THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF SELF-RESPECT

by

MATT A. FERKANY

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

(Philosophy)

at the

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

2006
 i
THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF SELF-RESPECT

Matt A. Ferkany

Under the supervision of Professor Harry Brighouse

At the University of Wisconsin—Madison

Many philosophers have claimed that self-respect is of almost supreme

importance for its possessor and a controlling value for politics. This dissertation defends

three main theses about self-respect and its value: (1) self-respect is a virtuous character

trait distinct from and more valuable than self-esteem, (2) it is one thing among others

directly promoting a person’s well-being, and (3) it is something for which society ought

to supply adequate opportunity, though governments ought not actively promote it.

I distinguish self-esteem as the level at which a person is disposed to make

positive judgments and experience good feelings about herself. Self-respect, on the other

hand, I distinguish as appropriate consideration for or of the self, particularly as

manifested through habits of will and conduct like autonomy, personal and moral

integrity, humility (or non-arrogance), self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-

development. So understood, self-respect requires appreciating one’s rights and

observing some limits to what one is willing to do without shame, but not self-esteem,

not conceptually, and probably not causally. Rather, self-respecting persons simply

accept themselves as adequate or decent.

The autonomy and integrity of self-respecting persons has both intrinsic and

instrumental value for them. As integrated, self-respecting persons know what they stand

for and are less reliant on others for their self-esteem. As autonomous, they are less

vulnerable to exploitation and are well positioned to discover satisfying ways of life. But
 ii
both habits directly promote their well-being, insofar people who lack them but are

otherwise equally well off seem to be less well off on the whole.

As a constitutive part of a good life, self-respect is thus not simply a useful

primary good the social bases of which society might guarantee, but a valuable

functioning or capability it might actively promote. I argue that some ways of promoting

self-respect politically should nevertheless be avoided. Universal affirmation of the value

of all cultures, for instance, is self-defeating, whereas the promotion of self-respect in

schools puts the state’s legitimacy at risk. Instead, the just society should ensure adequate

opportunity for self-respect’s acquisition.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements v

Introduction and Chapter Summaries 1

Notes 8

Chapter 1: What is Self-Respect? 9

Introduction 9

The Basic Distinction Between Self-Respect and Self-Esteem 10

Some Accounts of Self-Respect and the Basic Distinction 18

Why Getting It Right Matters 26

Conclusion 34

Notes 36

Chapter 2: The Virtue View of Self-Respect 39

Introduction 39

The Virtue View 40

Objections to Self-Respect as Standards 72

Conclusion 82

Notes 84

Chapter 3: Self-Respect and Well-Being 87

Introduction 87

The Capability Thesis 88

The Paradigmatically Self-Respecting Person 90

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The Value of Self-Respect 109

Conclusion 127

Notes 129

Chapter 4: Well-Being and Endorsement 132

Introduction 132

The Endorsement Thesis and Subjectivism and Objectivism 133

About Well-Being

Two Ways of Being Well Off 136

Hedonism 138

Desire Theory 141

The Authentic Happiness Theory 146

Conclusion 155

Notes 156

Chapter 5: Restraint in the Politics of Self-Respect 158

Introduction 158

Promoting Self-Respect and Guaranteeing the (Social Bases of) 159

Self-Esteem

In Favor of Facilitating Self-Respect 180

Conclusion 214

Notes 215

Bibliography 218
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Acknowledgments

Many people have made this dissertation both possible and better than I alone could have

made it. Special thanks are due to Professor Harry Brighouse for taking on this project,

encouraging me throughout it, and asking just the right questions. I could not have

finished without his guidance, and perhaps not even begun. I am also grateful to

Professors Russ Shafer-Landau, Robert Streiffer, and Daniel Hausman for serving on my

committee and providing helpful feedback on earlier chapter drafts. Professor Lester H.

Hunt also provided helpful feedback on earlier chapter drafts and helped me survive my

earlier years as a graduate student. Mary Juzwik and Ronald Suter also provided helpful

feedback and encouragement. Dr. Ellen Grumeretz invited me to talk to her class of

therapists-in-training, leading to illuminating discussion about self-respect and self-

esteem.

