This essay interweaves the narratives of Josephine Baker and Nora Holt in an exploration of African American women’s performance lives in jazz-age Paris. Baker landed in Paris by way of Harlem and...

Radial Animal Studies: Beyond Respectability Politics, Opportunism, and Cooptation is a scholar-activist book emerging out of the field of Critical Animal Studies (CAS). Radical Animal Studies (RAS) edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and Kim Socha recognizes and values the goal of total liberation and the importance of underground revolutionary direct action. RAS is a complement to, not in conflict with, CAS. Indeed, RAS is dedicated to two of the 10 CAS principles: seven (total liberation) and nine (radical politics (...) and strategies). This book is an essential read for social justice community organizers, animal liberation activists, and intersectional total liberation scholars. (shrink)

Marginalized people have used body aesthetic practices, such as clothing and hairstyles, to communicate their worth to the mainstream. One such example is respectability politics, a set of practices developed in post-Reconstruction black communities to prevent sexual assault and convey moral standing to the white mainstream. Respectability politics is an ambivalent strategy. It requires assimilation to white bourgeois aesthetic and ethical standards, and so guides practitioners toward blandness and bodily erasure. Yet, it is an aesthetic practice that cultivates (...) moral agency and helps communities avoid violence and meet social and economic goals. I contrast respectability politics with the anti-assimilationist body aesthetics of Chike Jeffers and Janell Hobson. Because these accounts do not seek to neutralize or erase the body, they fundamentally value black people. As such, they more effectively convey personhood than assimilationist strategies do and also demonstrate the positive role that body aesthetics can play in everyday ethical projects. (shrink)

Black women and girls face conflicting expectations to be both strong and respectable. Studies of their socialization into racialized gender ideals often focus on the influence of society, mothers, and media. In this article, I investigate how black women’s relationships with their fathers shape their responses to racialized gender ideologies. Based on 79 in-depth interviews with 40 college-educated black women between the ages of 18 and 22, the data show that the quality of daughter–father relationships influences how black women navigate (...) discourses of strength and respectability. This study extends research about the transmission of racialized gender ideals by identifying key differences between women with supportive fathers and those with distant, uninvolved fathers. The article concludes with an appeal for further examination of daughter–father relationships and their influence on black women’s meaning making and negotiation of femininity ideals. (shrink)

Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores amateur rugby women’s reflexive negotiation of the bruises they earn as a result of the physicality of the game. On one hand, participants take pride in body marks that confirm their athletic strength and rugby identity and which grants them respect and belonging. On the other hand, these body marks can be anchors of stigma, signalling women’s rugby bodies as ‘deviant’ to non-initiated audiences. The article unpacks this tension between bruises as empowering or (...) disempowering artefacts by demonstrating the situational and interactional nature of gendered dispositions and expectations. I show that the moral and symbolic order of entrenched gendered expectations is perpetuated in the flesh, but that it must be understood as being produced and reproduced in situ through intercorporeal processes. Through the analysis of bruises, I argue that to study bodies is to study (social) space. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that moral judgments do not need to be objective in order to be logically respectable. Absence of 'objectivity' does not preclude us from putting moral judgments through standard logical hoops, And, Although derived moral judgments have a descriptive direction of fit, It does not follow that fundamental moral judgments are 'objectively true'. Without invoking objectivity the impersonal form of moral judgments can be justified on the analogy of kant's account of aesthetic judgments. Their impersonal form (...) is essential to both the logic and rhetoric of moral discourse and communication. (edited). (shrink)

Race, Crime, and the Law. Randall Kennedy. New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1997, xiv + 539 pp.

