Respect and loving attention

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 483-515

  Bagnoli, Carla ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 31144446257     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2003.10716552     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. In many respects, contemporary philosophers move objections to Kant's moral psychology which are similar to the ones formulated by his first critics, Schiller and Hegel; see F. Schiller, Uber Anmut und Wurde, Schillers Werke (Stuttgart: 1867) 238-96, esp. 270-5;
2. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1942), 90;
3. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979), 260-2, 386.
4. The literature on the subject is extensive, but see e.g. H. Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990), 180-98;
5. K. Ameriks, 'The Hegelian Critique of Kantian Morality,' in New Essays on Kant, B. den Ouden and M. Moen, eds. (New York: Peter Lang 1987) 155-78;
6. D. Henrich, 'Der Begriff der sittlichen Einsight und Kants Lehre vom Faktum der Vernunft,' in Kant: Zur Deutung seiner Theorie von Erkennen und Handeln, G. Prauss, ed. (Koln: Kiepernheuer & Witsch 1973) 77-115;
7. A. McBeath, 'Kant on Moral Feeling,' Kant Studien 64 (1973) 283-314;
8. C. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 77-105;
9. S. Sedgwick, 'On the Relation of Pure Reason to Content: A Reply to Hegel's Critique of Formalism in Kant's Ethics,' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49 (1988) 59-80;
10. A. Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999), 40-49.
11. See, e.g., L. Blum, 'Moral Perception and Particularity,' Ethics 101 (1991) 701-25;
12. S. Buss, 'Respect for Persons,' Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (1999) 517-50;
13. L. Code, 'Persons and Others,' in Power, Gender, and Values, J. Genova, ed. (Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing 1987) 143-61;
14. C. Cranor, 'On Respecting Human Beings as Persons,' Journal of Value Inquiry 17 (1983) 103-17;
15. R. Dillon, 'Respect and Care: Toward Moral Integration,' Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1999) 105-32;
16. M. Newman, 'Did Kant Respect Persons?' Res Publica 6 (2000) 285-99;
17. R. Noggle, 'Kant, Respect, and Particular Persons,' Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (1999) 449-78, at 452-6;
18. E. Spelman, 'On Treating Persons as Persons,' Ethics 88 (1977) 150-61;
19. B. Williams, 'Persons, Character, and Morality,' reprinted in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981) 1-19.
20. Philosophers more sympathetic to Kantian ethics also show to be sensitive to the kinds of concern raised by Murdoch, and attempt to revise Kant's conception of respect accordingly, see e.g. B. Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1993);
21. T. Hill, Respect, Pluralism, and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press 2000);
22. N. Sherman, 'Concrete Kantian Respect,' Social Philosophy and Policy 51 (1998) 119-48;
23. J. Raz, Value, Respect, and Attachment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000).
24. Compare B. Herman, 'On the Value of Acting for the Motive of Duty,' Philosophical Review 90 (1981) 359-82, at 176ff.;
25. R. Sullivan, Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989), 121.
26. See Guyer, 'The Possibility of Categorical Imperative,' in Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: Critical Essays, P. Guyer, ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield 1998) 215-18 and 234-9. I would like to thank an anonymous referee of this journal for pressing me on this point. I come back to this issue in section V.
27. This objection is extended to various forms of contemporary ethics, which Murdoch claims to be Kantian in spirit, see R. Moran, 'Vision, Choice, and Existentialism,' Notizie di Politeia 66 (2002) 88-101.
28. To this extent, respect is the subjective part of the fact of reason. The fact of reason has subjective and objective aspects; see L. Beck, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1960), 166-75;
29. L. Beck, Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (Indianapolis: Hackett 1965), 200-14;
30. Objectively, it establishes the validity of the moral law and thus it proves the autonomy of the will, see Kant, Practical Reason, 55-7.
31. J. Rawls, Lectures in History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2000), 253-71.
32. see also G.F. Muenzel, Kant's Conception of Moral Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1997), 103;
33. A. Reath, 'Kant's Theory of Moral Sensibility,' Kant Studien 80 (1980) 284-302, at 295;
34. Frankfurt puts it differently: 'The moral law can influence a person's conduct, Kant believes, only through the mediation of respect' (H. Frankfurt, 'Autonomy, Necessity, and Love,' in The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988) 129-41, at 141. This suggests that whether the agent eventually acts for the sake of morality depends on whether respect is sufficiently strong to overcome the competing inclinations. For reasons I provide in this paragraph, Frankfurt's suggestion is misleading.