Others helped in other invaluable ways. Patricia Winspur made finishing from out

of state far more expeditious than it easily might have been. Professor Dan Pekarsky

participated in my defense despite extraordinary circumstances. Oakland University

professor Paul Graves made graduate school a real possibility for me. My colleagues at

the University of Wisconsin-Madison provided encouragement and many good times,

Greg Novack and Alan Rubel later providing a place to stay. Susan Ferkany, Denis

Ferkany, and Mary Juzwik provided needed financial assistance, but also love and

encouragement paralleled only by my sister Colette’s and uncle Philip’s. Jeff Williams

gets an assist for introducing me to a wonderfully stress relieving basketball game,

Trevor Stone and Peter Youngs get one for their friendship. My dog Fritz ensured that I

took a self-respecting number of walks for a philosopher.

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This dissertation is dedicated to my wife Mary Juzwik—the value of her support

is otherwise utterly inexpressible.

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INTRODUCTION AND CHAPTER SUMMARIES

When in 1971 John Rawls proclaimed that self-respect (or what he then took to be the

same, self-esteem) is “perhaps the most important primary good,” he seems to have

struck a nerve. 1 Defining self-respect as the sense of self-worth consisting of belief that

one’s plan of life is worthwhile together with confidence in one’s ability to carry it out,

Rawls then maintained that we should “wish to avoid at almost any cost the social

conditions undermining self-respect.” “Without it,” he stated, “nothing may seem worth

doing, or if some things have value for us, we lack the will to strive for them.” 2

Though Rawls’s later opinion of self-respect’s importance seemed to change

significantly, 3 the belief that a key measure of a just society is how well it protects or

promotes a sense of self-worth has become both widespread and widely debated. Charles

Taylor, for instance, argues that just societies must enact certain forms of cultural

recognition, since their absence “can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a

false, distorted, and reduced mode of being” and leaving them “condemned to suffer the

pain of low self-esteem.” 4 In a similar spirit, Elizabeth Anderson rejects luck

egalitarianism on grounds that the monetary compensation it awards the disabled, the

untalented, or the ugly, for their “misfortunes” is tantamount to a public announcement of

their lesser worth and an attack on their self-respect. 5 Perhaps illuminating Anderson’s

point, Avishai Margalit defines humiliation as any behavior or condition constituting a

reason to consider self-respect injured, and claims that just societies never give such

reasons to those in their sphere. 6

While these commentators treat self-respect or self-esteem as a very great or even

uncompromising value, other theorists are less sanguine. Richard J. Arneson, for
 2
example, declares, “There is no threshold level of self-respect such that society should

give lexical priority to doing whatever it can to maintain all individuals above this level

of self-respect.” 7 Rather in his opinion, the value of self-respect is susceptible of difficult

and complicated trade-offs. Other philosophers, Laurence Thomas, for instance, draw a

distinction between self-respect and self-esteem and argue that justice demands equality

in opportunity for the first but not the second. Self-respect, Thomas argues, is merely the

conviction that one is deserving of “full moral status, and so the basic rights of that status,

simply in virtue of the fact that [one] is a person,” and having it does not depend on one’s

abilities or character. Self-esteem on the other hand is the belief that one’s successes meet

one’s aspirations or expectations, and so does depend (he claims) upon abilities and

character to a certain extent. But while society cannot ensure that everyone’s successes

match their aspirations, it can guarantee them a significant opportunity to be convinced of

their full moral status.

Setting aside these theorists’ remarks, it is in some ways easy to understand why

justice demands concern for self-respect. It is a truism that a person is badly off if she

lacks a secure sense of it. It is also evident (and commonly argued by both philosophers

and psychologists) that a person’s sense of her worth is to some extent dependent upon

her social environment. All humans want to feel that they are appreciated by others and

tend to be deeply affected when they believe that they are not. Self-respect merits

political concern simply because it is both valuable and social.

