John Rawls shares the Enlightenment's commitment to finding moral and political principles which can be reflectively endorsed by all individuals autonomously. He usually presents reflective autonomy in Kantian, rationalist terms: autonomy is identified with the exercise of reason, and principles of justice must be constructed which are acceptable to all on the basis of reason alone. Yet David Hume, Adam Smith and many other Enlightenment thinkers rejected such rationalism, searching instead for principles which can be endorsed by all on the (...) basis of all the faculties of the human psyche, emotion and imagination included. The influence of these sentimentalists on Rawls is clearest in his descriptive moral psychology, but I argue that it is also present in Rawls's understanding of the sources of normativity. Although this debt is obscured by Rawls's explicit "Kantianism," his theory would be strengthened by a greater understanding of its debts to the sentimentalist Enlightenment. (shrink)

Background: The importance of respecting patients and participants in clinical research is widely recognised. However, what it means to respect persons beyond recognising them as autonomous is unclear, and little is known about what patients find to be respectful. Objective: To understand patients’ conceptions of respect and what it means to be respected by medical providers. Design: Qualitative study from an academic cardiology clinic, using semistructured interviews with 18 survivors of sudden cardiac death. Results: Patients believed that respecting persons incorporates (...) the following major elements: empathy, care, autonomy, provision of information, recognition of individuality, dignity and attention to needs. Conclusions: Making patients feel respected, or valued as a person, is a multi-faceted task that involves more than recognising autonomy. While patients’ views of respect do not determine what respect means, these patients expressed important intuitions that may be of substantial conceptual relevance. (shrink)