 An attitude of respect is, most generally, a relation between a subject and an object in which the subject responds to the object from a certain perspective in some appropriate way. Respect necessarily has an object: respect is always directed toward, paid to, felt about, shown for some object. While a very wide variety of things can be appropriate objects of one kind of respect or another, the subject of respect (the respecter) is typically a person, that is, a conscious rational being capable of recognizing objects, intentionally responding to them, having and expressing values with regard to them, and being accountable for disrespecting or failing to respect them. Respect and disrespect can also be expressed or instantiated by or through things that are not persons, such as guidelines, rules, laws, and principles, systems, and institutional organizations and operations. So, we can say that laws that prohibit torture express respect for persons while the institution of slavery is profoundly disrespectful of human beings.