This chapter provides an extensive examination of how Harlem Renaissance women’s poetry participated in that movement’s spirit of resistance. While that movement’s architects often rhetorically emphasised the “new” in ways that privileged masculinity and the formal experimentalism of landmark modernist poetry by Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and Jean Toomer circa 1922, women poets were often dismissed as too traditional, “respectable,” or apolitical in their use of form, themes, and sensibilities. Yet, by incorporating gendered theories and experiences into their poetics, African (...) American women poets provided unconventional and antitraditional explorations of gender and sexuality through expression, performance, and orientation in their works in ways that may also be understood as “new,” “modern,” “experimental,” and deeply political. Focusing on the subversive treatment of sex, love, and respectability in poems by Gwendolyn Bennett, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Helene Johnson, and Mae Cowdery in and after 1922, this chapter explores the strategic ways in which these poets adhered to and broke with traditional poetic forms and themes to explore modernity’s intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, as they sought new forms through which they could equally participate in the movement’s poetics of resistance.This chapter reads sex, love, and respectability as central to an intersectional understanding of African American women poets’ place in New Negro poetics of resistance. Drawing upon Black feminist accounts of the Harlem Renaissance and the theoretical framework of intersectionality, this chapter reflects on the complex trajectories in which subjugated knowledge evolves from intimate experiences with intersecting oppressions of race, class, and gender. In serving as sources of subjugated knowledge, Harlem Renaissance women’s poetry reflects the often-misunderstood ways in which Black women have historically renovated poetic conventions to identify and reject gender and race oppression. Blending the unconventional and the archetypal, these women used poetry as a tool of defiance against those forces, in ways that broaden our understanding of how women contributed to the politics and poetics of the New Negro movement and modernism. (shrink)

This essay treats divergent conceptions of “respectability politics” as a question of conceptual ethics. Influential discussions of respectability politics in the public sphere have centered on disagreements about tactics and strategies for liberation. But entwined within this discourse one can find a parallel effort to decide which conception of “respectability politics” will best serve the current moment of struggle. Should we accept its newer normative meaning, where it is used to condemn political tactics that ask African-Americans and (...) members of other marginalized groups to seem nonthreatening and morally acceptable to oppressors? Or should stakeholders work to preserve the descriptive meaning of the concept—the one introduced by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Righteous Discontent, 1993) to identify late-Ninenteeth century tactics of moral self-discipline that were sometimes elitist, but were also often progressive, rebellious, and pro-working class? The conceptual choice invites us to ask which social realities should be picked out by the phrase “respectability politics” and how to judge the different ways normative and descriptive conceptions function within our political lives. In this essay I offer criteria for adjudicating between the negative-normative and the complex-descriptive conceptions of respectability politics and I consider the whether or not they can be reconciled. (shrink)

This article examines the mutual imbrication of gender and class that shapes how some transgender women seek incorporation into social hierarchies in postcolonial India. Existing literature demonstrates an association between transgender and middle-class-status in the global South. Through an 18-month ethnographic study in Bangalore from 2009 through 2016 with transgender women, NGO workers and activists, as well as textual analyses of media representations, I draw on “new woman” archetypes to argue that the discourses of empowerment and respectability that impacted (...) middle-class cisgender women in late colonial, postcolonial and liberalized India also impact how trans women narrate their struggles and newfound opportunities. Trans woman identities are often juxtaposed to the identities of hijras, a recognized group of working-class male-assigned gender-nonconforming people. Instead of challenging stereotypes of gender nonconformity most evident in the marginalization of hijras, some transgender women are at pains to highlight their difference from hijras. These trans women are from working-class backgrounds. It is partly their similarities in class location that propel trans women’s efforts to distinguish themselves from hijras. They employ the figure of the disreputable hijra to contain negative stereotypes associated with gender nonconformity, thus positioning their identities in proximity with middle-class respectable womanhood. (shrink)

An increasingly common objection to kidney sales holds that the introduction of monetary incentives may undermine potential donors’ altruism, discourage donation, and possibly result in a net reduction in the supply of kidneys. To explain why incentives might be counterproductive in this way market opponents marshal evidence from behavioral economics. In particular, they claim that the context of kidney sales is ripe for motivational crowding. This reasoning, if sound, would have a profound influence on the debate over kidney sales. What’s (...) perhaps the principal reason to favor a market – the increase in supply it would bring – would be called into doubt. However, on inspection it becomes apparent that the evidence touted by market opponents not only lends no credence to their claims, but also provides some positive reason to doubt them. The near-ubiquitous references to motivational crowding in the literature on kidney sales are fundamentally misplaced. (shrink)

This paper argues that race and class inequalities cannot be fully understood in isolation: their intersectional quality is explored through an analysis of how the White working class were portrayed in popular and political discourse during late 2008 (the timing is highly significant). While global capitalism reeled on the edge of financial melt-down, the essential values of neo-liberalism were reasserted as natural, moral and efficient through two apparently contrasting discourses. First, a victim discourse presented White working people, and their children (...) in particular, as suffering educationally because of minoritised racial groups and their advocates. Second a discourse of degeneracy presented an immoral and barbaric underclass as a threat to social and economic order. Applying the 'interest-convergence principle', from Critical Race Theory, the discourses amount to a strategic mobilisation of White interests where the 'White, but not quite' status of the working class (Allen, 2009) provides a buffer zone at a time of economic and cultural crisis which secures societal White supremacy and provides a further setback to progressive reforms that focus on race, gender and disability equality. The existence of poor Whites, therefore, is not only consistent with a regime of White supremacy — they are actually an essential part of the processes that sustain it. (shrink)

