MANCEPT Workshops - Respect for Persons: Foundations, Varieties, and Challenges

Among Kant’s most enduring contributions to modern moral and political philosophy is the idea that there is a moral duty of respect for persons, and that persons are owed respect simply in virtue of being persons. This Kantian insight reshaped subsequent debates by suggesting that the fundamental moral relation among citizens is not primarily one of benevolence, utility, or shared ends, but of reciprocal recognition of equal status.

In contemporary political theory, respect for persons has become a central idiom for expressing ideals of legitimacy, civic equality, and the just state. Rawls describes a just society as “a social cooperation on a footing of mutual respect between citizens regarded as free and equal” (Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, p. 28). Dworkin maintains that “individuals have a right to equal concern and respect in the design and administration of the political institutions that govern them” (Taking Rights Seriously, p. 180). Nussbaum characterizes her capability approach as providing “the philosophical underpinning for an account of basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by the governments of all nations, as a bare minimum of what respect for human dignity requires” (Women and Human Development, p. 5).

Despite its influence, the idea that persons are owed respect (and that there is a corresponding duty of respect for persons) raises persistent puzzles and theoretical concerns. What kind of thing is respect: an attitude, a pattern of conduct, or a relation? How, if at all, can the duty of respect be justified? And does the language of respect for persons illuminate debates about justice, or does it risk obscuring them?

The proposed MANCEPT panel will bring together scholars working on these and related issues. Contributions from a range of philosophical perspectives are welcome, including historically informed work.

Possible topics include:

• The relation between respect and other central concepts in political philosophy, such as justice, equality, freedom, welfare, and rights.
• Different kinds of respect at work in political philosophy, including recognition versus appraisal respect (Darwall), opacity respect (Carter), care-respect (Dillon), and others.
• Applications of respect for persons to specific debates in political philosophy, for example, debates about wrongful discrimination, state neutrality, and distributive justice.
• Respect’s relation to cognate notions such as dignity, moral status, and inviolability.
• Criticisms of respect for persons, including doubts about its usefulness in political theory and doubts about its role as a foundational political value.
• Feminist perspectives on respect.
• Respect for persons and justice toward nonhuman entities, such as nonhuman animals and artificial intelligence.