ABSTRACT
Respect is not just a principle or concept but also an attitude (Downie & Telfer, 1969) of unconditional positive regard for whoever and whatever possesses worth. However, for millennia there has been a contestation of whether worth is possessed by all aspects of reality and reality as a whole or is possessed only or more heavily by certain aspects of reality – such as human beings or only a subset of them who satisfy ‘qualifying’ criteria. In Western discourse what amount to tussles over this have often been played out through the discourses relating to personhood and dignity – with the application of the former being necessarily narrow and the latter often interpreted as being so but at least capable of being broader. Having critically explored how these terms have been used in Sections 1.2 and 1.3 of this chapter, I go on to make the case that worth applies broadly to all aspects of reality and reality as a whole in part four and in part five link this to my understanding of the nature and purpose of reality and key related streams of holistic thought.
