Jerga y argot en la cultura juvenil: lenguajes difusos

To get clearer on the nature of this puzzle, let’s look more closely at some of the things that Darwall says about recognition respect. Darwall notes that recognition respect involves regard – i.e., that it involves regarding a certain fact about some object as

having an appropriate place in deliberation. In line with this way of analyzing respect, it is possible for one to act as if one has this regard – i.e., to “be respectful” -- without actually having respect (i.e., for other motives). Says Darwall,

For example, a person participating in a legal proceeding who in fact has no respect for the judge (i.e., for the position he occupies) may take great pains to be respectful in order to avoid a citation for contempt. Such a person will restrict his behavior toward the judge in ways appropriate to the role that he plays. But his reason for so doing is not that the mere fact of being the judge is itself deserving of consideration, but that the

possibility of a contempt citation calls for caution.12

Thus, it is possible to act in ways that are indicative of respect without actually having respect for the object in question. Although Darwall does not spend much time

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Of course, in “Two Kinds of Respect” Darwall talks at length about the fact that this other kind of respect is not morally required – my point is that recognition respect is associated most closely with morally required respect, and so this further distinction within a morally-loaded concept is troubling.

on this distinction, it seems an important point for understanding what the attitude of respect essentially involves; furthermore, his discussion of this case highlights the puzzle identified above. For one might think that “being respectful” towards the judge is at least an instance of non-moral recognition respect; that is, it might seem that what one is doing in this case is weighing a certain feature of the judge (i.e., the power the judge has to cite bad behavior) appropriately in one’s deliberations, and acting accordingly. One might think that this behavior is an instance of recognizing that a feature of the judge restricts the range of prudential actions in the courtroom. However, Darwall is very clear that he does not consider this behavior to be an instance of recognition respect at all – says Darwall, “one can be ’respectful’ of something [in this case, the judge] without having any respect for it (even of a recognitional sort [my emphasis]). This will be the case if one behaves as one who does have respect would have behaved, but out of motives other than respect”13. Thus, the case of the judge is not even a case of non-moral recognition respect for him – it is not a case of recognition respect for the judge at all, and the reason for this seems to depend (for Darwall) on the motives of the actor. It is somewhat tricky to trace the line of Darwall’s distinction here, but the distinction might be this: Even though it may be considered a moral transgression to “disrespect” the judge, the actor’s behavior is not a case of moral recognition respect because the actor does not restrict his actions out of recognition that the judge’s status calls for a restriction on the moral permissibility of his actions. On the other hand, the actor’s behavior is not a case of non- moral recognition respect either (and this is where it gets tricky), presumably because even though the actor is behaving prudentially (i.e., to avoid a citation) he is not doing so because he recognizes that there are features of the judge that restrict his behavior -- he is

13_Ibid

not acting out of any consideration of the judge at all. Rather, he is acting out of

consideration of negative consequences that just happen to be under the judge’s control. It seems that since the regard that is being shown by the actor is not directed at a fact about the judge at all, but rather at certain consequences of bad behavior, this behavior cannot be classified as any sort of recognition respect for the judge. It might be loosely termed recognition respect for bad consequences, but it is no sense recognition respect for the judge, because the fact that is being given weight in deliberation is not a fact about the judge at all. The actor is “being respectful” of the judge, but he has no recognition respect for him at all.

However, even if Darwall were to answer this way, it seems that this seems to make a distinction so subtle that it is barely a distinction at all; in trying to trace the distinction that he makes here, it seems as reasonable (given the formal structure of recognition respect outlined above) to conclude that the “respect” shown to the judge is in fact a case of recognition respect (contra Darwall), and that perhaps it is just not a case of moral recognition respect. It seems as if the man is regarding not merely the bad

consequences that disrespecting the judge may cause, but is also regarding (with appropriate weight in his deliberations) the fact that the judge can bring bad

consequences to bear. And that, at least, seems to show regard for a fact about the judge, non-moral (and merely prudential) though that regard may be. It is possible that Darwall’s insistence that this case is not a case of recogition respect was merely an oversight, and should not be read too seriously as a something he wishes to commit his view to. However, even if Darwall may have made a mistake here (which I think is a

reasonable conclusion to draw), his discussion raises a point of tension that still needs to be resolved.

The case of the judge highlights the somewhat bizarre consequences of distinguishing moral from non-moral respect, and it highlights the problems that will accompany any analysis of respect that construes respect as a kind of good practical deliberation. For in the case of the man who has come before the judge, certain behavior seems required of him, certain behavior that (even when we delve into his motivations) seems to meet all the requirements for recognition respect. Even though the man has no recognition respect for the judge’s status qua judge, he does have recognition respect for the power of such status; he does seems to have respect for the fact that the judge’s role in the proceedings gives rise to behavioral requirements on the part of others. He sees certain facts about the judge as requiring certain behavior, and he acts accordingly. That he does this for merely prudential reasons seems not to matter in the respect-analysis at all (remember the case of the tornado); but, because the nature of his reasons does not matter, one is left thinking that there is actually very little distinction between “having respect” and “being respectful” (where the latter is, according to Darwall, not a case of recognition respect at all). In the case of the judge, the distinction Darwall wants to make seems nonexistent; the distinction that Darwall does make seems merely to concern which facts the man is weighing in his deliberations (that is, what are the motives he has for weighing certain facts in his deliberations), and thus seems merely a distinction about the object of his respect, and not a distinction about whether he has recognition respect at all. Thus, it seems that since recognition respect is so broad (i.e., since one has it

very few cases of thoughtful, prudential action that are not cases of a certain kind of recognition respect. And so it seems that the case of the judge is merely a non-moral case of recognition respect, and the lack of proper moral motivation on the man’s part merely denotes that he is using prudential, rather than moral, reasoning.

The fact that it seems as if most good prudential reasoning will turn out to be some sort of recognition respect highlights how troubling distinguishing between cases of moral and of non-moral respect can be. If the term “respect” applies to any case in which one (thoughtfully) considers certain facts as delineating appropriate courses of action, then respect as a general concept is so broad as to be rather uninteresting. What seem to be important (given the broadness of the term) are those special cases that are a separate class within the broader concept. What seem to be really weighty, then, are the moral cases of recognition respect, and what seems to be most interesting and difficult is the attempt to delineate this special class. What makes this class special? And what distinguishes certain sets of features such that consideration of them prescribes morally imperative, rather than merely prudent, action? What sets the special case of moral respect apart? Although Darwall has an answer for this (i.e., that Kantian answer14), the fact that he analyzes respect the way he does makes it so that this is really the only important question to ask, and his analysis leaves one wondering if respect can possibly have the broad formal structure that he says it does if the meat of the analysis hangs on this one question.

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In the chapter on Kantian respect that follows, we will get Kant’s answer to what sets this special class apart – morally imperative action will involve having the correct attitude towards creatures with the distinct

Section 6: Appraisal Respect and How it Differs Fundamentally From Recognition