2. Respect for others
The core value of Montessori's moral theory is character. While it can and should be perfected, preserved, and realized, character is what Kantians call an 'existent end' (Wood Reference Wood1999: 116) that provides 'personal dignity' worthy of respect (12:60). As character is the fundamental value in Montessori's moral theory, respect is the proper attitude to take toward that value. Section 1 emphasized respect for one's own character in the form of striving for self-perfection. In this section, I show how Montessori extends respect's scope to include others' character-driven activities.
2.1. From Character to Respect
As the most fundamental aspect of moral life, character provides the 'sense of personal dignity' that is one of two 'noble characteristics that would prepare a man to be social', where the second characteristic is 'a sense of justice' (12:60). Ethics does not end with self-perfection through character. Montessori's critique of Nietzschean egoism integrates egalitarian, universal concerns into her ethics. In moral life, 'two things are necessary: the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life' (10:52). Character leads to participation in social life, and those with character who find themselves in society develop a sense of justice.
To some extent, Montessori describes the connection between character and respect as an 'experimental fact' (9:52): 'easy adaptation to the social environment' arises 'as a result of the phenomenon of concentration' (17:233).
After these manifestations [of character] … true discipline is established, the most obvious results of which are closely related to what we will call 'respect for the work of others and consideration for the rights of others.' Henceforward a child no longer attempts to take away another's work; even if he covets it, he waits patiently until the object is free. … When discipline has been established by internal processes … there is a mutual respect … between the children … and hence is born that complex discipline which … must accompany the order of a community. (9:70)
'Normalization' generates respect for others. For philosophers like Kant, who see human nature as radically evil (see Formosa Reference Formosa2018; Wood Reference Wood1999), this empirical claim about effects of character might seem overly 'romantic' or mere wishful thinking. Montessori provides evidence for her empirical claims, and recent work provides further support for them (see Lillard Reference Lillard2007), but further empirical work needs to be done.
Beyond straightforward empirical correlation, some features of character lend themselves to the extension of respect. Because character is a pursuit of perfection, it requires and fosters conceptions of what is admirable. Those with character value norm-governed work toward ideals of perfection, and those who aspire to perfection come to admire, respect, and be inspired by others' similar pursuits. Montessori offers neither a conceptual argument like Gewirth's insistence that 'a claim on the part of the agent that he has a right to perform his action' is both 'an essential feature of [one's] action' and a claim by which 'he is logically committed to the generalization of this right-claim to all prospective agents' (Gewirth Reference Gewirth1974: 62–63) nor even a Korsgaardian claim about what is constitutive of human reasoning as such (Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2009). Her essentially psychological claim lays out perceptions of moral sense as it develops in children in conditions conducive to its exercise (see Frierson Reference Frierson2015). Like Gewirth and Korsgaard, however, she highlights how striving toward perfection pushes beyond each individual. We naturally see others' pursuit of perfection as equal in value to our own, which gives rise to a commitment to respect and admire it.
Moreover, because character seeks perfection with an indeterminate object, social life itself can become its object; one can seek perfection in social intercourse. Those with character actively involved in social life seek to engage in that life increasingly excellently. They seek to know, conform to, and improve standards of excellence for social interactions, preeminent among which are norms of mutual respect.
Character particularly promotes respect given properly prepared social environments where daily life provides opportunities to exercise social virtues. Montessori described 'the meaning of morality' as 'our relation with other people and our adaptation to life with other people'.
If the different individuals have to live harmoniously in one society, with a common aim, there must be a set of rules which we call morality. … [Morality is] … a technique which allows us to live together harmoniously … a form of adaptation to a common life for the achievement of a common aim. (Montessori Reference Montessori1984: 15)
Children learn this morality through actually living together (1:203), and Montessori designed her classroom environment to encourage the 'conflicts' that prompt awareness of the need to respect others (see Krogh Reference Krogh1981). In those contexts, normalized children develop their own moral sense: 'If social virtues need to develop, they will do so at that moment when children must of themselves adapt themselves to these virtues' (18:265). Montessori defends scarcity of materials, for example, in moral terms:
There is only one specimen of each object, and if a piece is in use when another child wants it, the latter—if he is normalized—will wait for it to be released. Important social qualities derive from this. The child comes to see that he must respect the work of others, not because someone has said that he must, but because this is a reality he meets in his daily experience. There is only one between many children, so there is nothing for it but to wait. And since this happens every hour of the day for years, the idea of respecting others, and of waiting one's turn, becomes a habitual part of life which always grows more mature. (1:202)
Given scarcity, there is 'nothing for it' but to respect others' work. Respect describes how a community of character-driven activity functions; it is not a command from God or parents, an abstract requirement of practical reason, or a way to promote hedonic happiness.
2.2. The Nature of Respect
For Montessori, 'studying … these children and their mutual relationships in an atmosphere of freedom, the true secrets of society come to be revealed' (1:206), such as that 'society does not rest on personal wishes, but on a combination of activities which have to be harmonized' (1:202). Within what we might call Montessori's 'social contract', the fundamental good of society is harmony of activity, rather than maximization of preference-satisfaction or even securing of rights to choose as such. Respect, as the means for securing this harmony, is morally required.