But returning to the remarks of these theorists, the precise importance of

politically securing self-respect slips away. First, they do not all clearly agree on the

urgency to justice of politically protecting or promoting it. But more fundamentally, they
 3
apparently do not all agree on even the simple question what self-respect is and whether

it is different from self-esteem (and if so how). What Taylor, for instance, seems to mean

by “self-esteem” does not seem to be the same thing that Thomas means by self-esteem,

nor what Rawls means by “self-respect/esteem”; what Thomas means by “self-esteem”

seems to be similar to what Rawls meant by “self-respect/esteem,” while what Taylor

means by “self-esteem” seems to be similar to what Thomas means by “self-respect”;

what Anderson and Margalit seem to mean by “self-respect” is not obviously the same

thing as either just what Thomas means by “self-respect” or “self-esteem” or what Rawls

meant by these. This is a mess. Furthermore, a review of the literature shows that none of

these authors, nor many others, compares his view at any length to those of others, nor

attempts to explain at much length why self-respect is of such great value (Rawls perhaps

being one exception).

This disorder concerning self-respect’s nature and value prompts the questions

that structure this dissertation. It is beyond doubt that a secure sense of self-worth is an

important element of human well-being. But what exactly is it to have self-respect and

how if at all is this different from having self-esteem? If these traits are different, are they

of equal political concern, or does one merit greater political concern than the other?

What is the precise value to a person’s life of having or lacking self-respect or self-

esteem? What does this value indicate about the precise urgency to justice of politically

promoting self-respect compared to other political values?

In response to these questions, this dissertation argues that self-respect is a

virtuous character trait worth achieving for its own sake that both differs from and merits

greater political concern than self-esteem. Self-respect, I will argue, is the virtue a person
 4
has when her will and conduct are organized by qualities enacting appropriate

consideration of and for herself, such as autonomy, personal and moral integrity, self-

knowledge, humility and self-acceptance, and self-development. Self-esteem, on the

other hand, is the level at which a person is disposed to make positive judgments and

experience good feelings about herself. So understood, self-respect, I argue, is one

important element making up a completely good life, whereas self-esteem’s value for

well-being is largely instrumental. However, this does not mean self-respect is worth

promoting politically at almost any cost. Rather, I argue that governments should exercise

considerable restraint in seeking to enable people to respect themselves. Not everyone

sees the value of self-respect and many ways of promoting it politically are self-

defeating. On other hand, promoting it through the educational system falls foul of

constraints of liberal legitimacy.

This dissertation argues for these points in the following way. Chapter 1 begins

the argument by setting out a basic account of the distinction between self-respect and

self-esteem and showing that it has three noteworthy qualities. According to this basic

distinction, to esteem the self is to in some way positively evaluate it, while to respect the

self is to in some way take appropriate consideration of or for it. The simple accounts of

self-respect and self-esteem this distinction contains are vague. But despite that, I argue

that a few good qualities are visible. First, the accounts usefully apply to and illuminate a

number of concrete cases studies by showing how the two traits can variously converge

and diverge. Second, a few prominent accounts of self-respect either miss the basic

distinction altogether or needlessly muddle it—they introduce unnecessary distinctions

between different kinds of self-respect. Third, as understood in terms of the basic

 5
distinction, I argue that self-respect merits greater political concern than self-esteem, both

for its greater social utility and greater worthiness of pursuit for its own sake. If so,

political theorists who would treat self-respect as a guiding value must be clear about the

difference and relationship between it and self-esteem.

In light of Chapter 1’s discussion, Chapter 2 elaborates fuller accounts of self-

respect and self-esteem, as well as a more systematic account of the difference and

relationship between them. As mentioned above, I argue that self-respect is the virtue a

person has when her will and conduct are organized by qualities enacting appropriate

consideration of and for herself, such as autonomy. Self-esteem, on the other hand, is the

level at which a person is disposed to make positive judgments and experience good

feelings about herself. This virtue view of the difference and relationship between self-

respect and self-esteem entails a few relevant theses. First, self-esteem is neither causally

nor conceptually necessary for self-respect and low self-esteem persons can be perfectly

self-respecting. This is partly because, while self-respect implies self-acceptance, low

self-esteem does not necessarily imply self-contempt, but only modesty or neutrality of

self-regard. Second, as a trait necessarily connected to habits that comprise flourishing

(such as autonomy), self-respecting persons necessarily possess a virtue whereas self-

esteeming ones do not necessarily possess one. Finally, whereas having self-respect

protects and necessarily justifies having some self-esteem, increases or decreases of self-

esteem do not justify changes in self-respect. All persons ought to respect themselves,

whatever their esteem for themselves.

