Participant Respect
When
Department of Philosophy Colloquium with speaker Andrew Lichter, from the University of Arizona. More details to follow. The talk will take place from 3:00 - 5:00 pm in Social Science 224.
Abstract:
If you owe something to someone, it seems I can disrespect you by tempting you to violate your obligation. Indeed, such temptation is merely one way I might denigrate your duties: I can scoff at them, prevent you from complying with them, regard them cynically as mere dictates of prudence, and more. Respect, it seems, requires that I take your obligations seriously. In this talk, I attend to this undertheorized form of respect, which I gloss as respect for persons qua moral participants—people who owe things to others. First, I introduce cases where this sort of participant respect is especially salient. Then, I consider the norms that govern participant respectful treatment: participant respect requires us to act in ways that reflect the degree and kind of importance of a person’s obligations. Finally, I ask why participant respect matters morally. Participant disrespect can hinder our moral development, I suggest, and damage our ability to successfully perform reparative actions such as apologizing and making amends. But participant respect also matters in its own right: the possession of morally important obligations reflects a person’s importance, and participant respect is how we recognize and affirm this facet of their importance.