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Respect And Care: Toward Moral Integration1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robin S. Dillon
Robin S. Dillon*
Affiliation:
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA18015, USA
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Extract

In her provocative discussion of the challenge posed to the traditional impartialist, justice-focused conception of morality by the new-wave care perspective in ethics, Annette Baier calls for ‘a “marriage” of the old male and newly articulated female ... moral wisdom,’ to produce a new ‘cooperative’ moral theory that ‘harmonize[s] justice and care.’ I want in this paper to play matchmaker, proposing one possible conjugal bonding: a union of two apparently dissimilar modes of what Nel Noddings calls ‘meeting the other morally,’ a wedding of respect and care.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 105 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

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References

1 This is a revised and expanded version of my ‘Care and Respect,’ in Susan Coultrap-McQuin and Eve Browning Cole, eds., Explorations in Feminist Ethics: Theory and Practice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press forthcoming). Ancestral versions of this paper were presented at the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Conference ‘Explorations in Feminist Ethics’; at the 1989 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs; at the 1989 Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association; and at the Lehigh Valley Feminist Research Group. I have benefited greatly from the discussions in these sessions. I am especially grateful to Marilyn Friedman, my respondent at the APA Central Division session, for her insightful criticisms and suggestions. I have also benefited from comments by Edmund Abegg, Kurt Baier, Gordon Beam, Aaron Ben-Zeev, Ann Cudd, Janet Fleetwood, John Hare, Ralph Lindgren, and Jean Rumsey, and from discussions with Annette Baier, David Gauthier, and Geoffrey Sayre-McCord.

2 Baier, Annette C. ‘The Need For More Than Justice,’ in Hanen, Marsha and Nielsen, Kai eds., Science, Morality, and Feminist Theory (Calgary: University of Calgary Press 1987) 56Google Scholar

3 Noddings, Nel Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1984) 4Google Scholar

4 Kant, Immanual The Doctrine of Virtue, Gregor, Mary trans. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1964) 116Google Scholar

5 Gilligan, Carol In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1982Google Scholar), and ‘Moral Orientation and Moral Development,’ in Kittay, Eva Feder and Meyers, Diana T. eds., Women and Moral Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and littlefield 1987) 19-33.Google Scholar 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 Theury 164.

6 Kant 134. A few sentences earlier Kant refers to them as ‘mere duties of love.’

7 See ‘Conclusion of the Doctrine of Elements: The Union of Love and Respect in Friendship,’ in The Doctrine of Virtue, 140-5.

8 Such a view is suggested by, for example, Held, Virginia ‘Feminism and Moral Theory,’ in Women and Moral Theory 111-28Google Scholar; Friedman, Marilyn ‘Beyond Caring: The De-Moralization of Gender,’ in Science, Morality, and Feminist Theory 109Google Scholar; Card, Claudia ‘Caring and Evil,’ Hypatia 5 (1990) 101-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kohlberg, Lawrence Levine, Charles and Hewer, Alexandra Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics (Basel: S. Karger 1983), 220-1.Google Scholar For a discussion of Carol Gilligan’s views on this issue, see Blum, Lawrence A. ‘Gilligan and Kohlberg: Implications for Moral Theory,’ Ethics 98 (1988) 472-91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 It might seem that not everything worth attending to has its own worth, not everything we respect is something we value. For we respect dangerous and fearsome things: the prudent sailor has a healthy respect for the sea, the tennis player has a healthy respect for her opponent’s backhand, the lion tamer has a healthy respect for his animals. In each case, it is the dangerousness of the object that seems to call us to respect it, making respect akin to fear. However, this is not an adequate understanding of such cases, as David Gauthier pointed out to me. For in such cases the fearsome element of the object is part of what makes the object valuable to us. Thus the sailor respects the sea in part because of its power not only to give but also to take away; it is her powerful backhand that makes the tennis opponent a great player and a worthy opponent; and part of what attracts the lion tamer to her profession is the excitement of facing the danger her animals pose. Moreover, while there may be an element of fear in some forms of respect, we do not respect those fearsome things that we view as having no worth at all in virtue of their dangerousness, such as the AIDS virus or nuclear waste.

10 I draw here on Cranor, Carl ‘Toward a Theory of Respect for Persons,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 12 (1975) 309-19.Google Scholar

11 Hudson, Stephen D. ‘The Nature of Respect,’ Social Theory and Practice 6 (1980) 69-90CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 There may, however, be an appraisal behind the other varieties of respect. For example, institutional respect for a country’s flag may involve viewing it as the symbol of a great country. Moreover, disrespect for such institutional symbols as flags, presidents, and judges is often an expression of our lack of evaluative respect for the institutions they represent. Similarly, directive-respecting a person’s advice may involve having evaluative respect for her as an advice-giver. However, the institutional or directive respect itself does not consist in an appraisal of the relative quality of the flag or the advice; and we can respect the flag of a country we despise and respect advice we think is poor.

