The Phenomenology of Kantian Respect for Persons

Abstract

In this chapter Uriah Kriegel and Mark Timmons apply to the feeling of respect an approach that has become common in understanding other mental phenomena, such as emotions. They distinguish the functional role of respect in moral philosophy (such as the types of treatment that respect leads to), which is described third-personally, from the phenomenological account of what it feels like to experience respect, which is described first-personally. They argue that since discussions of respect in analytic philosophy have focused almost entirely on its third-person functional role, shifting our attention to the phenomenological experience of respect may provide valuable new insights.