Knowledge and respect exhibit a puzzling self-other asymmetry: Self-respect generates an imperative to know oneself, but as the objectionability of paternalism and privacy violations illustrate, respect for others can require that we avoid acquiring, or making use of, knowledge we have about them. This article elaborates this asymmetry and offers a solution to it, rooted in the distinctive importance that self-knowledge has for self-respecting rational agents: Self-respecting agents have reasons to have others defer to their ‘surfaces’ or self-presentations in order (...) to inhibit making themselves vulnerable to others in ways that undermine their self-respect by subordinating their wills to the wills of others, as well as to ensure that self-knowledge can play its desired role in the lives of self-respecting agents. (shrink)

Respect, as Kant describes it, has a duality of nature that seems to embody a contradiction – i.e., it is both a moral motive and a feeling, where these are thought to be mutually exclusive. Most solutions involve eliminating one of the two natures, but unfortunately, this also destroys what is unique about respect. So instead, I question the non-cognitive theory of emotion giving rise to the contradiction. In its place, I develop the cognitive theory implicit in Kant's work, one (...) in which emotions take the form of evaluative judgments that determine the will. I then show that, as a purely rational emotion, respect is perfectly suited to be a moral motive. (shrink)

In general, we think that when it comes to the good of another, we respect that person’s will by acting in accordance with what he wills because he wills it. I argue that this is not necessarily true. When it comes to the good of another person, it is possible to disrespect that person’s will while acting in accordance with what he wills because he wills it. Seeing how this is so, I argue, enables us to clarify the distinct roles (...) that the wills of competent and incompetent people should play in third-party deliberations about their welfare. (shrink)

Respect is one of the central concepts in contemporary moral thought. It plays a prominent role in everyday, pre-philosophical moral thinking, as well as in recent moral theory and applied ethics. Yet basic questions about the concept and role of respect have received less attention than might be expected. This volume takes up some of these basic questions. The book is not meant to be a comprehensive handbook that covers all aspects of the topic of respect, nor is the focus (...) of the book mainly historical. Rather, the aim is to give leading experts in the field a chance to present their latest ideas and point the research on respect in new directions. Following an introductory historical essay, Part I addresses questions of what respect is, its nature and basis. Part II examines questions in moral theory, for example what exactly ought to be respected, what role respect plays in morality, and which different types of respect are appropriate and morally significant. Part III deals with the practical application of requirements of respect. The essays in this volume will be of interest both to scholars and students working on issues of respect and to anyone interested in this central moral notion. (shrink)

What is self-respect? And how can it bear the normative weight that liberal egalitarians often place on it within their theories of justice? This paper aims to answer these questions. I argue that appraisal self-respect does not entail sufficient recognition self-respect from the viewpoint of justice. Then, after noting that recognition self-respect is often appealed to by activists and theorists participating in real-world egalitarian movements, I argue that it is the value of recognition self-respect—as opposed to appraisal self-respect—that supports an (...) egalitarian picture of political morality. I argue that Rawlsian recognition self-respect can play this role and that its social bases constitute a social primary good. I conclude by replying to the objections that the social bases of self-respect are not distribuenda, that considering these social bases to be a social primary good constitutes unacceptable double-counting, that the social bases of self-respect cannot explain the content of justice, and that individuals are fully responsible for developing their self-respect. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It seems groups can be proper objects of respect. Can groups themselves manifest respect for other things? In this paper, I argue that some highly structured groups can. I also argue that ‘group respect’ is best understood in non-summative terms – that is, respect-relevant properties can obtain at group-level even if they don’t obtain at the level of individual members of that group, and vice versa. Group respect entails additional group agential phenomena at issue in the ‘non-summativist package of (...) views’ developed in Jessica Brown’s recent book, The Epistemic and Moral Evaluation of Groups (2024). Most notably, group respect entails the possibility of group action for a reason. Since Brown’s is the most developed account of group action for a reason, her account, and the non-summativist package of views it’s linked with, are especially useful in developing an account of group respect. By connecting Brown’s project with group respect, I aim to illuminate the latter while lending further support to Brown’s project in three ways: further demonstrating its unifying power; revealing how it enables a new account of an underexplored group phenomenon; and extending it to important societal issues via social and political upshots of a non-summativist approach to group respect. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a paradigm-based explanation of respect. Paradigm-based explanations propose to illuminate subject matter that are basically disunified, by identifying a form of them (“the paradigm”) that is then shown to be explanatorily basic to the subject as a whole. This explanatory strategy is well-suited to the subject of respect, which is widely agreed to encompass two distinct kinds, appraisal respect and recognition respect. Accordingly, the paper sets out to determine which of these two kinds is paradigmatic (...) and which, derivative. It begins by advancing a novel account of appraisal respect (“perspectival respect”), which it also hypothesizes is respect in its paradigmatic form. On this hypothesis, perspectival respect is paradigmatic in virtue of its apparent “point” or function, which is that it constitutively aims at understanding another person’s perspective on things. The paper then tests the viability of this hypothesis by showing how one central form of recognition respect (“respect for persons”) can reasonably be understood to derive from respect in its paradigmatic form, by showing how it is illuminated by the aim of interpersonal understanding. (shrink)

