What is meant by “respect morality?” A respect morality has a basic imperative that some condition C ought to be promoted and protected regardless of any desire for C. Some examples of C are autonomy, duty and the good of the other. Corresponding imperatives might be expressed as: Protect autonomy for the sake of autonomy, Do your duty for the sake of doing your duty and promote the good of the other for the sake of the good of the other. Respect moralities are also virtue or character moralities because correlative to imperatives to do C for the sake of C there are imperatives to make yourself the kind of person who does C for the sake of C regardless of any desire to be such a person. For consensusal sexual morality in which protecting sexual autonomy is identified with receiving consent, the imperative may, for the purpose of emphasizing the difference between respect and desire, be expressed as protect receiving consent to the sexual act regardless of any desire to wait for consent.

The significance of recognizing some moralities as respect moralities is to point out that these kinds of moral theories need to include in their moral psycholgies another factor besides belief and desire to account for moral motivation. Perhaps belief and desire can account for why people choose what is believed to be good. However, if autonomy is specified what is to be respected, desire cannot account for choosing autonomy because autonomy is the condition for specifying what is good or truly desirable.

In this connection, I close this note by an attempt to reduce respecting sexual autonomy to desiring a certain type of sexual experience. See On Ohio State’s “Consent is Sexy” Posters.