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12 J. Value Inquiry 1 (1978)

handle is hein.journals/jrnlvi12 and id is 1 raw text is: 1 ON RESPECT ROBERT L. ARRINGTON What is it to respect a man, and why should we do so? These questions pose the philosophical problem of the nature and ground of one of the most im- portant moral attitudes. It is widely believed that respect is something owed to all men, but what this debt is, and what reasons there are for acknowl- edging it, are far from clear. Historically some men have been honored and held in deference because of their possession of properties by no means universal: peculiarities of family, class, religion, or race. Others not pos- sessing these desired features have been hated, maltreated, and enslaved. But even if we can be sure that to treat a man as a slave is not to respect him, unfortunately we cannot be so sure that to honor him and to comply with his wishes is to do so. The moral attitude in question has remained conceptually no less than factually elusive. And philosophers have met with little success in their search for a ground which would justify the demand for universal respect. They have proposed grounds which either are probably not universal, e.g., human freedom, or are ones which are so vague, transcendental, or circu- lar as to afford no verifiable basis for it, e.g., inherent worth or dignity. The pressing need for respect in a world beset with strife and conflict is paralleled by the need for philosophical elucidation of the concept of respect. In his important and influential article, The Idea of Equality,' Bernard Williams engages in one of the most interesting contemporary attempts to find a non-metaphysical, operational ground for respect. Rejecting the Kantian notion that this response is owed a man by virtue of his possession of the transcendental capacity for being a rational, free, and moral agent, Wil- liams locates its ground in the fact that each man is something more than his public titles and his publicly observable capacities and achievements (or failures). He is additionally a conscious and self-conscious individual with purposes and intentions who sees himself and the world from his own point of view. If we adopt what Williams calls the human view or the human approach we will attempt to look behind the titles and the public assess- ment and appreciate the way in which the agent sees himself. The respect we owe a man is, at least in part, the obligation we have to identify him in his own terms. Such an analysis is relevant to the idea of equality precisely be- 1 Bernard Williams, The Idea of Equality, in Philosophy, Politics and Society (Second Series), ed. Laslett and Runciman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), pp. 110-131, see especially pp. 114-120.

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