With self-respect more clearly in view, Chapter 3 turns to consider in detail its

precise role in human well-being. I argue that certain habits of paradigmatically self-
 6
respecting persons, including autonomy and the avoidance of servility and personal

integrity, have both instrumental and intrinsic value for their well-being. That is, these

traits promote their well-being both because having them partly constitutes living well,

but also because they help them to achieve other goods of value, like good personal

relationships. In sum, Chapter 3 argues that self-respect is not just (or even primarily) a

needed means to pursuing other ends of value, but a valuable functioning worth achieving

for its own sake and as a constitutive part of the good life.

In maintaining that autonomy and personal integrity promote well-being directly

(as constitutive parts of well-being), the argument of Chapter 3 proceeds under the

controversial assumption that some things improve a person’s well-being whether she

believes they do or not. Chapter 4 aims to support the conclusions of Chapter 3 by

defending this controversial assumption against challenges to it in the well-being

literature. According to subjectivists about well-being, nothing can promote a person’s

well-being if she does not take a favorable attitude of some sort toward it under

appropriate circumstances, e.g. if seeing it clearly, it does not elicit her endorsement, give

her satisfaction, or realize her desires. Chapter 4 argues that this endorsement thesis is

mistaken. Whereas the endorsement thesis makes our endorsement of a thing a condition

of its ability to improve our lives, a better view understands endorsement of our life or its

events as one independent element of a completely good life.

The discussion of Chapters 3 and 4 show that relative to politics, self-respect is

not simply a primary good or all-purpose means (opportunity for which) justice might

guarantee, but a valuable functioning it might promote. Chapter 5 argues that, so

understood, there are good reasons for exercising restraint in seeking to politically enable
 7
self-respect. Politically enabling self-respect is fundamentally a perfectionist endeavor

and is anathema from the standpoint of political liberalism. Chapter 5 argues that though

political liberalism is not clearly a success, the values of public reason and liberal

legitimacy nevertheless recommend restraint in the promotion of self-respect. In the

educational policy domain, for instance, I argue that promoting self-respect in schools

threatens to be illegitimate. Furthermore, many other ways of enabling people to respect

themselves politically are either self-defeating or already required by justice for reasons

independent of self-respect’s value.

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NOTES: INTRODUCTION

1
See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 440.
2
Ibid.
3
Though see Rawls’s remarks on self-respect’s value at Political Liberalism, (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993), p. 319. There Rawls claims that “It is clear…that [self-respect’s] social bases are
among the most essential primary goods.”
4
Taylor, Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”, (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 25-
26.
5
Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (1999), 287-337. See especially pp. 304-6.
6
Margalit, The Decent Society, (Harvard University Press, 1996).
7
Arneson, “Against Rawlsian Equality of Opportunity,” Philosophical Studies 93:1 (1999), 77-112, p. 104.
 9
CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS SELF-RESPECT?

1. Introduction

This dissertation seeks to ascertain the value of self-respect for human well-being and its

place and importance in political argument. But what exactly is self-respect? The

literature in ethics and political philosophy does not straightforwardly answer this basic

question. Among authors who have commented on self-worth, nearly all use different

language, some apparently to refer to the same thing and others apparently to different

things. 1 Some speak solely in a language of self-respect, others speak only in a language

of self-esteem. 2 Others have made a distinction between self-respect and self-esteem and

use the language of both. 3 Who is right and does it really matter? What exactly is self-

respect?

This chapter argues that carefully distinguishing self-respect from self-esteem

matters. It matters because there is a highly plausible, basic way of distinguishing the two

that (1) usefully illuminates character, (2) shows them to have different value for human

well-being and politics, but which (3) is not clearly grasped by extant accounts of self-

respect. If so, greater clarity about the difference between these two traits is needed in

assessing self-respect’s value.

The discussion of this chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2 uses some concrete

case studies to show that a highly plausible way of distinguishing self-respect from self-

esteem (which I will call the basic distinction) usefully illuminates character. Section 3

reviews some prominent accounts of self-respect and its relationship to self-esteem,

showing that they either miss the basic distinction altogether or needlessly obscure it.
 10
Section 4 then argues that when understood in terms of the basic distinction, self-respect

and self-esteem have very different political value or importance.

