# Do You Respect EVERYTHING? A Spectrum of Respect
Published: 2025-12-24
Canonical: https://journal.xiaotianfanx.com/journal/do-you-respect-everything-a-spectrum-of-respect

On understanding "respect."  	A few months ago, I briefly mentioned in a post how I understand and practice "respect" as a counterexample to confront  the possibility of my being a relativist who virtually has no values . In hindsight, there is no way I would argue that the paragraph back then was clear enough. In fact, my very understanding, or at least my capability of stating that understanding, wasn't solid enough back then. While I'll attach that paragraph at the end of this post, I'd like to start a bit more gently instead of throwing that gibberish at you.  	I hope you will agree with me that, although it's definitely not the case for everyone everywhere, practicing "respect" has become an omnipresently obeyed ghost in nowadays "mainstream" conversations—morphed from a rather rigorous, judgmental virtue into some sort of universal responsibility, and with anything less could be considered aggressive or even hostile. In a nutshell, we are asked to "respect everything/everyone" frequently enough.  	Interestingly, if we go back to our good old friends, dictionaries, one of the simple examples we can find is in  Merriam-Webster : a: to consider worthy of high regard b: to act in a way which shows awareness of (someone's rights, wishes, etc.) a: to treat or deal with (something good or valuable) in a proper way b: do what is required by (a law, rule, etc.) It is quite evident that the word "respect" actually means distinct things. Distinct enough that one should probably never use the different meanings interchangeably. Sadly, at least to my experience, that distinction has greatly blurred in many cases in our daily lives.  	On top of that, if we do a little bit of research, there are surely already many theoretical frameworks that try to study "respect" or at least categorize it (as done in the dictionaries, too). Just to name drop a few: Kant has writings on  Achtung  (ACH-tung, the German word usually translated as “respect”), Hudson (1980) has a four-fold classification ( evaluative, obstacle, directive, and institutional ), Darwall (1977) provides a handy dichotomy between  recognition respect  and  appraisal respect , and so on and so forth. While some of those frameworks may be obscure, some are intuitive enough, I would say, for us to at least sense that there is indeed a distinction between the "respect-respect" and the rest. Thinking from an etymological perspective, its Latin origin,  respicere  (reh-SPEE-cheh-re), meaning "to look back at" or "to look again," already suggests that the "respect-respect" is not a glance but rather a  specialized mode of attention , the act of taking something seriously enough to look at it a second time, acknowledging its weight, its claim, or its excellence. [ SEP ]  	That said, a crucial hypothesis here is that, in order to practice the "respect-respect," there must be  some  value system to refer to (and this is how I used it to "prove" the existence of my values back then.) In other words, it is a matter of value judgement. However, if we consider (or "respect") the postmodern notion and the fact that we (at least I) have to face the undeniable incredulity towards metanarratives, aka. the lost ability to judge which narratives/explanations are "better" or "truer," then to criticize another's story (since all we have are our own stories in that case, no matter if a story is shared by many others) seems to be naturally an act of "disrespect." Subsequently, there is essentially no space for the "respect-respect" to live with us anymore—how can we evaluate anything, excellent or not, if there are no values at all? Non-judgment becomes an  obligation , per se. And that's why and how, to my understanding now, the distinction between the "respect-respect" and the rest has been blurred/diluted on such a large scale.  	Then the question seems to become another complication/aftermath of losing the values...? Anyway, without being stuck at the BIG ISSUE of the time, the inspiration I had that completed the missing piece of the puzzle in my previous understanding, as well as writing this post, was actually quite practical—and my stance here is honestly quite practical as well:  	That inspiration is a particular word used by the UAE when it comes to many religion-related contexts—the word "tolerate." This word can be seen in many tourist resorts, such as the  Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque  in Abu Dhabi, and is even used to name a government department, the Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence. To be very honest, I was a bit triggered by this term initially, more than one and a half years ago, when I first encountered it at the grand mosque, as it obviously hints at a position that we do not necessarily agree with each other, and it's some sort of mercy for me to be "tolerated." At that moment, I didn't feel "respected" enough.  	However, if we really think of it, bit by bit, given that we bear with us the difference between "respect" and "respect," and bear with us the fact that the "respect-respect" has been inevitably diluted nowadays, it suddenly turns out to me to be so proper to use such a term—maybe a little bit offensive at first glance but actually much more proper than bluntly and recklessly using "respect."  I mean, at least it seems to me much more honest a stance when it is indeed not the case that we all agree with each other.  	