ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to indicate further inadequacies in Kant’s notion of respect as ‘noninterference’ and as respect for people’s independence and self-sufficiency. In the previous chapter I have shown how this idea fails to do justice to the way in which we may need the support of others. In this chapter I will show how it fails to take account of the way in which our moral activity may be affected and distorted by the social relations of power and subordination. I shall be looking at the two cases of such relations which Kant himself discusses, that of relations between the sexes, and that of relations between rich and poor.