2. The Basic Distinction Between Self-Respect and Self-Esteem

This section introduces and defends a basic conception of the distinction between self-

respect and self-esteem by showing how it usefully illuminates some concrete case

studies. The studies, when analyzed in terms of the basic distinction, will show a few

things. First, they will show that people can be self-esteeming while significantly lacking

self-respect in a number of different ways, or vice versa. Second, they will show that self-

respect is necessarily related to other desirable character traits, like non-servility, whereas

self-esteem is only loosely or causally related to them.

Before proceeding to the studies, it is worth emphasizing that the first claim is

weak in a certain way. It does not say that a person can be perfectly self-esteeming and

wholly lacking in self-respect or vice versa. Another thing analyzing self-respect and

self-esteem in terms of the basic distinction will show is that having one tends to

motivate a person to have the other to some degree. However, this does not mean there is

no difference between them, or that nothing of importance for ethics and political

philosophy attaches to the basic difference between them. As the case studies will show,

the two trait can nevertheless come very widely apart.

The basic distinction between self-respect and self-esteem is this:

Self-Esteem: To esteem the self is to in some way positively evaluate it, either

generally or in regards to some more specific dimension(s) of assessment.

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Self-Respect: To respect the self is to in some way give appropriate weight or

consideration to it or its evaluatively relevant features, especially in practical

deliberations. 4

The locution “in some way” makes both these formulations vague. This vagueness can be

somewhat removed and will be later on (in the next chapter especially). But this

vagueness is mostly necessary vagueness. It is necessary relative to self-esteem because

there are innumerable ways of thinking or feeling that manifest a positive evaluation of

the self. Similarly, there are innumerable ways of thinking, feeling, and willing or

desiring that manifest appropriate self-consideration.

These claims, and the merits of the basic distinction generally, are best

substantiated by concrete examples. I elaborate five here without comment, then analyze

them each in turn. Thus, consider the following cast of characters:

1) The Arrogant 5 —Skip is proud of having built the largest and most profitable
hamburger chain in the country. In building his empire, he has shamelessly encouraged
and benefited from cruel animal farming practices, fraudulent land deals, bribery of
public officials, misrepresentation of his product, and an army of unorganized, part-time,
benefits ineligible employees. Skip’s business practices have been widely criticized and
Skip is not unfamiliar with these criticisms. But he sees no reason to take the opinions of
his critics seriously. These people, he assumes, either don’t know what’s worth pursuing
in life or are simply envious of his success and incapable of engineering similar success
for themselves.

2) The Deferential Wife Revisited 6 —Grace is a woman who is devoted to serving her
beloved family. Though she works full time at a school, she does the majority of the
cooking and cleaning. At dinners, she is always the one making sure everyone else has
what he wants before fixing her own plate. If there is only one cookie left, she always lets
her husband or children take it, who rarely in turn offer it to her. She willingly
compromises on and participates in activities they prefer, but often notices how unwilling
or impatient they are to compromise in favor of her preferred activities. Grace is not
happy with these dimensions of her family life. But it isn’t that she doesn’t like benefiting
her family. She loves them and firmly believes she is right to be patient, giving, to do her
fair share. Grace, in fact, is proud of just how giving she can be and believes she takes
care of necessary household business as well as can be. She simply wishes others would
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do their share and be more giving and patient with her. But somehow she can’t find the
wherewithal or means to make her wishes clear to them, or, in the meantime, to change
her own behavior to better meet her own needs.

3) The Self-Unforgiving 7 —Despite realizing that she has many talents, Joan is sharply
self-critical. At parties, she is never quite sure what to say in making conversation, so she
usually doesn’t say anything, or waits for someone else to speak to her first. Even so, it
takes a good deal of courage to speak, since even then, she immediately begins to worry
that what she says will reveal what a stupid jerk she really is. Afterwards, she finds
herself wondering over and over whether she said anything wrong, thereby having added
to the list of all the other stupid things she knows she’s done, e.g. the subtle trusts broken,
the little generosities never repaid. Sometimes she feels so ashamed she thinks she is just
no good at all, though on reflection she realizes this feeling is unwarranted. Yet her
anxiety remains and in fact has occasionally led her to unproductive behavior and even
desperate acts that have only served to confirm and reinforce her feeling that she is
worthless. Preoccupied by self-doubt, she has spent as much time worrying about the
quality of her work than simply getting on with it, thereby deferring her success. She has
got in pointless arguments over trivia with loved ones, uselessly tried to achieve goals
beyond her reach, slept with men for whom she has no respect, and kept “friends” who
have simply used her.

