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On respect
New Ideas in Psychology 18 (2000) 177}185
On respect Cynthia Lightfoot* Department of Human Development & Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, Commonwealth College, 25 Yearsley Mill Road, Media, PA 19063, USA
We learn from Piaget, as from Durkheim before him, that there are two moralities, one of obligation and one of goodness. The morality of obligation is the inferior one, a power politic based on a combination of a!ection and fear that belongs to the unilateral respect of a lesser towards a greater authority, as that of a child towards a parent. In mature minds developed in complex societies, however, it can and is overcome by the morality of goodness. This second and later arriving morality, in contrast to the "rst, is engendered by the mutual respect and a!ection that exists between individuals who recognize each other as equals. In his introduction to the volume, Les Smith claims that Sociological Studies is meant to answer the question, `How does a rational mind attain truth?a (1977, 1995, p. 1). I would not argue the point. Nevertheless, the work could just as well be taken as an attempt to answer, `What leads the mind to goodness?a (Piaget, 1977/1995, p. 205). That these two enterprises * attaining truth and attaining goodness * may re#ect two sides of the same epistemic coin, I will leave for others to puzzle. My interest turns here on the more particular notion of respect, and how having it re#ects the way we understand ourselves. To my way of thinking, the ability to recognize each other as equals, which Piaget takes as the cornerstone of mutual respect, is in fact derivative of the more fundamental ability to recognize each other as individuals. It seems appropriate to ask why, in a volume whose chapter titles include such prestigious and technically sophisticated subjects as, `Genetic Logic and Sociologya, `Logical Operations and Social Life,a and `The Relationship Between Morality and Lawa, one would settle on respect as a topic worthy of articulation. It is, after all, a short and common word found in the vocabulary of just about everyone over a certain age. It makes its way into the ordinary discourse of ordinary folk who
* Corresponding author. Tel.: #1-610-892-1432. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Lightfoot). 0732-118X/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 7 3 2 - 1 1 8 X ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 0 7 - 6
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C. Lightfoot / New Ideas in Psychology 18 (2000) 177}185
observe its comings and goings through the lives of individuals, and the way it bears on and even de"nes their relationships. Everyone knows that the young child is full of respect, just as everyone knows that the teenager is not. That respect returns in adulthood would also seem to be a point of common knowledge. We know, however, that the adult bestows it selectively * on certain deserving people, institutions, symbols, which sometimes, but not always or inevitably, includes his or her own self. The historical tides of respect have likewise provided material for the "reside talk and re#ection of common men and women, perhaps most often expressed as a nostalgia for the long ago when people honored their fathers and mothers and country. Some historical eras have made a virtue of the explicit giving, or withholding, of respect. For a while it was our national treasure, a way of assuring ourselves that our traditions, institutions and elders were appropriately acknowledged and honored. It was a charm against trouble * against rebellion, desertion, treason. Then in the 1960s its precipitous decline was boldly sloganized, and `Question Authority!a became the mantra of a new generation. In contrast to the scholarly and well-heeled talk of `genetic logica, `logical operationsa, and `moral lawa, respect has a worn and tattered quality that belies its base and homespun origin. It is telling in this regard that Piaget sees in respect not only the very source of moral law, but a developmental path that leads ultimately to the morality of goodness. Respect is immanently, and of necessity, bound to a notion of person: `Respecta, writes Piaget, `is a personal sentiment, that is, it evaluates a person as such, well di!erentiated from other individuals and considered as a unique wholea (1977/1995, p. 172). It would appear, furthermore, that Piaget understands the `person as sucha not only as di!erentiated and unique and whole, but in terms of a `scale of valuesa, or what we might otherwise call an interpretive stance or point of view. Indeed, Piaget suggests that a person is a point of view. To value a person therefore amounts to valuing their personal interpretation of how things stand: We call respect the feeling tied to positive valorizations2of persons2, as against the valorization of objects or services. To respect a man thus means to attribute to him a value, but one can attribute a value to one of his actions and to one of his services without valorizing him as an individual. To respect a person therefore amounts to recognizing his scale of values, which as yet does not mean to adopt it oneself, but to attribute a value from the point of view of this person... Further, it is easy to see that this valorization of individuals as such, in terms of &respect', necessarily leads to the disinterested behavior which characterizes moral norms, and leads to it alone: to say that a respects a is to say that in his behavior relative to a the individual a puts himself at the point of view of a and of his scale. The `reciprocal substitution of scalesa or of &means and ends' is therefore nothing else than the expression of a mutual respect (Piaget, 1977/1995, pp. 118}119). The mutual respect de"ned here, however, is not something that we are born to. The ability to recognize and hold in regard each other's `value scalesa * each other's
