Abstract
In this chapter the fourth element of coming into the presence of persons—recognizing or discovering the inherent worth of persons—is examined. The fourth element, it is shown, contains and orders the other three. Immanuel Kant and Josiah Royce offer an analysis of the basis for the recognition of the inherent worth of persons. For Kant it is rationality and for Royce it is having experiences as we ourselves do. Both of these analyses are criticized and contrasted with the view of Emmanuel Levinas. The question is raised of how the realization of the intrinsic worth of persons relates to an awareness that the ends principle applies to them. It is argued that an awareness that the ends principle applies to persons can exist independently of a realization of their intrinsic worth gained through coming into their presence, but the latter sustains the former.
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Notes
- 1.
George Nakhnikian has argued: “If I love myself as a human being, then I love anyone as a human being, and if I love anyone as a human being, then I love myself as a human being.” At least this is so, for Nakhnikian, if I am “(fully) rational.” George Nakhnikian, “Love in Human Reason,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 3, 1978, p. 305 (Nakhnikian’s emphasis). But this reasoning is derailed by those who refuse to recognize others as fully being human beings.
- 2.
Immanuel Kant, The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 435, in The Moral Law, H. J. Paton, 3rd ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1956), pp. 96–97.
- 3.
W. G. Maclagan, “Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle I,” Philosophy, vol. 35, July 1960, pp. 199–200.
- 4.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingia (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 24. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority was originally published in French as Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’ extériorité in 1961.
- 5.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 33 (Levinas’ emphasis).
- 6.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 63.
- 7.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 25.
- 8.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 193.
- 9.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, pp. 51, 187, and 197.
- 10.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 193.
- 11.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 198.
- 12.
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 193. In some ways Levinas’ “face to face” encounter is like Martin Buber’s idea of an “I-You” encounter. For Buber an I-You encounter or relationship with another person is very different from treating a person as a “thing among things.” But such an encounter is not an experience, although the other may be “beheld.” And in the resulting relationship there is a “unity.” Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribners, 1970), pp. 59, 61, and 70.
- 13.
J. A. Brook, “How to Treat Persons as Persons,” in Philosophy and Personal Relations, ed. Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 71.
- 14.
Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1968), p. 155.
- 15.
We should be clear, though, that the recognition of the inherent worth of persons is not sufficient to generate all of morality. For instance, it is not in itself sufficient to resolve issues relating to the tension between the allegedly conflicting prima facie claims of justice and mercy, nor does it in itself give us a means of resolving conflicts between other specific prima facie obligations.
- 16.
Herbert Morris, “Shared Guilt,” in On Guilt and Innocence: Essays in Legal Philosophy and Moral Psychology (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1976), p. 125.
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Kellenberger, J. (2019). The Recognition of the Inherent Worth of Persons. In: The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons. Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_6
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