4) The Humble—There are many things Sarah does very well and which she could be
justifiably proud of. Despite her significant talents, however, Sarah is not confident that
she has much to be especially proud of. It isn’t that she can’t see the merits of her
accomplishments. She simply declines to make much of them, preferring instead to self-
deprecatingly recall her faults, attribute her success largely to good fortune, and to focus
on the ways in which she could do better. There are, she believes, others who are much
more accomplished than she. Sometimes this gets in the way of her work. And Sarah is
often less assertive with others than she could reasonably be, always treating their wishes
with the utmost consideration. At parties, she lets others approach her first and gets
nervous when she is pulled into the limelight. Yet she is stunned when others take
advantage of her generosity and finds their nerve simply unbelievable. She isn’t
especially comfortable confronting it and sometimes worries that she might lose control.
But she has little difficulty detecting when she is being taken advantage of, losing
patience with it, and withdrawing her good will in response to it.

5) The Self-Complacent 8 —For Dan, work is just work and the minimum effort required
to get by is almost too much. Consequently, he is prone to frequent run-ins with
employers and has trouble holding down a job. It isn’t that he can’t think of better
activities he could realistically pursue in work. Rather, he just can’t be bothered to put in
the effort to pursue them seriously—what he most wants is to relax, party, and have a
good time. But even here he runs into difficulty. When socializing, he tends to drink too
much, make inappropriate jokes, and hog the limelight. This generally puts people off
and as a result, he does not have very many close friends, while those who claim to be his
friend tend to take advantage of him.
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These cases illustrate various way in which self-respect and self-esteem can coincide and

diverge, as well as the variety of ways in which each can be expressed in different

thoughts, feelings, desires, or exercises of will.

To analyze each case in order, Skip’s case illustrates one sort of divergence

between self-respect and self-esteem. He is plenty self-esteeming, but, given a certain

conception of general human worth, he substantially lacks self-respect. Skip’s self-esteem

is visible in the pride he takes in his success, as well as in his attitude toward critics of his

business practices. To take his pride, it manifests self-esteem because pride is a pleasant

feeling arising from belief in the goodness of the self’s connection to some object judged

to be good. Thus, it expresses a positive evaluation of the self. It says, for instance, “The

success of this hamburger chain is my doing, and being so successful is good, therefore, I

am good.” But note that pride has affective as well as cognitive dimensions. It feels good,

and its feeling good is as much a part of Skip’s positively evaluating himself as the

judgments grounding his feeling. In Skip’s case, the judgments and feelings of pride he

experiences are tied together and the judgments seem to have a priority or controlling role

in the construction of this self-esteem. But, as I’ll discuss further below, it is a mistake to

always ascribe this sort of priority to judgment in the construction of self-esteem. 9

On the other hand, given a certain plausible conception of human worth, Skip’s

business conduct and self-esteeming attitude toward himself both manifest a failure to

give appropriate weight to the self, a lack of self-respect. The relevant conception of

human worth is the egalitarian one according to which the interests and well-being of all

humans are owed equal consideration. On this conception, Skip’s morally disintegrated
 14
business conduct and lack of shame for it manifest a lack of self-respect, because

defrauding others, deceiving them, or exploiting them in order to promote one’s own self-

interest are ways of giving his own well-being more consideration than is compatible

with seeing himself and others as equals. 10 Thus, the structure and direction of Skip’s

will and desires, together with his feelings and conduct, express a lack of self-respect.

Furthermore, insofar as the disintegrated quality of Skip’s success makes his pride and

lack of shame misplaced, the esteem he has for himself on the basis of that success also

expresses a lack of self-respect. Pride for immorality esteems the self more highly than is

appropriate. A more fitting response is shame. So, not only do Skip’s desires and actions

express self-disrespect, so do his thoughts and feelings. Hence, Skip’s case is one of

secure self-esteem, but a lack of self-respect.