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interpretive stances * is an ontogenetic process that begins only in the seventh or eighth year, and is not fully accomplished until adolescence. The construction and `reciprocal substitutiona of value scales is a cognitively complicated business that involves the intellectualization of feelings into a!ective structures. As Brown (1996) describes, `when intelligence becomes mediated by symbols and signs, it becomes possible for children to conduct reciprocal interpersonal exchanges and to construct value scales that will serve as norms of behaviora (p. 144). Prior to the reciprocity enabled by mediated intelligence, the young child yields to a higher authority insofar as that authority is both loved and feared. For the immature child, `spontaneous respecta drives obligation `independent of the content prescribeda. It is a strict and coercive morality, which exerts its authority not only in the lives of young children, unfolding in the form of unexamined duty, but also in the cultural life of `primitive societiesa. In primitive societies, those that assume, collectively, an epistemic posture comparable to that of the young child, spontaneous respect is manifested in the form of taboo and other `absurd prohibitions imposed by traditiona (Piaget, 1977/1995, p. 205). In a way that is not at all unexpected to those even modestly familiar with the larger context of his work and writings, Piaget attempts an algebra of respect. Two equations are provided to sum across the ways that parent and child each value the other as persons: 1. (r (s )#(s "t )#(t "v )"(r (v ). ? ?Y ?Y ?Y ?Y ? ? ? 2. (r 's )#(s "t )#(t "v )"(r 'v ). ?Y ? ? ? ? ?Y ?Y ?Y If you study these equations long enough with the knowledge that a is the parent and a the child, that r is the action of a on a , and s is the satisfaction of a as ? ?Y a consequence of r , that t is the debt of a as a consequence of s , that l is the ? ?Y ? ? valorization of a by a , and so on, you may begin to glimpse Piaget's intention, which is to illustrate in formal terms the constant disequilibrium in child}adult exchanges, an inherent asymmetry arising from the inequality of value that each attaches to the other. Knowing, however, that unilateral respect is but a developmental way station on the road to a more equilibrated mutual respect, one is inclined to wonder about what, exactly, changes developmentally. The answer, according to Piaget, is the child's own engagement in the process of constructing norms of behavior. Engagement in norm construction signals a disengagement from socially coercive processes, a relative autonomy, that is, from social constraints (see Nucci, 1996, for an extension of Piaget's ideas regarding the role of personal agency and freedom in moral development). On this account, the unexamined submission to a higher authority, which is characteristic of the younger child gives way to the `disinterested behavior which characterizes moral normsa. In Sociological Studies, Piaget (1977/1995) illustrates this shift on several occasions by referring to his well-known early investigations of the evolution of rules in children's social games * the marble game in particular (Piaget, 1932/1965). He refers, speci"cally, to his "nding that younger children consider rules of whatever sort to be sacred and immutable, whereas older children modify them
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easily as long as there is mutual agreement among the participants. This is understood to re#ect the emergence of respect for the democratic process and the common will. In detailing its nuances, Piaget returns repeatedly to the importance of the social relationship to the formation of mutual respect, arguing that it can only develop out of exchanges between individuals who consider themselves equals. Mutual respect takes for granted common values, it presumes a reciprocated respect, all of which is much more than a simple complementarity of interest or unilateral respect running in two directions. Mutual respect, in its autonomous and willing adherence to norms personally elaborated, gives rise to a new sense of obligation. Speci"cally, the childhood obligation to prefabricated norms of authority is supplanted by an obligation to the exchange upon which reciprocal esteem is based. In other words, to respect a person as such is to be obligated to the source of that respect: the constructive, cooperative process of the interchange itself. This would only give cooperation its due, which is plenty according to Piaget. He attributes to it three speci"c sorts of transformation in individual thinking. These include re#ection and self-consciousness, the dissociation of the subjective and the objective, and `autonomous rulea or the `rule of reciprocitya. All three are `of a nature to permit individuals to have a greater consciousness of reason immanent in all intellectual activitya (Piaget, 1977/1995, p. 239). Respect, it would seem, constitutes the interpersonal foundation of decentration and higher ordered thinking precisely because it emerges from common, cooperative social exchanges. Of course the argument that children's cooperative social interactions play a special role in the development of operational thought is scarcely a revelatory point. Piaget argued early on that social interactions promote decentration because they invite an awareness of alternative points of view and ways of understanding the world (Piaget, 1928). Moreover, he considered that peer interactions provided more likely contexts for decentration compared to child}adult interactions owing to inherent di!erences in the nature of their relationships. Speci"cally, peer relationships enjoy a symmetry in power relations that is lacking in child}adult relationships (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). This line of argument inspired an entire methodology bent on understanding peer collaboration as a context of intellectual development. By and large, and following Piaget's emphasis on the disequilibration understood to ensue in the course of cooperative, peer}peer interaction, much of the research in this area has focused on individual cognitive gains as a function of dyad constitution, "nding generally that gains are maximized when children are paired with partners who are moderately ahead of them. This is teased out using a methodology in which dyads are experimentally de"ned according to the problem solving competence of the individual children (e.g., `same abilitya versus `mixed abilitya). That all of this reclines on the assumption that age-mates are by de"nition social equals is apparent in the fact that the children who typically compose the dyads know each other only marginally, if at all. We know now, however, from a large and substantive history of anthropological, sociological, ethnographic, and social developmental research that children are not social equals. On the contrary, they are dominant or submissive, manipulating or controlled, behind the protective aegis of a group or outside of it, engaged in an