13 Darwall, Stephen L. ‘Two Kinds of Respect,’ Ethics 88 (1977) 36-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Darwall does not distinguish varieties of his two kinds.

14 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, Cranor, Carl ‘On Respecting Human Beings as Persons,’ Journal of Value Inquiry 17 (1983) 103-17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gibbard, Allan Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1990), 264-9.Google Scholar) 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.

15 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 Gruzalski, Bart ‘Two Accounts of Our Obligations to Respect Persons,’ in Green, O.H. ed., Respect for Persons (Tulane Studies in Philosophy 31 [New Orleans: Tulane University Press 1982]77-89).Google Scholar

16 I draw these elements primarily from the following: Williams, Bernard ‘The Idea of Equality,’ in Feinberg, Joel ed., Moral Concepts (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969) 153-71Google Scholar; Spelman, Elizabeth ‘On Treating Persons as Persons,’ Ethics 88 (1977) 150-61;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Downie, R.S. and Telfer, Elizabeth Respect for Persons (London: Allen and Unwin 1969)Google Scholar; Maclaren, Elizabeth ‘Dignity,’ Journal of Medical Ethics 3 (1977) 40-1CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Code, Lorraine ‘Persons and Others,’ in Genova, Judith ed., Power, Gender, and Values (Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing 1987) 143-61.Google Scholar

17 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’; Ruddick, Sara ‘Maternal Thinking,’ in Pearsall, Marilyn ed., Women and Values (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth 1986) 340-51Google Scholar; Walker, Margaret Urban ‘Moral Understandings: An Alternative “Epistemology” for a Feminist Ethics,’ Hypatia 4 (1989) 15-28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Code, Lorraine ‘Second Persons,’ in Science, Morality, and Feminist Theory 357-82.Google Scholar

18 In addition to those mentioned in note 16, above, see Williams, Bernard ‘Persons, Character, and Morality,’ in Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1976) 197-216;Google Scholar Macintyre, Alasdair After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press 1981)Google Scholar; Wolff, Robert Paul ‘There’s Nobody Here But Us Persons,’ in Gould, Carol C. and Wartofsky, Marx eds., Women and Philosophy: Toward a Theory of Liberation (New York: Perigee/Putnam 1976) 128-44;Google Scholar Johnson, Edward ‘Ignoring Persons,’ in Respect for Persons 91-105Google Scholar; Sandel, Michael Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1982).Google Scholar

19 Rader, Melvin Ethics and the Human Community (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston 1964), 157Google Scholar; quoted in Atwell, John E. ‘Kant’s Notion of Respect for Persons,’ in Respect for Persons, 22Google Scholar

20 Gilligan, Carol ‘The Conquistador and the Dark Continent: Reflections on the Psychology of Love,’ Daedalus 113 (1984) 77Google Scholar

21 Meyers, Diana T. ‘The Socialized Individual and Individual Autonomy: An Intersection between Philosophy and Psychology,’ in Women and Moral Theory 146Google Scholar

22 In what follows, I draw on Nozick, Robert Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1981), 452-7.Google Scholar

23 Murdoch, Iris The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1970)Google Scholar. See also Blum, Lawrence A. ‘Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral,’ Philosophical Studies 50 (1986) 343-67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Nussbaum, Martha Craven ‘“Finely Aware and Richly Responsible”: Literature and the Moral Imagination,’ in Clarke, Stanley G. and Simpson, Evan eds., Anti-Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 1989) 128-9Google Scholar

25 See Kant’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.

26 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.

27 See also Lorraine Code’s illuminating discussion in ‘Persons and Others.’

28 Maclagan, W .G. ‘Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle- 1,’ Philosophy 35 (1960) 193-217;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle- II,’ Philosophy 35 (1960) 289-305

29 See Lawrence A. Blum, ‘Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral.’

30 Two related worries lurk here: first, that care respect seems to entail an obligation to help others to promote even their morally heinous ends; and second, that care respect, like care, seems not only to demand too much, impossibly much, from us, but also to call for self-destructive self-sacrifice of care-takers and care-respecters. For taking care of the very many needy others and improving the well-bring of the innumerably many whose lives call for improvement would leave us with few resources for pursuing our own ends. More significantly, the other-centeredness of both care and care respect seems to deny intrinsic worth to the care-givers and care-respecter: we have value, it seems, only insofar as we contribute to others. But while this second concern may be a real problem in the conception of care, it is not so in the case of care respect. For respect is not other-focused, it is person-focused; and its vision encompasses oneself equally with others. I require my own care respect; and the demand to respect myself and maintain my self-respect constrains the demands which care respect for others can make of me. Further, because care respect regards all persons as equally valuable, equally worthy of care and of protection from harm, it cannot countenance sacrificing the well-being of one for the sake of another. Care respect for one is thus constrained by the demand to care respect all.

31 I owe this point to Ralph Lindgren.