciding how to act in relation to her.2 By adapting our choices or plans in light of the given feature, we show that we “recognize” the person in question. In this sense, respect connotes “heed,” “consideration,” “concern,” or “deference.”
Making matters more complicated, notice that the possible features of a person which might ground such recognition respect are diverse. It could be a person’s feelings about a political issue, their social status, or their professional rank. Indeed, any fact about a person that one might take as a reason for choosing one plan or action over another is a candidate for showing recognition respect. For example, you can show recognition respect to your taller opponent’s greater reach, by deciding to position yourself an extra step away, or by swapping your sword for a spear. Most relevant to the subject of this volume, however, is to consider the way we call on one another to adapt our plans or choices in light of the basic worth or dignity of human beings. When we do this—when we take a person’s human dignity as the relevant feature for revising or foregoing our plans or choices—we respect persons as persons. Or, as we sometimes say, “just because” they are persons. Call this the moralized connotation of recognition respect.
This semantic tangle, however, isn’t the main challenge for investigating the history of respect. For those interested in the moralized concept of respect, especially as it figures in the anglophone world, there is a much harder question.
Namely, how did we get to this point? For, the simple fact is that until the twentieth century, the term “respect” had almost no currency as meaning “recognition for persons as persons.” Early dictionary entries, for example, from Noah Webster (1828), to Samuel Johnson (1755), to John Kersey (1702), explain respect only through its appraisal connotations.3 Or consider that throughout the nineteenth century, suffragists and abolitionists spoke of “respect” almost entirely in appraisal terms4—a norm validated at least as late as the 1900 edition of Webster’s International Dictionary. 5 Indeed, the only “recognition” connotations of respect that this edition of Webster’s includes are marked by a centuries old sense of giving partial consideration to a particular person or group, which was entrenched into English from prominent biblical passages such as Acts 10:34: “God is no respecter of persons.”6 So, again, what explains the revolution in meaning that produced our current moralized notion of respect? The following chapter offers some preliminary answers to this question.
1. A Puzzle in Two Parts
From a contemporary, western viewpoint the moralized concept of respect is not simply familiar, it is fundamental. Most of us believe we owe respect to persons in virtue of some unearned status or worth or “dignity” that all humans enjoy equally, and we believe this respect should express itself, at least partly, in our practical deliberations. Of course, we may disagree on how to explain the relevant “status” or “worth” that supposedly commands such respect. In turn, we may disagree about exactly what it takes to respect persons as persons. Nevertheless, most of us agree that some such respect is owed to persons, and again, owed equally. Indeed, this principle of equal regard is so fundamental today, it is often treated as “properly basic.” That is, it is treated as needing no justification, in the sense that the principle marks a boundary of reasonable disagreement.7
In fact, then, there are two general questions to ask about the history of moralized respect for persons. First, there is a question about origins, and it has two parts. On the one hand, we can ask how the term “respect” came to connote “recognition for persons as persons” in the first place. On the other hand, given its relative youth, we can ask whether a concept of “recognition for persons as persons” existed before it was subsumed under the terminology of “respect.” And if so, did the older form of the idea imply or entail the same idea of moral personhood that it does today? In other words, even if we find older versions of the idea that we must respect the basic worth of persons, what conception of the person did these ideas trade on? These are the primary questions of this chapter.
Second, one might also want to ask how the moralized concept of “respect” gained so wide a currency once it was introduced. That is, how did the concept
and its attending principle become so ubiquitous that it could plausibly be said to be “properly basic”? It is easy to underestimate both questions, though for different reasons. Let me explain, starting with the second. In the next section, I turn back to my main interest, the question of origins—especially, the modern origins of our moralized concept of respect for persons.
It isn’t difficult to guess some of the major events that helped transform and widen the concept of respect into our present-day ethos of respect. We might start with the new “virtual cosmopolitism” of social media, or perhaps turn-ofthe-century new waves in feminism, queer studies, and race theory. We would certainly discuss the rise of Kantian egalitarianism that followed intellectual moguls like Rawls and Dworkin. We would note the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act and 1972 passage of Title IX. We would examine “the Sixties” cultural revolution, the contemporaneous American civil rights movement, and “second wave” feminism. We would reflect on global reactions to the Holocaust, such as UNESCO’s 1950 The Race Question or the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the latter of which was able simply to assert “the inherent dignity” of “all members of the human family,” in turn pledging “the promotion of universal respect.”8 We might consider the linked 1930s Supreme Court decisions Powell v. Alabama and Norris v. Alabama, which twice checked the racist climate of the Jim Crow south,9 or the influence of various literary movements like the Harlem Renaissance. We might also muse on the influence of music. Prior to 1930, for example, the “Blues” was referred to as “coon shouting.” But that term quickly faded after the genre’s popularization by singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey (Abbot and Serrof 2017: 175). And looking even farther back, we would consider turn-of-the-century social agitations like socialism and the “first wave” of feminism, which, in the long press for women’s suffrage, famously picketed the 1920 Republican Convention with a banner quoting Susan B. Anthony, “No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her” (Harper 1898: 416–417, 794).10
However, if these events and many more like them are easy to name, there is a complicating aspect to all such history. At every point in its post-modern development the principle of equal regard has been blatantly, violently, and systematically flouted across all western nations. Examples abound, but the recent rise of the “Black Lives Matter” movement in America is especially instructive. Formed by three black women in reaction to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, the movement gained international attention as it grew into the rally cry to protest an ensuing series of highly publicized, thus far largely judicially protected, and sadly still ongoing killing of unarmed black men and women. Consequently, “Black Lives Matter” has also become a reminder of the jagged rift between the liberal canons that inform the egalitarian public identity of America and the lived experience of its black
citizens—a rift as old as America itself. As Thurgood Marshall once noted, the seminal opening of the US Constitution, “We the People,” today looks like an act of false consciousness: “When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787,” Marshall memorably wrote, “they did not have in mind the majority of America’s citizens. ‘We the People,’ included in the words of the framers, “the whole Number of free Persons” (Marshall, 1987). In other words, Marshall meant, it meant white people.
