Stephen Darwall The Second Person Standpoint

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.In so doing, we acknowledge her (and her authority) asfree and equal.We may rightly think, for example, that unhealthy habitsare harmful for someone and thus contrary to her welfare, but we maythink as well that respect tells against exerting undue pressure to induceher to change.Concern for her and her welfare may lead us to want herto change, and to want to help her do so, even while respect for herdignity restrains us.A person s values and preferences can give othersreasons of respect to permit her to promote them (and, I have elsewhereargued, give her reasons to pursue them herself), whether or not theresulting states would be beneficial or good in some other way from anagent-neutral point of view, or indeed, whether she has any other reasonto promote them at all (Darwall 2001).And, because they are second-personal, respect s reasons are also fundamentally agent-relative.13 Theyconcern how others must relate to us and our authority to demand this.Reasons of care, on the other hand, are third-personal, welfare-regarding, and agent-neutral.From the perspective of sympathetic con-cern, the cared-for s own values are regulative only to the extent they arerepresented in his welfare.If, for example, the person for whom one caresis sufficiently depressed, he may not value his own welfare or what wouldfurther it very much at all.In feeling sympathetic concern for him, oneis regulated not by what he values or prefers (as in respect), but by what(one believes) would really benefit him.Of course, a person s welfare isbound up with his preferences and values, but the latter generate reasonsof care only to the extent that this is so.And to one who cares, consid-erations of welfare present themselves as agent-neutral, rather than agent-relative, reasons.It seems a good thing agent-neutrally that the cared-for13.See the discussion of this point in Chapters 1, 2, and 4.As I note there, the reasonmay itself be agent-neutral even though it is grounded in something fundamentally second-personal and agent-relative.Thus the principle of utility, which takes an agent-neutral form,might be thought to be based in the more fundamental idea that we must act toward oneanother (and ourselves) in ways that reflect our equal authority to make claims of oneanother.Copyright � 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College128 Respect and the Second Personbenefit and, therefore, that there is a reason for anyone who can to bringthat state about and not just a reason for those who have some particularrelation to the cared-for or happen to care for her.14 Finally, respect ofone s dignity is something anyone can demand; but this is not so withsympathetic concern for oneself and one s welfare.These differences between benevolent concern and respect can bebrought out by reflecting on the relations between parents and children.Parents may legitimately give relatively little intrinsic weight to a suffi-ciently young child s protest against eating a healthful food, although theyshould take account of its bearing on the child s welfare, for example, thelikelihood that eating it will be an unpleasant experience, the long-termeffects on the child s psychic well-being of insisting that she eat it, andso on.At this stage, the parents may properly be guided by the child swelfare alone.When, however, their daughter returns to her former homein middle age, to take an extreme case, the situation is much changed.For parents not to take a middle-aged daughter s will as having intrinsicweight, indeed, as governing, would clearly be disrespectful, paternalismin the pejorative sense.15 Now she has a second-personal standing shesimply did not have near the beginning of her life.And were her parentsto attempt to pressure her to eat her broccoli at this point, they wouldrightly be subject to reproach.Their failure of respect would invite asecond-personal response calling for respect, second-personally, fromthem to her.16Or think again of being in pain because someone is stepping on yourfoot.To someone who cares for you, it will seem as if relief of your painwould be a good state of the world and as if, therefore, there is a reasonfor anyone who can to try to realize it.Of course, since the person whois stepping on your foot likely has the best position in the causal networkto do this, this will seem to be a particularly good reason for him to14.For a further defense of these claims, see Darwall 2002b: 49, 69 72.15.For a very insightful account of paternalism that is especially illuminating in thisconnection, see Shiffrin 2000.16.We should note, however, that relations that we frequently call forms of care, likethose between friends and loved ones, frequently involve respect as well as benevolentconcern and have an ineliminable second-personal aspect.Friends, for example, understandthemselves as supporting one another, including in their pursuit of their preferences, some-what independently of considerations of each other s welfare.I am indebted here to JosephRaz and Susan Wolf.Copyright � 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeRespect and the Second Person 129move his foot.But it will nonetheless be an agent-neutral reason.Yourfoot-treader s relation to you is just part of the causal structure that makesthe agent-neutral normative fact that your being free of pain is desirabledistinctively relevant to his deliberative situation.If, however, you see histaking his foot off yours to be dictated by mutual respect, you will seehim as having a reason that is grounded in your authority to demandthat he move his foot (indeed, to demand that he not have stepped onyours in the first place).This reason will be second-personal and agent-relative.17 You will see his relation to you (his gratuitously causing youpain) as intrinsically relevant to how he should conduct himself towardyou.Moreover, as I argue in Chapters 10 and 11, the relevance of thisagent-relative relation (in the logical sense) can be seen to flow fromwhat it is to relate to one another in the second-personal sense.It issecond-personal relating that is primary.Agent-relative norms, like oneshould not cause gratuitous pain to others, can be explicated within acontractualist framework that is grounded in what we are committed toin relating to one another second-personally at all.Respect concerns how we are to conduct ourselves in relating to others,whereas care is sensitive to how things go for others, whether that involvesrelating to them or not.In itself, care neither is defined by nor necessarilyinvolves any distinctive conduct toward or relating to its object.Insofaras we care for someone, our interest in our own conduct toward him isinstrumental.Benevolent concern leads us to want to act in whicheverways are most conducive to his welfare.Recognition respect for some-one, however, involves distinctive ways of conducting oneself toward orrelating to him as a person, namely, those that are mandated by hisdignity.Given all this, it is entirely expectable that philosophical conceptionsof morality as rooted in universal benevolence should take agent-neutralconsequentialist forms and that conceptions like morality as equal ac-countability should spawn deontological moral theories with agent-relative constraints.18 If morality is grounded in care or concern, then it17.Again, what makes this norm agent-relative is that it cannot be stated withoutmaking ineliminable reference to the agent.Many moral norms, those sometimes called deontological constraints, are agent-relative in this sense: for example, a person shouldkeep her promises, other things being equal.On this point, see McNaughton and Rawling1993.18 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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