According to Rawls, “respect for persons…a recognition of their inherent worth and dignity…is manifest in the content [and ranking] of the principles to which we appeal” (TJ 513; cf. TJ 155, 158, 469–470, 477–478; PL 318–319). Citizens’ civility also encompasses respect: “respect for persons is shown by treating them in ways that they can see to be justified” (TJ 513; cf. 297, 455). So does citizens’ mutual reasonableness: “men [who] have a sense of justice…therefore respect one another” (TJ 513).

The importance of these expressions of respect lies downstream, Rawls suggests, from the “fundamental importance of self-respect” (PL 318). Self-respect is “perhaps the most important primary good” (TJ 386; PL 318–319), and “our self-respect . . . depends in part upon the respect shown to us by others” (CP 171; cf. TJ 155–156, 297, 477). This merely instrumental justification for respect for persons is unusual, but consistent with Rawls’s constructivism. “The theory of justice provides a rendering of [ideas about Kantian respect and human dignity] but we cannot start out from them” (TJ 513).