To reiterate, the history of anti-black racism in America is only one example. The broader point is this: After we compose the narrative to explain how the concept of recognition respect evolved into our current ethos of respect, there remains the critical history of respect. How should we understand this ethos, its history, our present conviction in it, and any confidence we presume in deploying the moralized concept of respect itself, given that this ethos and our conceptual confidence are thoroughly entwined with a legacy of brutal hypocrisy that belies the very principles in question?
This is a fraught question, and I must reserve my more comprehensive effort to answer it to a different space.11 In the remainder of this chapter, I attempt only to put into place a few crucial pieces of that broader answer, as it connects specifically to the question of historical origins that I outlined above.
2. Immanuel Kant and the Usual Half-Truth
Hypocrisy challenges the whole history of moralized respect, right down to its origins. However, the first order of business when it comes to the question of origins is correcting a widespread half-truth. It features Immanuel Kant, and goes something like this:
In 1785 Kant revolutionized the concept of respect when he argued that his foundational moral principle, the “Categorical Imperative,” could be understood through an alternative formulation: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (Kant 1996: 80 [4:429]). For, the reason persons must be cognized as ends, and never merely as a means, is that persons are autonomous: they are “laws unto themselves.” It thus follows that persons are (or should be) cognized as a limit to rational choice. In turn, persons exact or demand respect from us when properly cognized. Kant writes:
[R]ational beings are called persons because their nature already marks them out as an end itself, that is, as something that may not be used merely as a means, and hence so far limits all choice (and is an object of respect).
(Kant 1996: 79 [4:428])
The origin of our moralized concept of respect is thus at hand. Between Kant’s massive influence on German thought and subsequent translation into English and influence on the anglophone tradition, “respect” was forever bonded to its central moralized connotation as recognition for persons as persons. Indeed, should we further ask where Kant sourced his own innovations on respect, even here scholars have a ready answer. Kant was inspired by his French predecessor, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. “Rousseau set me right about this,” Kant confessed, adding that he learned from Rousseau “to honor humanity” (Menschen ehren). More importantly, Kant implied he learned that it was this very attitude—this attitude of honoring humanity—that “gives worth to all others in establishing the rights of humanity” (Kant 1996: xvii [20:44]).
Alas, as an answer to the question of origins, the foregoing story isn’t even just-so. To be sure, Kant’s influence can’t be ignored. At a minimum, his choice to use Achtung to name the fitting attitude towards what limits rational choice, conjoined with his argument that persons are or represent such a limit, is an essential piece of the origin story.12 In Kant’s day, Achtung—like the English word “respect”—was dominated by connotations of literal attention (to something) and appraisal (especially of a person’s character). The influential German Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart (Dictionary of the High German Dialect), for example, which was published contemporaneously with Kant’s Groundwork, defines Achtung this way:
Derived from “achten” (pay attention to) 1) without an article and for the most part used with the verb “give” almost the equivalent of “attention” and 2 “Acht” “heeding” in everyday life. To pay attention to something 2) The inner judgment about someone else’s strengths and accomplishments, both active and passive.
(Adelung 1793: 155–156)
But as an attitude towards persons, Kant opposed Achtung to any such appraisal. This was a bold shift in meaning, one for which Kant is certainly owed credit. Nevertheless, it is only one part of the story—and an exaggerated part at that.
For a start, Kant himself occasionally appealed to Achtung’s older connotation of “attention,” which raises a question about whether or to what extent Kant took himself to be innovating on the meaning of Achtung. 13 Relatedly, whatever change Kant did make to Achtung was at most a revision—not a reinvention. The Wörterbuch definition, for example, although primarily in terms of attention and appraisal, already has elements of recognition in it. Furthermore, Kant’s innovations weren’t definitively reflected in general language usage until around the middle of the next century, when an 1854 dictionary first credits him in its definition of Achtung. 14 Granted, taken on their own, these considerations would demand only a little historical rethinking, as opposed to serious revision.
