Three accounts of respect for persons in Kant's ethics

Kantian Review

Volumn 8, Issue , 2004, Pages 38-61

  Klimchuk, Dennis ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO   (Canada)

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EID: 60950389572     PISSN: 13694154     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1369415400001862     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. and the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), the second half of which is the Doctrine of Virtue. References will be to the Prussian Academy pagination, and inserted into the text. I will abbreviate the Groundwork as G, the Critique of Practical Reason as C2, and the Metaphysics of Morals as MdS.
2. For example, H. J. Paton argues that FHE 'may be said to enjoin respect for personality as such', and that '[s]trictly speaking, this formula, like all others, should cover rational beings as such; but since the only rational beings with whom we are acquainted are men, we are bidden to respect men as men, or men as rational beings'. Paton, The Categorical Imperative (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 165.
3. Carl R Cranor stops just short of drawing this conclusion in 'Kant's respect-for-persons principle', International Studies in Philosophy, 12 (1980), 19-40, holding that '[s]omeone might be able to argue for this claim' - that is, that FHE can be understood, on Kant's terms, as a principle enjoining respect for persons - 'but an argument is needed' (p. 31). I attempt such an argument below.
4. On which see Thomas E. Hill, Jr., 'Must respect be earned?', in Respect, Pluralism, and Justice: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 87-118.
5. The distinction implicit in these passages tracks the distinction Stephen Darwall draws between recognition-respect and appraisal-respect in 'Two kinds of respect', Ethics, 88 (1977), 36-49
6. in many but not all respects, as Marcia Baron notes in 'Love and respect in the Doctrine of Virtue', in Mark Timmons (ed.), Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretive Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 397-8. Rather than risk confusion, I have adopted the (admittedly awkward) vocabulary above. Hill draws a similar distinction, between what he calls 'respect for a person's position' and 'respect for a person's merit', in Hill, 'Must respect be earned?'.
7. See, in particular, Book I, Chapter III of the Critique of Practical Reason, On the Incentives of Pure Practical Reason, C2, 71-89.
8. I borrow this characterization from Andrews Reath's very helpful discussion in 'Kant's theory of moral sensibility', Kant-Studien, 80 (1989), 293.
9. As Onora O'Neill emphasizes in 'Universal laws and ends-in-themselves', Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 138-9.
10. See Barbara Herman, 'Mutual aid and respect for persons', Ethics, 94 (1984), 577-602, reprinted in Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 45-72.
11. Reath, 'Kant's theory', 293.
12. See the contrast Kant draws between temperament and character in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. V. L. Dowdell and H. H. Rudnick (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), part 2, section A.
13. Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics almost without Apology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 44-5.
14. and Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason, trans. Wood and Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 6: 50.
15. See Paul Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 303-23, for a very fine-grained treatment of these puzzles.
16. On this question, and on the taxonomy of duties in Kant's practical philosophy generally, see Mary Gregor, Laws of Freedom (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), pp. 95-112;
17. Onora Nell, Acting on Principle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), pp. 43-58;
18. and Walter E. Schaller, 'From the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals: what happened to morality in Kant's theory of justice?', History of Philosophy Quarterly, 12 (1995), 333-45.
19. There is more still contained in the claim that duties of right are duties for which external constraint is possible, but we need not attend to the further details here. I attempt a more comprehensive unpacking of the nuances of 'possibility' here in 'Necessity, deterrence and standing', Legal Theory, 8 (2002), 339-58.
20. This 'offence', it seems to me, is the breach of a duty of respect, which, then, seems to be satisfied by a (mere) omission. But if this is right, we have the odd consequence that one might discharge a duty of virtue with base or at least amoral motives. On this question and other issues in Kant's treatment of the duties of love and respect I have not raised here see Baron, 'Love and respect in the Doctrine of Virtue', pp. 391-407.
21. Robert Noggle, 'Kantian respect and particular persons', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 29 (1999), 455.
22. Michael Neuman, 'Did Kant respect persons?', Res Publica, 6 (2000), 299.
23. Noggle, 'Kantian respect', pp. 454-5.
24. Neuman similarly allows that the duty of beneficence requires us to consider the desires of others - and so that respect for persons is at least in part for persons as we ordinarily understand ourselves - but dismisses the significance of this owing to the fact that the duty of beneficence is, among other things, imperfect, and so 'not even a true moral obligation' (Neuman, 'Did Kant respect persons?', p. 298).