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ongoing process of positioning and re-positioning themselves in relation to others. We know as well that children's relationships are not static but change signi"cantly over time. Some sense of this emerges when we examine the interactional dynamics of collaborative interactions and "nd that intellectual gains may be more a function of the nature of the interactions rather than dyad's particular mix of competence levels. In particular, interactions which introduce disagreements, contradictions, and alternative solutions generate higher post-test gains compared to those that introduce, for example, consecutive assertions, presumably due to their greater potential for evoking perturbations and resolutions. Furthermore, interactions of this sort are more likely to occur between collaborative partners who have been given an opportunity to work together, and therefore establish something of a social relationship, over a period of weeks (Dimant & Bearison, 1991). Our own initial studies on problem solving in naturally constituted adolescent peer groups indicate as well that `theoretically relevant interactionsa, to use Dimant and Bearison's apt term * those that index minds engaged with other minds * occur more often in groups that are socially cohesive and close, compared to those which are in the throes of transformation because members are on the outs with each other (Lightfoot, 1992, 1997). Social interactions, then, are not equally evocative of emerging competence. Instead, a particular type of social participation more fully engages the reasoning power and potential of individuals, a type of participation that is enabled, or not, according to the social relationships of those involved. All of this is to say that to interact is to enter a relationship, and that our relationships, be they with speci"c persons, or social or cultural groups, even those that we have with our own selves, have histories that frame what takes place within them. These ideas run close to the surface at several points in Sociological Studies, particularly in Piaget's conceptualization of the transformation from `selfa to `personalitya, which has much to do with the nature of changing relationships between self and other. By Piaget's analysis, the self undergoes a radical reconstruction during adolescence. This is brought about by a con#uence of biological, psychological, and social factors which include puberty, the emergence of formal operational thought and all that attends it (e.g., the capacity to conceive projects, build a life plan, construct theories), as well as the insertion of the individual into the collective life of adults, generally accomplished in the context of work. Piaget writes that the individual no longer considers herself a child. She ceases to feel inferior and begins to feel as an equal, one among others of the society in which she expects to play a role and make a career (Piaget, 1977/1995, p. 298). Naturally, all of this is predicated on the idea that there is within the adult community a valued point of insertion for the individual, and something of value to o!er. All is predicated on a vision of engagement. The distinctive feature of the `personalitya, and what sets it apart from the less mature, egocentric `selfa, is the ability to construct a scale of values that goes beyond the more immediately contingent and negotiable interests of the moment. The scale of values constitutes the central axis of the personality which, Piaget writes, 2is to be conceived as a late-occurring synthesis quite di!erent from the `self a and characterized, above all else, by submission of the self to the role that
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the child assigns himself in society. Thanks to these two instruments, i.e. the formal operations and a `personala hierarchy of values, the adolescent plays a fundamental role in our societies of liberating coming generations from older ones. This leads the individual to elaborate further the new things that he acquired during his development as a child at the same time that it frees him, at least in part, from the obstacles issuing from adult constraints (1977/1995, p. 299). There is, in the mature personality, a submission to a social role, but it is a willing submission to a chosen role. There is an engagement in society, but it retains the edge of autonomy necessary for liberation and freedom from constraint. In fact, by Piaget's analysis, the individual develops personality to the extent that the egocentric self * the self which is unconscious of itself, innocent `not only of the eye, but of the whole minda * voluntarily renounces itself in order to `insert its own point of view among those of othersa. There is a conscious realization of the relativity of one's own interpretive point of view and a desire to relate it to those of others. This is, of course, merely an elaboration of our earlier encounter with the development of mutual respect, and it is unfortunate that Piaget neglected to develop the incipient connections between mutual respect and self-respect, which is surely just as foundational to any vision of engagement. That self-respect, the sense of one's own worth, the belief in one's own agency, one's own autonomy, one's ability to make a responsible and freely-given contribution can matter to such a high degree is inherent in much of the contemporary work on the development of self and identity. For example, in articulating his own position of identity as a `theory of self a, Moshman (1999) looks with approval on Isaiah Berlin's (1969) de"nition of what it means to be a rational agent, which means 2 to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which a!ect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer-deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes (1969, p. 131; cited in Moshman, 1999, p. 80). Rationality, autonomy, continuity, and unity constitute major features of the modern identity (see discussions by Berzonski, 1993; Blasi & Glodis, 1995; Chandler, 1993; Labouvie-Vief, Orwoll & Manion, 1995; Lightfoot, 1996; Moshman, 1999; Shalin, 1993; Smith, 1994, 1995; Taylor, 1989). It is, however, an identity only recently constructed. Cultural historians agree that our conceptions of self have been subject to radical revision over the course of time. In particular, beginning in the early 17th
