Maria-Sibylla Lotter

The moral quality of social coexistence and cooperation depends very much on the terms of mutual respect to which the individuals are entitled. Since this entitlement, by modern philosophy, is considered to derive from our very qualities as human beings, everyone being equally entitled to the same amount of respect, it is widely understood to impose a ban on unequal treatment which we associate with pre-modern cultures. This modern understanding of respect is commonly supposed to be the true moral understanding, in contradistinction to the “merely” social understanding of respect in pre-modern cultures. The article aims to present a different view. In distinction to the tendency of modern philosophers to constrict their investigation of respect to a rather abstract discussion of the terms of equal respect, I discuss certain concrete demands of respect which are essential for social cooperation both in modern and pre-modern cultures, proceeding from the assumption that the entitlement to respect is grounded on the social need for it. On the one hand, I argue that the forms of respect must differ corresponding to the social conceptions of this need. Thus in societies in which the individual is considered an independent, selfsustaining being, respect demands to exercise restraint, whereas in societies entertaining the ideas of mutual dependence, respect demands mutual care. On the other hand, I claim that respect is due not only to the human being stripped of all her distinctive qualities, but also to the social being with respect to her roles, and to the individual considered in all her uniqueness. In short, the real demands of respect cannot be derived from the abstract idea of equality but presuppose an image of humanity, attention to the individual and an understanding of the functioning of social institutions.

Today, most professional philosophers understand philosophy as the analysis of concepts and ideas. Still, there are two critical philosophical concerns which can, for several reasons, not really be resolved by professional philosophy today. First, a critique of the bifurcation of knowledge which resulted from the increasing specialization of the sciences. Second, a critique of importance, i. e. a contesting of what people, knowingly or unknowingly, take to be important or not. In his impressive «Experience and Nature» John Dewey presents these unresolved concerns as a kind of philosophical manifesto. I argue that, for several reasons, Dewey’s idea of philosophy can hardly be realized, the reason being that his claims for philosophy are both over-ambitious and overmodest. Still, there are various philosophical traditions which, by widely differing methods, emphasize certain aspects of the critical task. These include the revisionary metaphysics of Leibniz and Whitehead, the untimely meditation – as Nietzsche called it –, and the late philosophy of Stanley Cavell. Although these traditions differ widely with regard to their emphasis on construction and deconstruction, they concur in emphasizing the development of new encompassing ways of viewing things and understanding importance