Me being me, I immediately started thinking about the words themselves as well as the meanings behind them, since at first I was hard-pressed to clearly define the difference between the two.
These days, "approval" means something closer to "liking", which makes an easier distinction from "respect". When I dug into the etymology, though, some interesting thoughts emerged.
"Approve" has a deep root of the Latin "probare", "honest/genuine". I'm guessing that since generally "honest/genuine=good" in most cultures, it leads to "approbare", which is "to assent to as good". Over time a layer of meaning came to be applied that added the weight of expert opinion on the goodness of the thing, which gives us the concept of "approving" such as approving an application - "I, the expert, say this is good".
"Respect", on the other hand, means purely and clearly "looking back at" - "re" (back) and "specere" (look at). Interestingly, the Online Etymological Dictionary says that it took a couple hundred years to acquire the meaning of "treat with deferential regard or esteem".
So it seems to me that there's something more personal about respect - there's that root meaning of "I see you", and "being seen" is extraordinarily important to most of us. However, at its root, it *doesn't* mean "I think what I see is good" - that meaning evolved over time, which I find extremely interesting.
Approval, on the other hand, is simply a statement that "I think this thing or person is good, i.e. true/genuine". There's less of the implication of "seeing", so it's less personal, but at its root I don't see anything wrong with being able to say something is good/honest/genuine. I think the modern usage of the term has become more akin to liking, as I mentioned, and I think that's a result of the shift from "true" to "good" - good, after all, being a highly personal determination. "True", not so much, really. "Genuine" kind of falls in between - when applied to a factual thing, it's pretty clearly determined, but when applied to an overall person (not to a specific word or action) it's more a statement of character, which moves towards the "good" judgment.
Boiling all that down, I guess I can see respect without approval - your example was a good one - but I can't see approval without respect. Certainly when I am expressing them, they are not synonymous but they're very closely linked - if I do not think you or your actions/words are "good/true/honest/genuine", I'm not going to "look back at you" with very rare exceptions. "Approval" for me becomes a function of "do you meet my standards of integrity and maturity" rather than "do I like you" and/or "do you support me unconditionally", which seems to be more what it means to most people these days.
Since that's how it feels to me, that's more how I interpret it from others, and that being the case, how much it means to me has less to do with the distinction between respect and approval and far more to do with the person doing the respecting/approving. If it's someone who matters to me, and whose perspective *I* respect/approve of, then to discover that they did NOT respect me or approve of me would be disheartening and I would want to know why and whether I could change that. Those people constitute a small group, however, and for the rest of the world I could care less.
I don't find that most people have enough self-awareness or critical thinking skills to produce what I would call genuine "respect" or "approval" anyway - it's just a reflexive, childish "play the game my way and I like you and will praise you" or "you didn't act exactly as I thought you should so now you are a bad person and I will say bad things about you". I can't afford to be affected by that kind of stuff, and it's pretty meaningless anyway since it's really not about me - most people are so self-absorbed they can't even *see* me, much less come to a real, thoughtful conclusion about me. So, whatever.
Long and rambling, but I hope it was a reasonable answer to your questions. Thanks for the opportunity to swing in the gray matter playground!
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 02:15 pm (UTC)These days, "approval" means something closer to "liking", which makes an easier distinction from "respect". When I dug into the etymology, though, some interesting thoughts emerged.
"Approve" has a deep root of the Latin "probare", "honest/genuine". I'm guessing that since generally "honest/genuine=good" in most cultures, it leads to "approbare", which is "to assent to as good". Over time a layer of meaning came to be applied that added the weight of expert opinion on the goodness of the thing, which gives us the concept of "approving" such as approving an application - "I, the expert, say this is good".
"Respect", on the other hand, means purely and clearly "looking back at" - "re" (back) and "specere" (look at). Interestingly, the Online Etymological Dictionary says that it took a couple hundred years to acquire the meaning of "treat with deferential regard or esteem".
So it seems to me that there's something more personal about respect - there's that root meaning of "I see you", and "being seen" is extraordinarily important to most of us. However, at its root, it *doesn't* mean "I think what I see is good" - that meaning evolved over time, which I find extremely interesting.
Approval, on the other hand, is simply a statement that "I think this thing or person is good, i.e. true/genuine". There's less of the implication of "seeing", so it's less personal, but at its root I don't see anything wrong with being able to say something is good/honest/genuine. I think the modern usage of the term has become more akin to liking, as I mentioned, and I think that's a result of the shift from "true" to "good" - good, after all, being a highly personal determination. "True", not so much, really. "Genuine" kind of falls in between - when applied to a factual thing, it's pretty clearly determined, but when applied to an overall person (not to a specific word or action) it's more a statement of character, which moves towards the "good" judgment.
Boiling all that down, I guess I can see respect without approval - your example was a good one - but I can't see approval without respect. Certainly when I am expressing them, they are not synonymous but they're very closely linked - if I do not think you or your actions/words are "good/true/honest/genuine", I'm not going to "look back at you" with very rare exceptions. "Approval" for me becomes a function of "do you meet my standards of integrity and maturity" rather than "do I like you" and/or "do you support me unconditionally", which seems to be more what it means to most people these days.
Since that's how it feels to me, that's more how I interpret it from others, and that being the case, how much it means to me has less to do with the distinction between respect and approval and far more to do with the person doing the respecting/approving. If it's someone who matters to me, and whose perspective *I* respect/approve of, then to discover that they did NOT respect me or approve of me would be disheartening and I would want to know why and whether I could change that. Those people constitute a small group, however, and for the rest of the world I could care less.
I don't find that most people have enough self-awareness or critical thinking skills to produce what I would call genuine "respect" or "approval" anyway - it's just a reflexive, childish "play the game my way and I like you and will praise you" or "you didn't act exactly as I thought you should so now you are a bad person and I will say bad things about you". I can't afford to be affected by that kind of stuff, and it's pretty meaningless anyway since it's really not about me - most people are so self-absorbed they can't even *see* me, much less come to a real, thoughtful conclusion about me. So, whatever.
Long and rambling, but I hope it was a reasonable answer to your questions. Thanks for the opportunity to swing in the gray matter playground!