ONLINE FIRST
published on August 20, 2022
Grant J. Rozeboom
Roles, Rousseau, and Respect for Persons
Why does respect for persons involves accepting that persons have responsibilities, and not just authority, for their lives and interactions? I show how we can answer this question with a role-based view: respect for persons is an attitude of recognizing others for a social role they occupy. To fill in a role-based view, we need to describe the practice into which the pertinent role figures. To do this, my account draws on the Rousseauian idea of inflamed amour-propre. Roughly, respect for persons is an attitude of recognizing persons for the role they occupy in a social practice that helps solve the problem of inflamed amour-propre.