35. Rather, I am simply pointing out that Kant is interested in drawing a distinction between external and internal correctness of actions, which is a distinction in the kind of legislation and motivation, see e.g. M. Baron, 'Love and Respect in the Doctrine of Virtue,' Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 (1997) 29-44, at 37-8.
36. Not all alterations of mind qualify as a change in mind. To be a change in mind, an alteration must be neither imposed on the agent nor prompted by the circumstances, see A. Baier, 'Mind and Change in Mind,' in Postures of the Mind (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1985) 51-73.
37. There is scholarly disagreement as to whether dutiful actions always fulfill duties of respect. For example, Baron suggests that lack of respect as a moral feeling not only deprives actions of moral worth, but also makes them wrong; see Baron, and compare A. Wood, 'Humanity as End in Itself,' in P. Guyer, ed., 165-88. I do not address this issue here because it is not the kind of worry that Murdoch raises. My point is simply that the distinction between legality and morality is sufficient to respond to Murdoch's objection about the intelligibility of internal change in Kant's ethics.
38. The claim about the opacity of maxims is pervasive, see Kant, Groundwork, 407;
39. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, M. Gregor, trans. (The Hague: Nijhoff 1974), 121.
40. I take Kant's ethics to be practical and built into a first-person conception of oneself, and thus my strategy is to emphasize that the retrospective perspective of the evaluator is beside the point; on the merits of this strategy, see O. O'Neill, 'Kant's Virtues,' in How Should One Live? R. Crisp, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon 1996);
41. Doubts about Kant's conception of character have been fostered also by the metaphysical interpretation of the distinction between intelligible and phenomenal character; see A. McIntyre, 'Why Moral Agents Became Ghosts,' Synthese (1982) 295-312, and Williams. I put aside discussion of this issue, and endorse Allison's replies based on the practical interpretation of the distinction, see Allison.
42. Kant, Religion, 31-2.
43. I leave aside the objection that reverence for the law describes or encourages the despicable attitude of following a rule. On this issue, see H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin 1963), 134-8;
44. As Velleman explains in commenting this passage, the object of respect is the capacity for legislation (Geseztgebung) not a given law (Gesezt); see D. Velleman, 'Love as a Moral Emotion,' Ethics 109 (1999) 338-74, at 346. But this objection also mistakes the object and the nature of the attitude that reverence for the law expresses. That is, reverence for the law must also be distinguished from the ground that motivates the agent to act according to a duty. Reverence for the law is the attitude that is distinctive and peculiar to the agent that performs his duty for its own sake, that is, the agents that understands and values autonomy and acts autonomously. Since in this sense autonomy is a qualification of the will, one cannot act out of reverence for the law when she merely follows a given rule.
45. In fact, Murdoch is more aware of this similarity than contemporary readers are; compare L. Blum, 'Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral,' Philosophical Studies 50 (1986) 343-67
46. and L. Blum, 'Moral Perception.'
47. See R. Louden, 'Kant's Virtue Ethics,' Philosophy 61 (1986) 473-89;
48. O. O'Neill, 'Kant After Virtue,' Inquiry 26 (1983) 387-405;
49. O. O'Neill, 'Kant's Virtues';
50. A. Wood, 'Final Form of Kant's Practical Philosophy,' Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 (1997) 1-21.
51. For example, Anderson writes: 'We can see that Kantian ethics is hampered by the fact that it recognizes only two ways of valuing things, use and respect. These two modes of evaluations are not enough to account for the richness of our experience of value and our practices' (Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1993], 9).
52. S. Darwall, 'Two Kinds of Respect,' Ethics 88 (1977) 36-49. I am solely interested in the standard sense, according to which respect is based on the dignity of the persons, and therefore everybody deserves it (independently of personal merit, role or office).
53. 'What haunts us is Kant' (Murdoch, 132).
54. On the implications of Murdoch's diagnosis of this loss of moral concepts, see C. Diamond, 'Losing Your Concepts,' Ethics 98 (1988) 255-77.