Radical Respect
Dr. Laura Rediehs
In our world in which we are reckoning with racial issues and other kinds of divisiveness, it might be helpful to reconsider what “respect” means, and what kinds of respect we owe each other. Plato said, “it is never just to harm anyone.” Immanuel Kant said that we should always treat each other as ends and never merely as means. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated pacifism. Are they right that radical respect is always morally required? And if so, why?
Laura Rediehs is an associate professor of philosophy and co-founder and current coordinator of peace studies at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. She is also a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
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