This chapter explores the foundation and content of the duty to respect persons. The authors argue that it is best understood as a duty to recognize people’s rights. Respect for persons therefore has specific implications for how competent and non-competent persons ought to be treated in research. For competent persons it underlies the obligation to obtain consent to many research procedures. The chapter gives an analysis of the requirements for obtaining valid consent. It then considers respect for persons as it (...) relates to four common topics: the therapeutic misconception, research with children and adolescents, the use of deception in research, and research on competent adults without their consent. (shrink)

I propose that listeners have a moral duty to believe anyone’s testimony, on pain of disrespect, unless they have independent reasons to think that the testifier is not credible. What typically entitles a person to standard-issue respect is having the capacity for practical reasoning: practical agency and moral norm-responsiveness. I show that the capacity for theoretical reasoning also involves agency and norm-responsiveness, making it structurally isomorphic to the capacity for practical reasoning. This therefore plausibly grounds an entitlement to a specifically (...) epistemic type of respect: an entitlement to be treated as an epistemic agent. Because we express our epistemic agency through providing testimony, and testimony generally justifies belief, treating someone as an epistemic agent requires accepting their testimony in the absence of countervailing evidence. So, because epistemic agents are morally entitled to be treated as epistemic agents, testifiers are morally entitled to have their testimony believed by default. To not treat someone in this way is to express that you take (without good reason) either their capacity for agency or norm-responsiveness to be compromised. (shrink)

The book is a contribution to the study of values, as they affect both our personal and our public life. It defends the view that values are necessarily universal, on the ground that that is a condition of their intelligibility. It does, however, reject most common conceptions of universality, like those embodied in the writings on human rights. It aims to reconcile the universality of value with the social dependence of value and the centrality to our life of deep attachments (...) to people and countries alike. Building from there, the book explores personal love, the value of life, and the fundamental duty of respect for people. (shrink)

When and why do socially constructed norms—including the laws of the land, norms of etiquette, and informal customs—generate moral obligations? I argue that the answer lies in the duty to respect others, specifically to give them what I call “agency respect.” This is the kind of respect that people are owed in light of how they exercise their agency. My central thesis is this: To the extent that (i) existing norms are underpinned by people’s commitments as agents and (ii) they (...) do not conflict with morality, they place moral demands on us on agency-respect grounds. This view of the moral force of socially constructed norms, I suggest, is superior to views that deny the moral force of such norms, and it elegantly explains certain instances of wrongdoing that would otherwise remain unaccounted for. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What is self‐respect? And how can it bear the normative weight that liberal egalitarians often place on it within their theories of justice? This paper aims to answer these questions. I argue that appraisal self‐respect does not entail sufficient recognition self‐respect from the viewpoint of justice. Then, after noting that recognition self‐respect is often appealed to by activists and theorists participating in real‐world egalitarian movements, I argue that it is the value of recognition self‐respect—as opposed to appraisal self‐respect—that supports (...) an egalitarian picture of political morality. I argue that Rawlsian recognition self‐respect can play this role and that its social bases constitute a social primary good. I conclude by replying to the objections that the social bases of self‐respect are not distribuenda, that considering these social bases to be a social primary good constitutes unacceptable double‐counting, that the social bases of self‐respect cannot explain the content of justice, and that individuals are fully responsible for developing their self‐respect. (shrink)