The Deferential Wife Revisited illustrates a different sort of divergence between

self-respect and self-esteem. Though Grace lacks Skip’s arrogance, this is not really

because she is substantially lacking in self-esteem. It is difficult to say that she does not

positively evaluate herself on the whole, since, on the contrary, she takes pride in the

expert way she manages household business and in how patient and giving she can be.

And insofar as these really are virtues compatible with considering herself and others to

be equals, the esteem Grace has for herself on that basis manifests self-respect.

Nevertheless, Grace lacks an important dimension of self-respect. This is because in the

context of her family life, she is disposed to attend to others in a way that involves her in

claiming less than her due from them, thus expressing less than due consideration for

herself as a moral equal. Whereas Skip is arrogant and entitled, Grace is servile and
 15
deferential. Hence, though Grace is not self-esteeming the way Skip is, both are self-

esteem cases of deficient self-respect.

The next two cases, The Self-Critic and The Humble, illustrate yet another

contrast. Unlike Skip and Grace, Joan (The Self-Critic) substantially lacks self-esteem as

well as self-respect. Joan is a paradigmatically low self-esteem person. Not only does she

tend to evaluate herself negatively, she seems perpetually preoccupied by questions of

self-worth. This leads her to make gaffes that just reinforce her self-doubts, locking her

into a cycle of self-criticism from which it is difficult to escape. Moreover, her case is

one in which a lack of self-esteem and self-respect converge. By hypothesis, her Joan has

many good qualities and her faults are completely ordinary. Her relentless self-criticism

is thus unmerited and itself expresses a lack of self-respect or appropriate consideration

for herself—she should be more self-accepting. But this self-disrespect also leads her to

want or do things further manifesting a lack of appropriate self-consideration, e.g. to

maintain abusive relationships or sleep with men she really does not care for. Note

furthermore that, unlike in Skip’s case, there is a disconnect between some of Joan’s self-

evaluative judgments and her self-esteem related feelings. Joan is aware that she is too

self-critical and to this extent her self-esteem is preserved. But this self-conscious

judgment seems to be powerless to short-circuit the cycle of self-criticism she is caught in

or to end the bad feelings she experiences about herself. Hence, self-(dis)esteem is

expressed through both thoughts and feelings, neither of which has special priority in its

construction. 11

Joan’s case is usefully contrasted with Sarah’s. Though Sarah is not lacking in

self-esteem to the extent Joan is, she is not especially self-esteeming either. On the
 16
contrary, she is quite self-deprecating. One difference in her case, however, is that

positive and negative self-evaluative thoughts and feelings do not so widely diverge.

Though she generally forbids herself from experiencing any very positive ones,

preferring to maintain a low but even level of affect, she is much more in control of her

feelings. Second, though she does not esteem herself very highly, Sarah is not ashamed of

herself and does not take her faults to justify being the object of abuses from self and

others the way Joan does. Sarah’s case is thus one of modest self-esteem and secure self-

respect.

Finally, the case of The Self-Complacent represents yet another way in which

self-respect and self-esteem are divergent. In uncritically accepting himself and what he

is doing with his life, Dan is clearly not lacking in self-esteem. But for the same reason

he is significantly lacking in self-respect. This is not because self-respect forbids

uncritically accepting any of one’s shortcomings without shame. On the contrary, Joan’s

self-respect, for example, could benefit greatly if she became more like Dan. But Dan is

not just self-accepting, but self-complacent, seeing no reasons for self-criticism in a way

that harms his life. The clearest evidence of this is the poor quality of his personal and

work relationships. And though less obvious, probably more important is the absence in

his life of very many worthwhile pursuits that would promote his own self-development.

Dan does not, for example, read books, knit, study an instrument, play a sport, write

computer programs, maintain a web-page or blog, draw, or throw darts well. Such

pursuits tend to have a complexity requiring the development and exercise of

sophisticated human capacities, such as for patience, persistence, delayed gratification,

and not least, critical self-reflection. But going for such pursuits and developing the
 17
capacities they require is appropriate because they give life point and weight and conduce

to more stable sources of pleasure and satisfaction, qualities it is good for a person’s life

to have and bad for it to lack. 12 Moreover, because leading a life lacking in point, weight,

and stable sources of satisfaction is itself bad for a person, omitting to exert oneself in

ways that would produce them manifests a lack of consideration for self, a lack of self-

respect. Thus, even though manifested through very different thoughts, feelings, acts, and

desires, Dan’s case is similar to Grace’s. Both are secure self-esteem cases of deficient

self-respect.

