Author: Ophelia Benson

We got in a discussion in comments on Just the questions, ma’am about whether it is reasonable to demand respect, which entailed a discussion of what respect is and what people mean by it. I agreed that it’s reasonable enough to demand a minimal version of respect, but I pointed out 1) that people often mean something very maximal by the word and 2) that that fact is often disguised because the minimal version is available. So I was pleased, while re-reading Simon Backburn’s ‘Religion and Respect’ to see this:

‘Respect’, of course is a tricky term. I may respect your gardening by just letting you get on with it. Or, I may respect it by admiring it and regarding it as a superior way to garden. The word seems to span a spectrum from simply not interfering, passing by on the other side, through admiration, right up to reverence and deference. This makes it uniquely well-placed for ideological purposes. People may start out by insisting on respect in the minimal sense, and in a generally liberal world they may not find it too difficult to obtain it. But then what we might call respect creep sets in, where the request for minimal toleration turns into a demand for more substantial respect, such as fellow-feeling, or esteem, and finally deference and reverence. In the limit, unless you let me take over your mind and your life, you are not showing proper respect for my religious or ideological convictions. We can respect, in the minimal sense of tolerating, those who hold false beliefs. We can pass by on the other side. We need not be concerned to change them, and in a liberal society we do not seek to suppress them or silence them. But once we are convinced that a belief is false, or even just that it is irrational, we cannot respect in any thicker sense those who hold it—not on account of their holding it. We may respect them for all sorts of other qualities, but not that one.

This is exactly what I was (and am) claiming.

Phrases like ‘equal concern and respect’ trip off the tongue. But in any more than the most minimal sense of ‘deserving equal protection of the law’ or equal toleration, there are, quite properly, gradations of respect. We respect skill, ability, judgement, and experience. The opinion of someone who has demonstrated these qualities is more important to us than the opinion of a newcomer, or someone who is foolish and wild in his reasonings. We defer to some people more than we defer to others, and this deference is a measure of respect.

Same again. And to ‘demand’ the upper level of the gradation is to demand something that can’t be given as a mere act of will or generosity, and that thus is not ‘respect’ in the sense intended; therefore it is futile to demand it. I can’t demand that people respect me as a mountaineer, because I’m not one. If I do demand that and people decide to humour me, what they’re giving me is not respect. Thus my demand falls to the ground like a broken moth, forceless.

Here’s a good juxtaposition which Allen Esterson pointed out to me:

“Our movement is peaceful,” he said. “The government too should stay calm. We’ve warned the government that if it ever tried to suppress us by force, thousands of students of madrassas will retaliate with suicide attacks.”

Peaceful indeed. Quaker-like. Peaceful as a pond on a windless afternoon in August.

How’s that again?

Parents of some of the girls studying at a controversial religious school in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, have voiced concern for their safety. Their fears rose after an ultimatum from madrassa leaders that Sharia law be enforced in the country. The school and adjoining mosque are accused of promoting intolerance and taking the law into their own hands. On Sunday, the chief cleric issued a fatwa against a female minister who had been pictured hugging a man. The madrassa has frequently been in the news in recent months. In February, armed students prevented the authorities from demolishing an illegally constructed mosque, and occupied a nearby children’s library. Last month they abducted a woman they accused of running a brothel, holding her captive for two days.

Kids today eh. But that’s not the ‘say what?’ part. This is:

Parents of some of the girls studying* at the Jamia Hafsa say they are worried by recent events, but do not want to harm their daughters’ education.

Their daughters’ what? Their daughters’ what? What on earth makes the parents think what the daughters are getting at the madrassa is an education? What part of occupying a children’s library or abducting and imprisoning a woman sounds educational to them? What part of going outside in black bags to brandish bamboo poles at enemies looks educational to them? What do they take education to be, exactly? What is it that they don’t want to harm? The aggression? The fanaticism? The stupidity?

*Studying? Studying? What part of kidnapping, threatening, and occupying looks like studying to the BBC?

Simon Blackburn on Baudrillard.

Baudrillard’s ideas about simulated reality seem to have touched on an old philosophical panic. Perhaps our senses are no better than our televisions. Perhaps nature has varnished and spun the pictures we receive. They too are commodities, bought in to provide sustenance.

Perhaps, but then again, it’s a mistake to relish the idea, because generalized scepticism implies that nothing is wrong with anything and nothing matters.

[A]nd would any self-respecting culture critic want to draw that conclusion? In any event, it is not all simulacra. We are participants in a public world, not hermits trapped in our own private cinemas. The cure for the sceptical nightmare is action. Nobody stays sceptical while crossing the street, or choosing dinner.

I like that ‘nobody stays sceptical while crossing the street’ – I amused myself with a little riff on that idea in Why Truth Matters. Blackburn reviewed WTM; maybe the riff stuck in his mind. (Or maybe not; it’s certainly an obvious example.)

French postmodernism may be passing, but it had a point. Even if engagement with the world is the cure, the respite it gives may be short-lived. No sooner has the real moment gone than the work of memory begins, once more selecting, massaging, suppressing and spinning.

Just so. I love that last line, and we were just talking about that idea the other week. That’s why I don’t agree with Jeremy that Stannard is being rational to believe that his inner experience of meeting god in prayer is genuine evidence that he has met god in prayer. It’s because even if he can’t doubt the experience while he’s having it, he should be aware that once the real moment has gone then the work of memory begins, once more selecting, massaging, suppressing and spinning. Even if he can’t doubt it while he’s having it, he should be able to doubt it afterwards. Being unable to doubt it afterwards is too credulous, therefore not rational.