KANTIAN RESPECT AND PARTICULAR PERSONS
Forthcoming in Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
Why does respecting persons seem to entail respecting at least some of
their ends or desires? I examine three answers. The first comes from Kant,
who holds that we must respect a person's ends because they are set by
the faculty of rational will, which is the proper focus of moral respect.
The second comes from utilitarianism, which sees the need to respect a
person's desires as being either a basic postulate or an implication of
the fact that persons, whom we must respect, own their desires. After criticizing
these two views, I develop a third view. This view, which I call "Kantian
Particularism," draws on certain of Kant's but directs our respect not
only at a person's status as a rational will, but also at her status as
the particular, empirical person that she is. I offer a moral psychology
according to which a person's particularity can be described in terms of
the structure of her psychology. I then use this psychology to derive practical
implications for Kantian Particularism.