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century the self was remade into something fundamentally more private, agentic, individuated, self-conscious and self-determining. It became an individual (Burckhardt, 1960; Hannerz, 1980; Heller, 1981; Morris, 1973). Corroborative evidence includes the emergence of new forms of speech used to describe the self, new types of relationships understood to hold between the self and others, and new qualities of feeling ascribed to the self. During the early part of the 17th century, confession, friendship and romantic love came to take on unprecedented weight in human a!airs. There is also an abundance of physical evidence that the self was remade to modern dimensions. Particularly noteworthy is the construction of new material artifacts that were used to re#ect the individual and monitor its changes. Mirrors became larger and more plentiful. Portraiture emerged * the sort that depicts individual characteristics rather than social role attributes alone. We altered as well our physical spaces to accommodate the freshly developed needs of the self, privacy among the most notable. Benches were replaced by chairs and we sat together separately at table. We began to build more walls in our homes. A new `sentiment of beinga emerged, a new way of experiencing ourselves (Trilling, 1971). It exposed a knowledge that I am I, equal to myself and no other, a free agent, my own person, and in virtue of that alone, of consequence. The new sense of self paraded under the legitimizing banner of personal authenticity. It sought singularity and distance from the commonplace. Its culmination was interiority * consciousness alone with itself like `an old man seated with his memories on a rocka (Wolf, 1982). Its epistemological imperative was to know itself; its moral imperative to be true to itself. The historical evidence converges to underscore how we have developed into ourselves, taken on lives of our own and achieved autonomy in action and in being. Viewed within Piaget's theoretical context, the development of the individual may be seen to constitute both an historical and an ontogenetic solution to the problem of self-fragmentation posed by a teeming multiplicity of roles made available in the "rst instance by the division of labor associated with the rise of modernity and in the second instance by the developmental emergence of an awareness of norms and conventions * what Habermas and his colleagues have described as `role-bound identitya (Dobert, Habermas & Nunner-Winker, 1987). In the face of all that would consume it * a plethora of social roles and expectations, occupational possibilities, "lial duties and obligations * the own self rises like a phoenix, de"ant. But there is a certain orphan existence implied by this solution. As noted by Paz (1990), `the modern age has exalted individualism, and has been, therefore, the period of the scattering and isolation of personal awarenessesa. His comment re#ects a nostalgia for fraternity. He argues, in fact, and in agreement with Ortega y Gasset (1914/1961), that the convergence of fraternity and autonomy, of engagement and distance, constitutes the `theme of our timea, and that our era does indeed favor such a vast undertaking. If the beginnings of a response to the call for convergence is to be found within Sociological Studies, it is in Piaget's discussion of the development of the personality within the norms of cooperation. The personality, that `most re"ned product of socializationa (1977/1995, p. 219), has a social counterpart in cooperation in the same way that the egocentric self is correlative to social constraint. Each implies the other.
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Constraint reinforces egocentrism and, when characteristic of a society, socializes the individual `only on the surfacea, leaving intact the `deep habitsa of egocentrism: `gerontocratic constraint retards the intellectual development of those who are subject to ita (1977/1995, p. 231). Cooperation, in contrast, encourages the evolution of the individual's personality because it implies relations among individuals who recognize each other as equals * who together create a climate of mutual respect. To ask which produces the other is to miss the point. According to Piaget, `(w)hat needs to be analyzed.. is how the initial `selfa blossoms as personality thanks to cooperation, and how the social thus joins, rather than opposes, what is innermost in an individual. Perhaps, the creation of a rational equilibrium is to be found in the secret of this agreementa (1977/1995, p. 240). Perhaps, too, the self-respect that is foundational to what was once called character. The "rst lesson of Piaget's constructivism * its central axiom * has not changed in Sociological Studies: Although the world appears to be a place which contains people, it is in fact a place contained within them, inscribed, that is, in action, thought, ritual, language, and text. The corollary is that in order to know the world we must come to know those people and become engaged in their actions, share their thoughts and ideas, partake of their rituals, speak their languages, read their texts * valorize their interpretive stances. To interact is not enough. Meaningful engagement is required. Thus, although the world is the subject's world, the equilibria the subject's equilibria, the valorizations the subject's valorizations, it is in our predicate lives that our worlds, equilibria, valorizations are inspired, made viable and true. The main problem to be resolved in developing an account of what leads the mind to goodness turns out to be a grammatical problem, a struggle to write in complete sentences that include both subject and predicate. It is the corollary of Piaget's constructivism, which is brought into relief in wholly new ways in Sociological Studies, and which has ever so much to do with a notion of respect.
References Berlin, I. (1969). Four essays on liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berzonsky, M. D. (1993). A constructivist view of identity development: People as postpositivist selftheorists. In J. Kroger, Discussions on ego identity (pp. 169}203). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Blasi, A., & Glodis, K. (1995). The development of identity. A critical analysis from the perspective of the self as subject. Developmental Review, 15, 404}433. Brown, T. (1996). Values, knowledge, and Piaget. In E. Reed, E. Turiel, & T. Brown, Values and knowledge. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Burckhardt, J. (1960). The civilization of the renaissance in Italy. New York: New American Library. Chandler, M. J. (1993). Contextualism and the post-modern condition. In S. Hayes, L. Hayes, H. Reese, & T. Sargin, Varieties of scientixc contextualism. Reno, NV: Context Press. Dimant, R., & Bearison, D. (1991). Development of formal reasoning during successive peer interactions. Developmental Psychology, 27, 277}284. DoK bert, R., Habermas, J. & Nunner-Winkler, G. (1987). The development of the self. In J. M. Broughton, Critical theories of psychological development. New York: Plenum Press. Hannerz, U. (1980). Exploring the city. New York: Columbia University Press. Heller, A. (1981). Renaissance man. New York: Schocken.