What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In _Respect for Nature_, Paul Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental ethic in which all life has value. Without making claims for the moral rights of plants and animals, he offers a reasoned alternative to the prevailing anthropocentric view--that the natural environment and its wildlife are valued only as objects for human use or enjoyment. _Respect for Nature_ (...) provides both a full account of the biological conditions for life--human or otherwise--and a comprehensive view of the complex relationship between human beings and the whole of nature. This classic book remains a valuable resource for philosophers, biologists, and environmentalists alike--along with all those who care about the future of life on Earth. A new foreword by Dale Jamieson looks at how the original 1986 edition of _Respect for Nature_ has shaped the study of environmental ethics, and shows why the work remains relevant to debates today. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I explore the characteristic reason that motivates a virtuously honest person to perform honest actions. I critically examine previous accounts of honesty’s characteristic motivating reason, including Christian Miller’s pluralistic account, which allows various virtuous motivating reasons to count as honesty’s motivation. I then introduce the respect for the right not to be deceived as the moral ground that characteristically motivates a virtuously honest person’s honest action. After addressing possible objections, I conclude by discussing its educational implications (...) on cultivating the virtue of honesty. (shrink)

Respect for persons is a central element of our ordinary moral views. However, there is a growing demand to include not just normal human adults, but also animals, the environment, and other traditions, etc., and to uphold a unified account of respect that seamlessly includes all of these beings. This chapter argues that this demand is best captured not by a third-person account that grounds the requirement to respect others in an objective value the other possesses, nor in a second-person (...) account, but if one holds that there are internal, first-person reasons to adopt an attitude of respect. This chapter further argues that such reasons can be supported by every major normative outlook, such as Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism, and Deontology. The chapter considers which understanding of respect best fits our intuitions, and it then applies this view to the question of respect for intellectually disabled human beings. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders some themes and arguments from my earlier paper “Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos.” That work is often considered to be part of a cluster of papers attacking “luck egalitarianism” on the grounds that insisting on luck egalitarianism's standards of fairness undermines relations of mutual respect among citizens. While this is an accurate reading, the earlier paper did not make its motivations clear, and the current paper attempts to explain the reasons that led me to write the (...) earlier paper, assesses the force of its arguments, and locates it in respect to work of Richard Arneson and Elizabeth Anderson. The paper concludes by bringing out what now appears to be the main message of the earlier paper: that the attempt to implement an “ideal” theory of equality can harm the very people that the theory is designed to help. (shrink)

Some philosophers object that Kant's respect cannot express mutual recognition because it is an attitude owed to persons in virtue of an abstract notion of autonomy and invite us to integrate the vocabulary of respect with other persons-concepts or to replace it with a social conception of recognition. This paper argues for a dialogical interpretation of respect as the key-mode of recognition of membership in the moral community. This interpretation highlights the relational and practical nature of respect, and accounts for (...) its governing role over other persons-regarding concepts. (shrink)

In many cultures arrogance is regarded as a serious vice and a cause of numerous social ills. Although its badness is typically thought to lie in its harmful consequences for other persons and things, I draw on Kant to argue that what makes it a vice is first and foremost the failure to respect oneself. But arrogance is not only a problem inside individuals. Drawing on feminist insights I argue that it is a systemic problem constructed in and reinforcing unjust (...) distributions of social power. I identify ways in which arrogance is connected with social arrangements of domination and subordination, then discuss implications of a power-focused analysis Among the implications: (1) contrary to the widely-held view, humility is not the personal virtue opposing arrogance, self-respect is; (2) arrogance is not always a vice, for in circumstances of oppression a certain kind of arrogance is a virtue of self-respecting resistance to domination. (shrink)

Individuals are owed equal respect. But on the basis of what property of individuals are they owed such respect? A popular Kantian answer—rational agency—appears less plausible in light of the growing psychological evidence that human choice is subject to a wide array of biases (framing, laziness, etc.); human beings are neither equal in rational agency nor especially robust rational agents. Defenders of this Kantian answer thus need a non-ideal theory of equal respect for rational agency, one that takes seriously our (...) characteristic deficiencies of practical rationality without junking the niotion that rational agency entitles us to equal respect. This chapter defends an understanding of respect for rational agency wherein the object of such respect is individuals’ aspiration to rationally govern their lives. This understanding of respect for rational agency retains the core notion of respect as a kind of deference, directs respect at persons, has suitably egalitarian implications, and does not require us to deny the aforementioned psychological evidence regarding the infirmities of human rationality. (shrink)