However, when we turn to the English-language context it is ultimately clear that we should not start with Kant. Not only did Kant have sparing influence on British thought before 1830, but what influence he did have both before and after this point was variously circumscribed.
In England, all early discussion of Kant took place outside the university in the pages of popular literary journals. And while Kant enjoyed a brief flash of popularity in these journals at the very end of the eighteenth century, what was conveyed in them was greatly simplified, even trivialized. Moreover, there was little discussion of his ethics, with most attention given to his theoretical, theological, and political views—the last mostly based on his essay Perpetual Peace. And in this last respect Kant ended up seeming a radical with dangerous Jacobite leaning. By the close of the century, the English public had become rather suddenly conservative and nationalistic with a growing suspicion of German Enlightenment thought and culture (Micheli 2005: 202–314; Copleston 1966: 148–154). And so it was that, despite a brief fascination with Kant, already by 1798 the influential Critical Review complained that “[t]he philosophy of Kant is little known in this country.”15 Indeed, after 1806 Kant’s name virtually disappeared from English periodicals for decades (Micheli 2005: 202–314).16 Translations of Kant’s work, which had already been scarce, were not in demand. His practical philosophy was especially slow to find its way into English. In particular, the Groundwork was not professionally translated into English until 1836, when J. W. Semple, a Scotsman, offered the first serious edition.17 And even this translation was not easily accessible until a revised edition appeared in 1869, “at a third of the original price,” and featuring a new introduction for students—notably authored by another Scotsman, Henry Calderwood.18 In fact, what scholarly interest in Kant did exist in the first half of the nineteenth century was mostly contained to Scotland (Burns 2009: 115–131). Taken all together, then, whatever influence Kant had on anglophone moral philosophy, let alone the anglophone concept of respect in general, must have been slight before 1870, if not much later—at which late point Kant ironically would have competed with his successors, especially Hegel and Marx.19
However, and what is now crucial to note, by this point the English-language transformation of “respect” was already underway—albeit, not always where one might expect. Thus, most nineteenth-century abolitionists and suffragists, as I noted once before, did not couch their arguments in the language of moralized respect, even when they plainly had the idea in mind. For example, in his 1830 abolitionist pamphlet, the Appeal, in Four Articles, David Walker explicitly attacked the hypocrisy of American principles of equality, writing in direct reply to Thomas Jefferson, “I am after those who know and feel, that we are MEN, as well as other people.” And yet, Walker’s argument is never framed in the moralized terminology of respect. Similarly, in her 1850 protest against slavery, A Plea
for the Oppressed, Lucy Stanton insisted that “Humanity is a unit, he who injures one individual wrongs the race.” She added that the moral goal is “to love one’s neighbor as one’s self” (Stanton 1850: 208).20 In making these claims, Stanton plainly has a moralized concept of respect for persons in mind. She’s articulating the idea that each person matters equally in some fundamental sense, and correspondingly requires appropriate recognition by others. Nevertheless, the language is different. A Plea for the Oppressed nowhere uses the term “respect,” or even its close cognates like “regard” or “recognition.”
Or consider Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, arguably still the most famous first-wave feminists. They never explicitly demand “equal respect” for women or even “respect for women,” not where that language might connote moralized respect. Instead, when they speak explicitly of “respect” for women or woman’s “self-respect” (a frequent topic), it’s always in the appraisal sense (see e.g. Stanton p. 192, in DuBois 1992). Anthony and Cady Stanton defend the qualities of a woman’s character that should win respect from men, or from themselves. At best, Anthony and Cady Stanton sometimes use the terminology of respect to connote recognition for social status—that is, for the typical social role women play or could play if given the chance. But this kind of recognition respect is compatible with one’s thinking that not all women, let alone all persons, are in fact owed respect. Indeed, it is now widely known that Cady Stanton’s work was marked by racist rhetoric.21
However, if these examples suggest that the concept of moralized respect was alive but only in ways that were disconnected from the terminology of “respect,” elsewhere we find some signs of a semantic shift in language as well. Some of this change appears under the rhetoric of political rights or privileges, in contexts that imply the rights in question belong to all people equally. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary cites Thomas Macaulay’s widely read 1849 History of England in this way: “Lewis had, like James, repeatedly promised to respect the privileges of his Protestant subjects.” More splendidly, John Stuart Mill, in his 1869 The Subjection of Women—which he largely credited to his wife, Harriet—argued that the era of “chivalrous” morality was over. In the modern era, Mill wrote, respect for women no longer depended on the intersection of the “brave” man of honor and the “submissive” virtues of women. But also—and crucially—neither did it depend on what a woman might accomplish. Thus Mill criticizes a mistake in “the modern movement of morals and politics,” which assumes that “conduct, and conduct alone, entitles to respect; that not what men are, but what they do, constitutes their claim to deference; that, above all, merit, and not birth, is the only rightful claim to power and authority” (Mill 2002: 209). Instead, Mill argues, “The main foundations of the moral life of modern times must be justice and prudence; the respect of each for the rights of every other” (Mill 2002: 213, 223–224). Or consider James Rapier, who, in his address to the US Congress in support of the