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Inhelder, B., & Piaget, J. (1958). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence. New York: Basic Books. Labouvie-Vief, G., Orwell, L., & Manion, M. (1995). Narratives of mind, gender, and the life course. Human Development, 38, 239}257. Lightfoot, C. (1992). The adolescent peer group as a context for problem solving. Paper presented as a part of the symposium, `Towards co-constructive methodology in the study of human developmenta (J. Valsiner, organizer), at the I Conference for Socio-Cultural Research, Madrid, September. Lightfoot, C. (1996). Slouching towards paradigm land. Culture and Psychology, 2, 465}475. Lightfoot, C. (1997). The culture of adolescent risk-taking. New York: Guildford Press. Morris, C. (1973). The discovery of the individual 1050}1200. New York: Harper and Row. Moshman, D., (1999). Adolescent psychological development: rationality, morality, and identity. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Nucci, L. (1996). Morality and the personal sphere of actions. In E. Reed, E. Turiel, & E. Brown, Values and knowledge. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ortega y Gasset, J. (1961). Meditations on Quixote. New York: Norton. (original work published 1914) Paz, O. (1990). The other voice: Essays on modern poetry. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Piaget, J. (1928). Judgement and reasoning in the child. London: Routeledge & Kegan Paul. Piaget, J. (1965). The moral judgment of the child. New York: Free Press (original work published 1932). Piaget, J. (1995). Sociological studies (2nd ed.). (L. Smith, et al., Trans.) (original work published 1977). Shalin, D. (1993). Modernity, postmodernism, and pragmatist inquiry: An introduction. Symposic Interaction, 16, 330}332. Smith, L. (1995). Smith, M. B. (1994). Sellfhood at risk: Postmodern perils and the perils of postmodernism. American Psychologist, 49, 405}411. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Trilling, L. (1971). Sincerity and authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wolf, B. (1982). Romantic re-vision: Culture and consciousness in nineteenth-century American painting and literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
On respect Cynthia Lightfoot* Department of Human Development & Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, Commonwealth College, 25 Yearsley Mill Road, Media, PA 19063, USA
We learn from Piaget, as from Durkheim before him, that there are two moralities, one of obligation and one of goodness. The morality of obligation is the inferior one, a power politic based on a combination of a!ection and fear that belongs to the unilateral respect of a lesser towards a greater authority, as that of a child towards a parent. In mature minds developed in complex societies, however, it can and is overcome by the morality of goodness. This second and later arriving morality, in contrast to the "rst, is engendered by the mutual respect and a!ection that exists between individuals who recognize each other as equals. In his introduction to the volume, Les Smith claims that Sociological Studies is meant to answer the question, `How does a rational mind attain truth?a (1977, 1995, p. 1). I would not argue the point. Nevertheless, the work could just as well be taken as an attempt to answer, `What leads the mind to goodness?a (Piaget, 1977/1995, p. 205). That these two enterprises * attaining truth and attaining goodness * may re#ect two sides of the same epistemic coin, I will leave for others to puzzle. My interest turns here on the more particular notion of respect, and how having it re#ects the way we understand ourselves. To my way of thinking, the ability to recognize each other as equals, which Piaget takes as the cornerstone of mutual respect, is in fact derivative of the more fundamental ability to recognize each other as individuals. It seems appropriate to ask why, in a volume whose chapter titles include such prestigious and technically sophisticated subjects as, `Genetic Logic and Sociologya, `Logical Operations and Social Life,a and `The Relationship Between Morality and Lawa, one would settle on respect as a topic worthy of articulation. It is, after all, a short and common word found in the vocabulary of just about everyone over a certain age. It makes its way into the ordinary discourse of ordinary folk who
* Corresponding author. Tel.: #1-610-892-1432. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Lightfoot). 0732-118X/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 7 3 2 - 1 1 8 X ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 0 7 - 6
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C. Lightfoot / New Ideas in Psychology 18 (2000) 177}185
observe its comings and goings through the lives of individuals, and the way it bears on and even de"nes their relationships. Everyone knows that the young child is full of respect, just as everyone knows that the teenager is not. That respect returns in adulthood would also seem to be a point of common knowledge. We know, however, that the adult bestows it selectively * on certain deserving people, institutions, symbols, which sometimes, but not always or inevitably, includes his or her own self. The historical tides of respect have likewise provided material for the "reside talk and re#ection of common men and women, perhaps most often expressed as a nostalgia for the long ago when people honored their fathers and mothers and country. Some historical eras have made a virtue of the explicit giving, or withholding, of respect. For a while it was our national treasure, a way of assuring ourselves that our traditions, institutions and elders were appropriately acknowledged and honored. It was a charm against trouble * against rebellion, desertion, treason. Then in the 1960s its precipitous decline was boldly sloganized, and `Question Authority!a became the mantra of a new generation. In contrast to the scholarly and well-heeled talk of `genetic logica, `logical operationsa, and `moral lawa, respect has a worn and tattered quality that belies its base and homespun origin. It is telling in this regard that Piaget sees in respect not only the very source of moral law, but a developmental path that leads ultimately to the morality of goodness. Respect is immanently, and of necessity, bound to a notion of person: `Respecta, writes Piaget, `is a personal sentiment, that is, it evaluates a person as such, well di!erentiated from other individuals and considered as a unique wholea (1977/1995, p. 172). It would appear, furthermore, that Piaget understands the `person as sucha not only as di!erentiated and unique and whole, but in terms of a `scale of valuesa, or what we might otherwise call an interpretive stance or point of view. Indeed, Piaget suggests that a person is a point of view. To value a person therefore amounts