Enthusiasm over the night

Abstract

This paper offers and defends a conception of the ethical principle of respect for persons. I maintain that respecting persons involves (among other things) watching for, interpreting, and affording ethical significance to expressions of the sub‐rational. Drawing from a range of sources and focusing especially on literary works with broad resonance, I defend this understanding by outlining a view of the self that includes the unconscious mind. I argue, first, that our practices and folk conceptions in a range of contexts—from medical ethics to dream interpretation—already reflect this picture of the self, and, second, that this conception of the self is ethically attractive.