The Possibility of Respect book workshop with Remy Debes (University of Memphis)

On Thursday 19 March, under the auspices of CEPPA, there will be an ‘author meets critics’ event on The Possibility of Respect: Human Dignity and the Ethics of Difference by Remy Debes (Memphis). The book was published by OUP late last year, and is available via the Library here.

Here’s an abstract of the book’s argument:

This book defends a radical new theory of respect against the backdrop of a critical analysis of Western claims to moral progress. Drawing from a wide range of typically marginalized voices both past and present, and often working through real-life reflections on the experience of disrespect, it demonstrates the ways that our existing ideas about respect—though inspiring—have misled our efforts to validate the equal human dignity of persons. We grow up being told that respecting persons requires focusing on the ways that all persons are alike in virtue of their equal capacity for agency, autonomy, and rights. However, this book argues that sometimes respecting persons requires de-emphasizing what they have in common with all other persons, in favor of what is different about them. According to this alternative theory, it is not a person’s autonomy or rights that matter most, but their unique, individual perspective on the world. And the way we respect or recognize this perspective is by trying to understand it. Hence the central thesis of this book: understanding persons sometimes constitutes a way of respecting them. Only if we start thinking about respect in this way, the book concludes, can we break free of Western myths of progress that continue to stymie our fundamental moral aspirations.