to valuing their personal interpretation of how things stand: We call respect the feeling tied to positive valorizations2of persons2, as against the valorization of objects or services. To respect a man thus means to attribute to him a value, but one can attribute a value to one of his actions and to one of his services without valorizing him as an individual. To respect a person therefore amounts to recognizing his scale of values, which as yet does not mean to adopt it oneself, but to attribute a value from the point of view of this person... Further, it is easy to see that this valorization of individuals as such, in terms of &respect', necessarily leads to the disinterested behavior which characterizes moral norms, and leads to it alone: to say that a respects a is to say that in his behavior relative to a the individual a puts himself at the point of view of a and of his scale. The `reciprocal substitution of scalesa or of &means and ends' is therefore nothing else than the expression of a mutual respect (Piaget, 1977/1995, pp. 118}119). The mutual respect de"ned here, however, is not something that we are born to. The ability to recognize and hold in regard each other's `value scalesa * each other's
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interpretive stances * is an ontogenetic process that begins only in the seventh or eighth year, and is not fully accomplished until adolescence. The construction and `reciprocal substitutiona of value scales is a cognitively complicated business that involves the intellectualization of feelings into a!ective structures. As Brown (1996) describes, `when intelligence becomes mediated by symbols and signs, it becomes possible for children to conduct reciprocal interpersonal exchanges and to construct value scales that will serve as norms of behaviora (p. 144). Prior to the reciprocity enabled by mediated intelligence, the young child yields to a higher authority insofar as that authority is both loved and feared. For the immature child, `spontaneous respecta drives obligation `independent of the content prescribeda. It is a strict and coercive morality, which exerts its authority not only in the lives of young children, unfolding in the form of unexamined duty, but also in the cultural life of `primitive societiesa. In primitive societies, those that assume, collectively, an epistemic posture comparable to that of the young child, spontaneous respect is manifested in the form of taboo and other `absurd prohibitions imposed by traditiona (Piaget, 1977/1995, p. 205). In a way that is not at all unexpected to those even modestly familiar with the larger context of his work and writings, Piaget attempts an algebra of respect. Two equations are provided to sum across the ways that parent and child each value the other as persons: 1. (r (s )#(s "t )#(t "v )"(r (v ). ? ?Y ?Y ?Y ?Y ? ? ? 2. (r 's )#(s "t )#(t "v )"(r 'v ). ?Y ? ? ? ? ?Y ?Y ?Y If you study these equations long enough with the knowledge that a is the parent and a the child, that r is the action of a on a , and s is the satisfaction of a as ? ?Y a consequence of r , that t is the debt of a as a consequence of s , that l is the ? ?Y ? ? valorization of a by a , and so on, you may begin to glimpse Piaget's intention, which is to illustrate in formal terms the constant disequilibrium in child}adult exchanges, an inherent asymmetry arising from the inequality of value that each attaches to the other. Knowing, however, that unilateral respect is but a developmental way station on the road to a more equilibrated mutual respect, one is inclined to wonder about what, exactly, changes developmentally. The answer, according to Piaget, is the child's own engagement in the process of constructing norms of behavior. Engagement in norm construction signals a disengagement from socially coercive processes, a relative autonomy, that is, from social constraints (see Nucci, 1996, for an extension of Piaget's ideas regarding the role of personal agency and freedom in moral development). On this account, the unexamined submission to a higher authority, which is characteristic of the younger child gives way to the `disinterested behavior which characterizes moral normsa. In Sociological Studies, Piaget (1977/1995) illustrates this shift on several occasions by referring to his well-known early investigations of the evolution of rules in children's social games * the marble game in particular (Piaget, 1932/1965). He refers, speci"cally, to his "nding that younger children consider rules of whatever sort to be sacred and immutable, whereas older children modify them
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easily as long as there is mutual agreement among the participants. This is understood to re#ect the emergence of respect for the democratic process and the common will. In detailing its nuances, Piaget returns repeatedly to the importance of the social relationship to the formation of mutual respect, arguing that it can only develop out of exchanges between individuals who consider themselves equals. Mutual respect takes for granted common values, it presumes a reciprocated respect, all of which is much more than a simple complementarity of interest or unilateral respect running in two directions. Mutual respect, in its autonomous and willing adherence to norms personally elaborated, gives rise to a new sense of obligation. Speci"cally, the childhood obligation to prefabricated norms of authority is supplanted by an obligation to the exchange upon which reciprocal esteem is based. In other words, to respect a person as such is to be obligated to the source of that respect: the constructive, cooperative process of the interchange itself. This would only give cooperation its due, which is plenty according to Piaget. He attributes to it three speci"c sorts of transformation in individual thinking. These include re#ection and self-consciousness, the dissociation of the subjective and the objective, and `autonomous rulea or the `rule of reciprocitya. All three are `of a nature to permit individuals to have a greater consciousness of reason immanent in all intellectual activitya (Piaget, 1977/1995, p. 239). Respect, it would seem, constitutes the interpersonal foundation of decentration and higher ordered thinking precisely because it emerges from common, cooperative social exchanges. Of course the argument that children's cooperative social interactions play a special role in the development of operational thought is scarcely a revelatory point. Piaget argued early on that social interactions promote decentration because they invite an awareness of alternative points of view and ways of understanding the world (Piaget, 1928). Moreover, he considered that peer interactions provided more likely contexts for decentration compared to child}adult interactions owing to inherent di!erences in the nature of their