In fact, this discovery propelled me to solidify and make up my mind on how, exactly, I should deal with the "diluted respect": maybe, if the word "respect" has become so vague to an extent that the language game around it is chaotic enough to hinder communications, we should probably "ditch" it and find other words to specify what exactly we are saying. (Well, if we just zoom out a little bit and forget about the trigger here, it is nonetheless quite common or reasonable by itself for us to strive for more accurate wording, in most cases, right?) Anyway, here is the "spectrum of respect" I came up with, building on "tolerate" and some understanding of the existing frameworks out there that classify "respect": Admit > Tolerate > Understand > Agree > Esteem  	While I hope they are evident enough by themselves, maybe some better-than-nothing explanations could still help: Starting from Admit, that's basically the very state that we almost cannot believe such a thing exists—and funny enough, many (including myself from time to time) still feel like we have to "respect" it in such a case. Then it comes to Tolerate. I'm actually not sure how it is used exactly by the UAE in those contexts, but it appears to me to represent a state that we do not agree with, and we do not even understand why/how such a thing would exist/happen, but for various reasons, we decide to accept it and live with it. For Understand, it for sure does not necessarily mean we also agree. It simply means we have managed to imagine why/how a thing would exist/happen. Frankly speaking, I personally use the word "understand" a lot to implicitly express disagreement, despite understanding (not to say it's a good practice). Last but not least, the difference between Agree and Esteem here is that, of course, the latter would consider a thing or person higher than ourselves, to some extent.  	Again, my devising this spectrum (or framework, still) is not to say that this is  the  answer—it's, on the contrary, of course, hardly serious compared to those well-defined frameworks out there, nor can it "solve" the dilution issue. However, I do think it's a reminder and a handy and more easy-going alternative approach to face the issue. And I hope now this paragraph from my previous writing makes more sense: A handy example here is how I treat and practice the act of 'respecting,' confronting the notion of a relativist who virtually has no values. Yes, I could respect everything—more exactly speaking, I could respect the potential and chance of everything, but it doesn’t mean I DO respect them positively. A case in point is philosophers vs. their philosophy. I surely respect the philosophy of Sartre, Russell, Schopenhauer, etc., and I surely could 'respect' that there will be persons like them who do things like them in their personal life and are inconsistent with their own ideas or vulgarly practice their ideas. Diametrically opposed to that 'respect,' I surely cannot respect—more precisely—cannot esteem their personal life—even if I can also choose to understand their cases, histories, motivations, traumas, socially inflicted difficulties, etc., empathetically. To place myself in a more difficult position, what would I say about murder, genocide, racism, or pedophilia, or anything else, alongside? And what would I do when facing such cases? Cutting to the chase: I do 'respect' that, on this planet, there would be such conduct, events, and people, etc., and the fact that these things exist indeed does not surprise me. Furthermore, I do acknowledge that there will be foul fiends who do not regard these as 'bad.' However, while I will not be able to prove my actions, both the 'respect' and acknowledgement here are firmly rooted in and standing aligned with my and my only absolute objection and condemnation of those. In a nutshell, to put it in an oversimplified expression (or in fact, a definitive tone I should have put out earlier), I may use something like a pluralist interpersonal ethic and universal dignity, but with selective admiration, personal austerity, and embodied peripheral enforcement. Period. ——From  My Real Abu Dhabi? — Journal — Xiaotian Fan  	Anyway, that's so much for the topical things I'd like to talk about—I hope you find it somehow sensible. At the end of the day, if the word respect, or in fact,  anything,  is destined to dissolve, let's consider the possibility of picking and even building something else together after acknowledging that dissolution.    P.S.  	Below are some trivial thoughts that came to me during the process of devising the spectrum. I feel like I can finally state more directly after figuring out "respect." (The context of most of the things below is the  My Real Abu Dhabi?  post.)  	I once said I both normatively  don't like to  judge others according to my own moral standards and positively  cannot  really judge others a lot, as I'm used to going through every perspective I could think of, and that typically  dilutes  my personal stance. Another part of the story that I didn't mention back then is: judging others and asking questions about others seems to me to expose more of myself inadvertently than outputting or knowing. (Although there is indeed a worthwhile question suggested by a friend, and I probably would come back later: Is self-exposure bad at all?) Anyway, in this context of "respect," there is certainly another defensible explanation—as I was indeed trapped by the "respect everything" notion (or, more precisely, misconception, propaganda, etc.), the reason I would normatively dislike judging is very likely to be that it felt less rightful to judge something that we "respect"—even if it was not the "respect-respect." Subsequently, I actually dare to judge more (or let's say express myself more) after figuring out the problem of respecting everything. What a bonus!