Because Montessorian respect focuses on harmony of activity, its objects are activities—not wishes or preferences—of others. Interference and interruption, even to aid, are paradigmatic forms of disrespect. Montessori compares interruption of the child to 'the manner of masters to slaves who have no human rights' (9:15). She insists, 'He who interrupts children in their occupations in order to make them learn some pre-determined thing … confuses the means with the end and destroys the man for a vanity' (9:134). Throughout her pedagogy, Montessori describes interruption and unnecessary help as among the most severe errors caregivers make with children. Her moral philosophy explains why. Exercising effort toward achieving worthwhile goals is the core of character. In 'those marvelous moments when their attention is fixed', children who are 'roughly interrupted' can rightly object that their wills are thwarted (9:16). When 'interrupted … they lose all the characteristics connected with an internal process regularly and completely carried out' (9:74). Most basically, moral respect is respecting others in their effortful work.
Besides noninterference with others' free activity, respecting others can, at times, involve directly helping them. Highlighting dangers of unnecessary assistance, Montessori distinguishes 'service' from 'help'. Service consists of doing something for another; it 'suffocates their useful, spontaneous activity' by treating them like 'puppets [or] dolls' (Montessori Reference Montessori and George1912: 97). Help, by contrast, 'help[s] him to make a conquest of such useful acts as nature intended he should perform for himself' (Montessori Reference Montessori and George1912: 97); it responds to an urge that became an articulated request among children in Montessori's schools: 'help me to do it by myself' (22:175; cf. 4:6; 10:97). Unfortunately, adults often serve in place of helping:
The mother who feeds her child without making the least effort to teach him to hold the spoon for himself … is not a good mother. She offends the fundamental human dignity of her son,— she treats him as if he were a doll, when he is, instead, a man confided by nature to her care. (Montessori Reference Montessori and George1912: 98)
By contrast, normalized children 'respect one another's efforts, and give help only when it is necessary', such as when 'there is a mishap, like the breaking of a vase', and 'the child who has dropped it is desperate [and] … feels ashamed' (1:207–208). In a healthy environment conducive to character, children show respect. This respect is agency-centered, offer necessary help but not service, condemns interruption, and protects each child's ability to do his own work. Montessori's experiences and experiments throughout the world showed this 'normal' form of mutual respect as a universal feature of healthy social life.
Montessorian respect for others has affective dimensions. Respectful people esteem others qua agents with 'recognition respect' (Darwall Reference Darwall1977: 38): 'Children come to know one another's characters and to have a reciprocal feeling for each other's worth' (1:205). Free from envy or jealousy, respect also includes that 'appraisal respect' (Darwall Reference Darwall1977: 39) that consists in 'admiration for the best. Not only are these children free from envy, but anything well done arouses their enthusiastic praise' (1:209). Finally, as we will see in more detail in section 3, character-driven respect is infused with 'affection' and 'true brotherhood' (1:205).
2.3. Montessori and Kant on respect
While Montessori's character-based emphases on individuality, progress, and perfection resonate with Nietzschean perfectionism, her conception of respect, like Kant's, requires one to subordinate one's actions—including one's pursuit of perfection—to obligations of respect for others. Just as for Kant, one ought 'so act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means' (Kant Reference Kant1900: 4: 429), so with Montessori one must respect others' activities even while pursuing one's own. Her two-fold emphasis—not infringing on and directly promoting others' agency—even fits Kant's distinction between perfect and imperfect duties (4:421–23, cf. Guyer Reference Guyer2014: 13).
Moreover, while character is the fundamental value in Montessori's moral theory, respect 'trumps' character in that people must show respect whether they have character or not. Because Montessori develops her moral theory in the context of pedagogy, she emphasizes that teachers must protect and promote character. Teachers—and others with responsibilities for protecting human rights—must ensure that even individuals without character respect others in their actions; the teacher 'must not only not interfere when the child is concentrating, she must also see that [the child] is not disturbed', which will require that she 'be a policeman' with those who interfere with others (17:229). Even if mere respectful behavior is not real respect, Montessori also describes people who 'impose rules upon themselves to save them from falling', and while such people fall short of her moral ideal, Montessori nonetheless describes them as having 'virtue' (1:189). Respectful moral agents without character are incomplete and conflicted, but they still ought to exhibit respect for others. Character is a perfectionist ideal, while respect is a categorical imperative.
Montessori's conception of respect differs from Kant's, however, in several respects. Kantian moral respect encompasses the whole of moral theory, while Montessorian respect is one element of a broader theory. Kantian respect is also broader than Montessorian when identifying what in others should be respected. For Kant, one ought to respect others' capacities for choice and thus not interfere with or compromise their ability to pursue objects of their choice in ways they choose (as long as they do not wrong others). Further, one ought to make some efforts toward positively advancing others' 'happiness', understood as the sum of objects for which they 'wish and will' (Kant Reference Kant1900: 5: 124).