relationships. Speci"cally, peer relationships enjoy a symmetry in power relations that is lacking in child}adult relationships (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). This line of argument inspired an entire methodology bent on understanding peer collaboration as a context of intellectual development. By and large, and following Piaget's emphasis on the disequilibration understood to ensue in the course of cooperative, peer}peer interaction, much of the research in this area has focused on individual cognitive gains as a function of dyad constitution, "nding generally that gains are maximized when children are paired with partners who are moderately ahead of them. This is teased out using a methodology in which dyads are experimentally de"ned according to the problem solving competence of the individual children (e.g., `same abilitya versus `mixed abilitya). That all of this reclines on the assumption that age-mates are by de"nition social equals is apparent in the fact that the children who typically compose the dyads know each other only marginally, if at all. We know now, however, from a large and substantive history of anthropological, sociological, ethnographic, and social developmental research that children are not social equals. On the contrary, they are dominant or submissive, manipulating or controlled, behind the protective aegis of a group or outside of it, engaged in an
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ongoing process of positioning and re-positioning themselves in relation to others. We know as well that children's relationships are not static but change signi"cantly over time. Some sense of this emerges when we examine the interactional dynamics of collaborative interactions and "nd that intellectual gains may be more a function of the nature of the interactions rather than dyad's particular mix of competence levels. In particular, interactions which introduce disagreements, contradictions, and alternative solutions generate higher post-test gains compared to those that introduce, for example, consecutive assertions, presumably due to their greater potential for evoking perturbations and resolutions. Furthermore, interactions of this sort are more likely to occur between collaborative partners who have been given an opportunity to work together, and therefore establish something of a social relationship, over a period of weeks (Dimant & Bearison, 1991). Our own initial studies on problem solving in naturally constituted adolescent peer groups indicate as well that `theoretically relevant interactionsa, to use Dimant and Bearison's apt term * those that index minds engaged with other minds * occur more often in groups that are socially cohesive and close, compared to those which are in the throes of transformation because members are on the outs with each other (Lightfoot, 1992, 1997). Social interactions, then, are not equally evocative of emerging competence. Instead, a particular type of social participation more fully engages the reasoning power and potential of individuals, a type of participation that is enabled, or not, according to the social relationships of those involved. All of this is to say that to interact is to enter a relationship, and that our relationships, be they with speci"c persons, or social or cultural groups, even those that we have with our own selves, have histories that frame what takes place within them. These ideas run close to the surface at several points in Sociological Studies, particularly in Piaget's conceptualization of the transformation from `selfa to `personalitya, which has much to do with the nature of changing relationships between self and other. By Piaget's analysis, the self undergoes a radical reconstruction during adolescence. This is brought about by a con#uence of biological, psychological, and social factors which include puberty, the emergence of formal operational thought and all that attends it (e.g., the capacity to conceive projects, build a life plan, construct theories), as well as the insertion of the individual into the collective life of adults, generally accomplished in the context of work. Piaget writes that the individual no longer considers herself a child. She ceases to feel inferior and begins to feel as an equal, one among others of the society in which she expects to play a role and make a career (Piaget, 1977/1995, p. 298). Naturally, all of this is predicated on the idea that there is within the adult community a valued point of insertion for the individual, and something of value to o!er. All is predicated on a vision of engagement. The distinctive feature of the `personalitya, and what sets it apart from the less mature, egocentric `selfa, is the ability to construct a scale of values that goes beyond the more immediately contingent and negotiable interests of the moment. The scale of values constitutes the central axis of the personality which, Piaget writes, 2is to be conceived as a late-occurring synthesis quite di!erent from the `self a and characterized, above all else, by submission of the self to the role that
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the child assigns himself in society. Thanks to these two instruments, i.e. the formal operations and a `personala hierarchy of values, the adolescent plays a fundamental role in our societies of liberating coming generations from older ones. This leads the individual to elaborate further the new things that he acquired during his development as a child at the same time that it frees him, at least in part, from the obstacles issuing from adult constraints (1977/1995, p. 299). There is, in the mature personality, a submission to a social role, but it is a willing submission to a chosen role. There is an engagement in society, but it retains the edge of autonomy necessary for liberation and freedom from constraint. In fact, by Piaget's analysis, the individual develops personality to the extent that the egocentric self * the self which is unconscious of itself, innocent `not only of the eye, but of the whole minda * voluntarily renounces itself in order to `insert its own point of view among those of othersa. There is a conscious realization of the relativity of one's own interpretive point of view and a desire to relate it to those of others. This is, of course, merely an elaboration of our earlier encounter with the development of mutual respect, and it is unfortunate that Piaget neglected to develop the incipient connections between mutual respect and self-respect, which is surely just as foundational to any vision of engagement. That self-respect, the sense of one's own worth, the belief in one's own agency, one's own autonomy, one's ability to make a responsible and freely-given contribution can matter to such a high degree is inherent in much of the contemporary work on the development of self and identity. For example, in articulating his own position of identity as a `theory of self a, Moshman (1999) looks with approval on Isaiah Berlin's (1969) de"nition of what it means to be a rational agent, which means 2 to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which a!ect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer-deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes (1969, p. 131; cited in Moshman, 1999, p. 80). Rationality, autonomy, continuity, and unity constitute major features of the modern identity (see discussions by Berzonski, 1993; Blasi & Glodis, 1995; Chandler, 1993; Labouvie-Vief, Orwoll & Manion, 1995; Lightfoot, 1996; Moshman, 1999; Shalin, 1993; Smith, 1994, 1995; Taylor, 1989). It is, however, an identity only recently constructed. Cultural historians agree that our conceptions of self have been subject to radical revision over the course of time. In particular, beginning in the early 17th