Respect and tolerance are key values in education. They are also among the aims of education and are brought to the foreground in educational policy. We argue that these values are neither philosophically nor politically given aims for which education is a means. Instead, respect and tolerance are enacted and negotiated through educational practices. We emphasize that respect and tolerance should be empirically and critically studied in educational practices. The discussion is based in two previous research projects and the material (...) includes interviews with teachers and students and classroom observations. Moral philosophy is positioned as a conversation partner with the data material. We conclude that respect and tolerance are performed in different modes in practice. These two values cannot be understood as individual cognitive aspects but as multimodal processes and as aspects of collective, bodily and material practices. This article provides a contribution to the theorizing about educating for respect and tolerance. (shrink)

As liberals, we would like each person to direct her own life in accordance with her will. However, because of the complexities of the human mind, it is very often not clear what a person wills. She may choose one thing though she prefers another, while having false beliefs the correction of which would cause her to prefer some third thing. I propose, against this background, that to respect a person’s will or self-direction is to respect both her choices and (...) her preferences, with some priority given to those preferences that are informed and coherent. This is a pluralist answer to the neglected question, “respect for what?”. (shrink)

Respect, Pluralism, and Justice is a series of essays which sketches a broadly Kantian framework for moral deliberation, and then uses it to address important social and political issues. Hill shows how Kantian theory can be developed to deal with questions about cultural diversity, punishment, political violence, responsibility for the consequences of wrongdoing, and state coercion in a pluralistic society.

Respect is much referred to in professional codes, in health policy documents and in everyday conversation. What respect means and what it requires in everyday contemporary nursing practice is less than clear. Prescriptions in professional codes are insufficient, given the complexity and ambiguity of everyday nursing practice. This article explores the meaning and requirements of respect in relation to nursing practice. Fundamentally, respect is concerned with value: where ethical value or worth is present, respect is indicated. Raz has argued that (...) the two ways of encountering value are to respect and to engage with it. The former requires acknowledgement and preservation. Respect in nursing practice necessarily requires also engagement. Respect is an active value and can be conceptualized within the context of virtue ethics as a hybrid virtue having both intellectual and ethical components. Examples from the literature are provided to illustrate situations where the respectful nurse requires these components or capabilities. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many social problems and put the already vulnerable, such as racial minorities, low-income communities, and older individuals, at an even greater risk than before. In this paper we focus on older adults’ well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic and show that the risk-mitigation measures presumed to protect them, alongside the generalization of an ageist public discourse, exacerbated the pre-existing marginalization of older adults, disproportionately affecting their well-being. This paper shows that states have duties to adopt and (...) put into practice redress measures to compensate for the negative consequences of COVID-19 public health policies on older adults’ overall well-being. These duties flow from the minimal ethical requirement of respect for persons. We show that respect is a morally basic attitude that presupposes taking the others’ interests into account, with the aim of advancing their well-being. This duty is not limited to kinship, relatives, and friends but it extends to states and the rest of the civil society. In the conclusion, we draw lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and sketch some redress measures that could compensate for the decrease in older adults’ well-being as a result of the adoption of measures to contain the spread of the virus. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of emotions in recognizing others’ vulnerability and motivating care practices, proposing a Kantian model centered on the emotion of respect. The argument develops through a critical engagement with Michael Slote’s empathy-based approach, which assigns empathy a central role in perceiving vulnerability and generating moral motivation. I argue that approaches grounded exclusively in empathy risk producing asymmetric and unbalanced moral relationships. As an alternative, I propose shifting the focus from empathy to respect. The paper first analyzes (...) vulnerability in relation to autonomy, understood as the capacity to freely pursue one’s conception of happiness, and defines vulnerability as a limitation in the full exercise of autonomous agency. Respect, on a Kantian view, enables recognition of the equal value of autonomy in oneself and others, even in relationships involving vulnerability. Moreover, respect makes violations of this value salient and motivates re-empowerment practices aimed at restoring autonomy. The final section applies this respect-based framework to Italians’ moral and social responsibilities toward immigrants. (shrink)