Respect and Care: Toward Moral Integration

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 1992, Pages 105-131

  Dillon, Robin S ^a  

^a LEHIGH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84954636040     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.1992.10717273     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. Annette C. Baier, ‘The Need For More Than Justice,’ in Marsha Hanen and Kai Nielsen, eds., Science, Morality, and Feminist Theory (Calgary: University of Calgary Press 1987) 56
2. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1984) 4
3. Immanual Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue, Mary Gregor, trans. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1964) 116
4. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1982), and ‘Moral Orientation and Moral Development,’ in Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers, eds., Women and Moral Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield 1987) 19–33. Seyla Benhabib explicitly contrasts care and respect in ‘The Generalized and The Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory,’ in Women and Moral Theory 164.
5. See ‘Conclusion of the Doctrine of Elements: The Union of Love and Respect in Friendship,’ in The Doctrine of Virtue, 140–5.
6. Such a view is suggested by, for example, Virginia Held, ‘Feminism and Moral Theory’ in Women and Moral Theory 111 -28; Marilyn Friedman, ‘Beyond Caring: The De-Moralization of Gender,’ in Science, Morality, and Feminist Theory 109; Claudia Card, ‘Caring and Evil,’ Hypatia 5 (1990) 101–8; Lawrence Kohlberg, Charles Levine, and Alexandra Hewer, Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics (Basel: S. Karger 1983), 220–1. For a discussion of Carol Gilligan's views on this issue, see Lawrence A. Blum, ‘Gilligan and Kohlberg: Implications for Moral Theory,’ Ethics 98 (1988) 472–91.
7. I draw here on Carl Cranor, Toward a Theory of Respect for Persons,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 12 (1975) 309–19.
8. Stephen D. Hudson, ‘The Nature of Respect’ Social Theory and Practice 6 (1980) 69–90
9. Stephen L. Darwall, Two Kinds of Respect’ Ethics 88 (1977) 36–49. Darwall does not distinguish varieties of his two kinds.
10. One complaint that has been raised against the notion of a principle of respect for persons is that such a principle ought to tell us precisely how to treat persons, but it cannot do this. (See, for example, Carl Cranor, ‘On Respecting Human Beings as Persons,’ Journal of Value Inquiry 17 (1983) 103–17, and Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1990), 264–9.) One of the implications of my argument is that this view misconceives the function of the notion of respect for persons. The concept of respect does not contain the resources for telling us how to treat persons; its function is rather to keep in the forefront of moral consciousness the attitude of valuing persons for their own sake and so,to remind us of the reasons why we should treat persons as morality obliges us to treat them. To place a principle of respect for persons at the heart of morality is to say that our moral attention ought in the first instance to be focused on persons in virtue of their fundamental worth, rather than, for example, on actions, consequences, rules, duties, or social cooperation.
11. It is worth noting that although we don‘t usually think of utilitarianism as dealing in respect for persons, my account entails that utilitarians can in a sense rightly claim to respect persons by taking each into account in determining the overall good. That is to say, utilitarian respect for persons is yet another conception of recognition respect for persons. However, it is a conception of respect which may be seen to focus on treatment rather than attitude insofar as utilitarian reasons for moral conduct have to do with the intrinsic value of states of affairs rather than the intrinsic moral value of persons. That the worth of persons is not in the forefront of utilitarian concern may be what underlies the belief that utilitarianism does not have a respect-for-persons principle. For a discussion of utilitarian respect, see Bart Gruzalski, ‘Two Accounts of Our Obligations to Respect Persons,’ in O.H. Green, ed., Respect for Persons (Tulane Studies in Philosophy 31 [New Orleans: Tulane University Press 1982] 77–89).
12. I draw these elements primarily from the following: Bernard Williams, ‘The Idea of Equality,’ in Joel Feinberg, ed., Moral Concepts (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969) 153–71; Elizabeth Spelman, ‘On Treating Persons as Persons,’ Ethics 88 (1977) 150–61; R.S. Downie and Elizabeth Telfer, Respect for Persons (London: Allen and Unwin 1969); Elizabeth Maclaren, ‘Dignity,’ Journal of Medical Ethics 3 (1977) 40–1; and Lorraine Code, ‘Persons and Others,’ in Judith Genova, ed., Power, Gender, and Values (Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing 1987) 143–61.
13. I have relied primarily on the following: Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice and ‘Moral Orientation‘; Seyla Benhabib, ‘The Generalized and the Concrete Other’; Nel Noddings, Caring; Virginia Held, ‘Feminism and Moral Theory‘; Marilyn Friedman, ‘Beyond Caring‘; Sara Ruddick, ‘Maternal Thinking,’ in Marilyn Pearsall, ed., Women and Values (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth 1986) 340–51; Margaret Urban Walker, ‘Moral Understandings: An Alternative “Epistemology” for a Feminist Ethics' Hypatia 4 (1989) 15–28; and Lorraine Code, ‘Second Persons,’ in Science, Morality, and Feminist Theory 357–82.
14. In addition to those mentioned in note 16, above, see Bernard Williams, ‘Persons, Character, and Morality,’ in Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1976) 197–216; Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press 1981); Robert Paul Wolff, There's Nobody Here But Us Persons' in Carol C. Gould and Marx Wartofsky, eds., Women and Philosophy: Toward a Theory of Liberation (New York: Perigee/Putnam 1976) 128–44; Edward Johnson, Ignoring Persons,’ in Respect for Persons 91–105; Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of justice (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1982).
15. Melvin Rader, Ethics and the Human Community (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston 1964), 157; quoted in John E. Atwell, ‘Kant's Notion of Respect for Persons,’ in Respect for Persons, 22
16. Carol Gilligan, ‘The Conquistador and the Dark Continent: Reflections on the Psychology of Love,’ Daedalus 113 (1984) 77
17. Diana T. Meyers, ‘The Socialized Individual and Individual Autonomy: An Intersection between Philosophy and Psychology,’ in Women and Moral Theory 146
18. In what follows, I draw on Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1981), 452–7.
19. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1970). See also Lawrence A. Blum, ‘Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral’ Philosophical Studies 50 (1986) 343–67.
20. Martha Craven Nussbaum, ‘“Finely Aware and Richly Responsible”: Literature and the Moral Imagination’ in Stanley G. Clarke and Evan Simpson, eds., Anti-Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 1989) 128–9
21. See Kanf's discussion of dignity and irreplaceability in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, H.J. Paton, trans. (New York: Harper and Row 1964), 102–3.
22. Marilyn Friedman raised this objection in her commentary on an earlier version of this paper. Alison Jaggar has also articulated this concern in ‘Feminist Ethics: Some Issues for the Nineties,’ Journal of Social Philosophy 20 (1989) 91–107.
23. W.G. Maclagan, ‘Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle — 1’ Philosophy 35 (1960) 193–217; and ‘Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle — II,’ Phibsophy 35 (1960) 289–305
24. See Lawrence A. Blum, ‘Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral.‘