RESPECT AND HEALTH CARE ETHICS: RESPECT, SOCIAL POWER AND HEALTH POLICY

Abstract

In this dissertation I argue in favour of a communicative view of respect for human dignity. This view of respect builds on recent interpretations of Kantian respect as second-personal, but adds an analysis of the ways in which contexts of pervasive structural social inequalities impoverish the epistemic and expressive resources within a society. I argue that, under conditions of structural social inequalities, respecting one another requires more than merely adopting a particular attitude or stance toward one another; it also requires achieving an understanding of the other across difference. Respect, on a communicative view is not an attitude adopted by one individual, but is instead a relation between two individuals as they attempt to interpret and understand one another across differences.