Two modes of respect for agency
Jeanette Kennett (Macquarie University)

March 31, 2022, 4:15pm - 6:15pm
Philosophy Discipline, University of Melbourne

Babel G03 (lower theatre)
Babel Building (139)
Melbourne 3010
Australia

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University of Melbourne

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The wrong of deception, has, since Kant, been characterised as a failure of respect for the agency of the other.  According to Kant, as rational beings capable of evaluating and setting their own ends, persons are not to be treated as mere means to another’s end. In lying we manipulate the other’s rational capacities in order to achieve ends we know, or fear, they would not share. This is paradigmatically a failure of respect. Truthfulness then, is seen as a central mode of respect for each other’s agency.  We agree. But we claim that a closer examination of our goals qua agent and of the ways in which agency can be supported or undermined in our interactions with each other reveals a further and distinct mode of respect for agency. The importance of truthfulness lies in significant part in the ways in which it answers to and supports our agential need to make intelligible, to make sense of our world, other people, and ourselves. 

While truthfulness is widely held to be fundamental to respect, the main burden of this paper is to draw out the notion of sense-making and highlight its importance for human agency. Since sense-making is something we often do together, and that we can support or undermine, it generates norms of interaction that we claim constitute a distinctive mode of recognition and respect for another’s agency. Truthfulness and support for sense-making are both modes of respect for agency, but, as we will demonstrate they might sometimes conflict. When they do, what should we do?


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