Solicitude and Respect. The Second Ethical Person

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of the second ethical person in Paul Ricoeur’s ethics. Initially, Ricoeur limits the field of the second ethical person to feelings of sympathy and respect. Later on, however, the scheme will be modified with the introduction of friendship (philia) and solicitude, and the maintenance of respect. We ask: why does Ricoeur replace sympathy for solicitude? He maintains the feeling of respect kept in its Kantian significance? We highlight the following results. First, that, in spite of sympathy being replaced by solicitude, the same dialectic structure is maintained, in which one of the poles is composed by respect. Second, that mutual respect will cease to ambiguously designate the first and third person, by designating specifically the second moral person. And third, that, in spite of the attribution of feelings such as sympathy, friendship and solicitude in the designation of the second ethical person, a same dialogical structure is kept intact: in any case, solicitude, as sympathy before it, will be respect taken in its affectionate face, and respect will be solicitude transposed to the abstract plane of moral standards.