Respect

Respect and consideration are words that have influenced each other, so much so that for some meanings they are synonymous, but their physiognomy offers food for thought and distinction. Their path starts from the eyes, and goes deep, to involve the entire person who looks and who is looked at. If the connection between regard and sight is clear to perceive, not so for respect, which derives from the Latin spicere, in the past participle spectus. Both words earn their specialization through the prefix. There is a "re-" which asks the intelligence to divert the eyes to look back, and there is a "re-" which requires strengthening the gaze, perhaps straight forward. In fact, respect looks backwards, respect looks forwards: this is also confirmed by the different verb tenses that have become fossilized in the two words. In fact, respect, when it is born, is always present: even when we talk about the respect we had two years earlier. In respect, however, the gaze has already been cast, and in the space of the past it has been transformed into reasoning: respect must be offered to everyone, beautiful or ugly, good or bad, due to all that we have been in common: at the root , that is, children.


Fabio Arduini
NP June / July 2023