Respect and Loving Attention

Kant's account of respect as a mark of moral agency and as the evaluative attitude due to persons has been the target of severe and relentless criticisms. This is a clarification of Kant's conception of respect in response Murdoch's objections that it is inadequate to account for moral relations to others. Although respect and love may concur in the practice of morality and concurrently inform our interactions, they are distinct functions of our moral sensibility and govern our relations in different manners. To confound them, or to opt for one of them at the exclusion of the other, is to deplete the basis of our normative model of personal relations. Despite arguments to the contrary, this is a significant yet neglected part of Kant's legacy that we should reclaim.