The project of Joseph H. Kupler's "Respect and Autonomy" is two-fold: Kupler discusses and defines the concept of moral respect and argues why moral respect is the appropriate response to anyone who is living in an autonomous fashion. Kupler makes a distinction between this type of respect, which does need to be earned, and another type of respect, which is accorded to individuals based on something they "have done or are." (39)
People often earn respect, but this is not the type of respect with which Kupler is chiefly concerned. Some people are more worthy of respect than others; however, what determines the standard of respect depends on autonomous choice and not simply on one's earthly achievements.
Kupler begins with an explanation of "earned moral respect" as that respect which a person "deserves in light of some moral achievement." (39) This type of respect is dependent on two levels of autonomous choice: 1) the level of daily choice--choosing where you work or whom you love, for example; and 2) the "deeper" level at which one examines his or her own values and acts according to them.(40) The person who acts independently of the pressures of conformity and moves toward his or her ideals is, of course, more autonomous than the person who simply copies another's ideals and assumes them as his or her own. Thus Kupler argues that "we earn moral respect" in what he calls the "second-order," or the level of thought that deals with deeper decisions. (40)
However, autonomous living does not always bear positive results. Adolph Hitler, for example, was indeed an autonomous person living for the fruition of ideals--the extermination of every living Jew, and worldwide political domination. On the other hand, if one patterns his or her life after a great moral leader's, say Martin Luther King, in a copy-cat fashion, the results no more deserve moral respect than the actions that emerge from a morality of pure ev...