Samuel Dishaw (Université Catholique de Louvain): 'Justifiability and the Other’s Point of View'
Abstract: A large part of morality concerns how we should relate to other rational agents. Call this the morality of respect. But what is it to respect another person? According to one important tradition in moral philosophy, we can understand respect for other rational agents in terms of hypothetical agreement. On the contractualist version of this thought, for instance, to respect others is to be moved by the ideal of interpersonal justifiability: to care about being able to justify ourselves to others. Against this, I will argue that respect for another person centrally involves a concern for their actual moral recognition: a concern for whether others recognize that they are treated justifiably. My argument will pay close attention to the practice of interpersonal justification, and to the central role of such recognition within it. Thus, one surprising upshot of my argument will be that the very ethical theory that places interpersonal justification at its core—contractualism—misses the organizing aim of interpersonal justification itself.
