Respect means to value another person’s worldview.

Dignity is the status of deserving respect.

Honor is the cultivation of dignity and the mutuality of respect.

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A pluralist respects differently from a monist.

For a monist, the essence of respect lies in the uniformity of worldviews, in agreement on what the truth is. Truth is the intellectual representation of reality, and the intellect is entirely adequate to the task of understanding that of reality a human being ought to know.

For a pluralist, the essence of respect lies in the differences between worldviews, and of the creative potential in overcoming difference in pursuit of truth. Truth is the human relationship to reality, and pursuit of truth is the attempt of a finite being to relate as fully as possible to reality, which is infinite, and not reducible to the finite terms of the intellect.

Both monism and pluralism are self-evident and self-consistent by their own terms.

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Both monists and pluralists seek unity, but the mode of unity differs.

The monist looks for oneness based in uniformity of ultimate substance. That substance might be the smallest unit of substance, of which everything is composed. Or the substance might be the greatest unit of substance, of which everything is a part. But finally, the self and other (that which is not the self) is made equivalent through the sharing of a single nature. Monism is homotropic.

The pluralist looks for oneness based on integration. The integration consists of establishing various kinds of relationship (material, practical, intellectual, etc.) between the self and other, and conscious participation in that which exceeds the self. The other can be another self, or the material world, or past or future, but the pluralist seeks to extend its participation in the world by seeking otherness and modes of relationship and participation with that otherness. Pluralism is heterotropic.

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A type of pluralist exists who stresses tolerance over relationship, and who seeks to hermetically preserve its sense of individual unity by simultaneously acknowledging the fact of otherness and discounting the practical importance of otherness. Also, a type of monists exists who asserts a preexisting or preordained unity, but who becomes intensely agitated if anything appears to contradict his conception of this unity by demonstrating inexplicable and undeniable otherness. These types pursue elimination of difference (either through withdrawing from difference or destroying it).