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century the self was remade into something fundamentally more private, agentic, individuated, self-conscious and self-determining. It became an individual (Burckhardt, 1960; Hannerz, 1980; Heller, 1981; Morris, 1973). Corroborative evidence includes the emergence of new forms of speech used to describe the self, new types of relationships understood to hold between the self and others, and new qualities of feeling ascribed to the self. During the early part of the 17th century, confession, friendship and romantic love came to take on unprecedented weight in human a!airs. There is also an abundance of physical evidence that the self was remade to modern dimensions. Particularly noteworthy is the construction of new material artifacts that were used to re#ect the individual and monitor its changes. Mirrors became larger and more plentiful. Portraiture emerged * the sort that depicts individual characteristics rather than social role attributes alone. We altered as well our physical spaces to accommodate the freshly developed needs of the self, privacy among the most notable. Benches were replaced by chairs and we sat together separately at table. We began to build more walls in our homes. A new `sentiment of beinga emerged, a new way of experiencing ourselves (Trilling, 1971). It exposed a knowledge that I am I, equal to myself and no other, a free agent, my own person, and in virtue of that alone, of consequence. The new sense of self paraded under the legitimizing banner of personal authenticity. It sought singularity and distance from the commonplace. Its culmination was interiority * consciousness alone with itself like `an old man seated with his memories on a rocka (Wolf, 1982). Its epistemological imperative was to know itself; its moral imperative to be true to itself. The historical evidence converges to underscore how we have developed into ourselves, taken on lives of our own and achieved autonomy in action and in being. Viewed within Piaget's theoretical context, the development of the individual may be seen to constitute both an historical and an ontogenetic solution to the problem of self-fragmentation posed by a teeming multiplicity of roles made available in the "rst instance by the division of labor associated with the rise of modernity and in the second instance by the developmental emergence of an awareness of norms and conventions * what Habermas and his colleagues have described as `role-bound identitya (Dobert, Habermas & Nunner-Winker, 1987). In the face of all that would consume it * a plethora of social roles and expectations, occupational possibilities, "lial duties and obligations * the own self rises like a phoenix, de"ant. But there is a certain orphan existence implied by this solution. As noted by Paz (1990), `the modern age has exalted individualism, and has been, therefore, the period of the scattering and isolation of personal awarenessesa. His comment re#ects a nostalgia for fraternity. He argues, in fact, and in agreement with Ortega y Gasset (1914/1961), that the convergence of fraternity and autonomy, of engagement and distance, constitutes the `theme of our timea, and that our era does indeed favor such a vast undertaking. If the beginnings of a response to the call for convergence is to be found within Sociological Studies, it is in Piaget's discussion of the development of the personality within the norms of cooperation. The personality, that `most re"ned product of socializationa (1977/1995, p. 219), has a social counterpart in cooperation in the same way that the egocentric self is correlative to social constraint. Each implies the other.
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Constraint reinforces egocentrism and, when characteristic of a society, socializes the individual `only on the surfacea, leaving intact the `deep habitsa of egocentrism: `gerontocratic constraint retards the intellectual development of those who are subject to ita (1977/1995, p. 231). Cooperation, in contrast, encourages the evolution of the individual's personality because it implies relations among individuals who recognize each other as equals * who together create a climate of mutual respect. To ask which produces the other is to miss the point. According to Piaget, `(w)hat needs to be analyzed.. is how the initial `selfa blossoms as personality thanks to cooperation, and how the social thus joins, rather than opposes, what is innermost in an individual. Perhaps, the creation of a rational equilibrium is to be found in the secret of this agreementa (1977/1995, p. 240). Perhaps, too, the self-respect that is foundational to what was once called character. The "rst lesson of Piaget's constructivism * its central axiom * has not changed in Sociological Studies: Although the world appears to be a place which contains people, it is in fact a place contained within them, inscribed, that is, in action, thought, ritual, language, and text. The corollary is that in order to know the world we must come to know those people and become engaged in their actions, share their thoughts and ideas, partake of their rituals, speak their languages, read their texts * valorize their interpretive stances. To interact is not enough. Meaningful engagement is required. Thus, although the world is the subject's world, the equilibria the subject's equilibria, the valorizations the subject's valorizations, it is in our predicate lives that our worlds, equilibria, valorizations are inspired, made viable and true. The main problem to be resolved in developing an account of what leads the mind to goodness turns out to be a grammatical problem, a struggle to write in complete sentences that include both subject and predicate. It is the corollary of Piaget's constructivism, which is brought into relief in wholly new ways in Sociological Studies, and which has ever so much to do with a notion of respect.
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