Respect is an important feature of democratic politics: democracy requires us to respect each person equally—a society of mutual respect. But what does respect in a situation of equality mean? Afterall, the logic of respect may very well depend on hierarchy: we respect that which is high and not that which is low, for if we respected the low as well as the high then “respect” would be meaningless. This course is an exploration of the challenges of thinking through the politics of equal respect when the meaningfulness of “respect”—and perhaps related terms like “honor” and “dignity”—appears to presume, i.e. to derive meaningfulness from, inequality. In our effort to work through the relationship among respect, hierarchy, and equality we will consider issues involving international spaces, regional locations, identity’s differences, economic distibution, and so forth while drawing upon a wide variety of scholarship that includes philosophy, politics, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and history.