It may be, of course, that Dan or people like him (or incidentally, like Skip,

Grace, or Joan) are generally blameless for this shortcoming. They might simply never

have had a chance to learn the basic skills needed to pursue their own self-development

(skills detect and effort fully pursue worthwhile goals), or their social circumstances may

not supply adequate opportunities for pursuing them. But lacking self-respect is one

thing, culpability for this lack another. If we decided that Dan was blameless for this lack,

our response to it might take the form of sympathetic encouragements to changer rather

than sharply critical rebukes. But we would still acknowledge a lack of self-respect.

The case studies discussed in this section support the basic distinction between

self-respect and self-esteem. Analyzed in terms of it, the studies show that self-respect

and self-esteem diverge and converge in a variety of interesting ways. This is because,

though having one tends to motivate having the other to some degree, self-respect is

conceptually related to other character traits to which self-esteem is only contingently

related. These include non-arrogance, (moral) integrity, non-servility, a will to self-

development, and a level of self-acceptance compatible with avoiding self-complacency.

 18
These points need more discussion, which the next chapter will pursue. But the argument

of this section shows that the basic distinction applies to some commonsense case studies

in a way usefully illuminating the character of the people in them.

3. Some Accounts of Self-Respect and the Basic Distinction

This section reviews a few prominent accounts of self-respect and argues that each

should be rejected. Each of these accounts either fails to grasp the basic distinction or

needlessly obscures it. But none offers any very good reason for abandoning or obscuring

it. If so, some prominent accounts of self-respect still fail to adequately grasp the basic

difference and relationship between these traits.

The accounts reviewed in this section will include those by John Rawls, Stephen

L. Darwall, and Elizabeth Telfer, taken in that order. Before commencing the discussion,

it is worth saying a few words about why these accounts particularly merit discussion

rather than certain others. There are other prominent accounts, such as those by Robin S.

Dillon, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Stephen J. Massey, and Laurence Thomas that might be

thought to merit discussion. 13 There are three reasons for focusing here on the first set of

accounts. First, these accounts form the basis for those advanced by these other authors. 14

Second, the accounts by Rawls, Darwall, and Telfer make up a narrative that is

particularly apt for interrogating the basic distinction. Rawls’s account omits to

distinguish self-respect from self-esteem altogether, whereas the accounts by Darwall and

Telfer accept that distinction while each differently distinguishing two other kinds of self-

respect. If these accounts are plausible, then the basic distinction is flawed at a
 19
fundamental level. Finally, the next chapter will address any features of the accounts by

Dillon et al that further challenge the basic distinction.

So, to commence the discussion, I begin with Rawls. In A Theory of Justice,

Rawls famously treats self-respect and self-esteem as identical. There he states

We may define self-respect (or self-esteem) as having two aspects. First of all…it

includes a person’s sense of his own value, his secure conviction that his

conception of his good, his plan of life, is worth carrying out. And second, self-

respect implies a confidence in one’s ability, so far as it is within one’s power, to

fulfill one’s intentions. When we feel that our plans are of little value, we cannot

pursue them with pleasure or take delight in their execution. Nor plagued by

failure and self-doubt can we continue in our endeavors. (Rawls, A Theory of

Justice, 1971, 440)

In this passage, by “self-respect,” Rawls really seems to mean “self-esteem.” Consider

that to have the sense of self-worth deriving from confidence in the value of one’s plans

or in one’s ability to pursue them successfully is to positively evaluate the self. Such

confidence says, “My plans are good, so I’m a good person,” or, “I’m capable of

achieving this worthy goal, therefore, I’m good.” These sentiments are good and worth

wanting and really do seem to be crucial to having self-esteem. Hence, understood as an

account of it, Rawls’s definition is astute.

Understood as an account of self-respect, however, Rawls’s definition is remiss.

A sense of self-worth premised on confidence in one’s plans or abilities is not internally

related to self-respect or proper self-consideration. Self-respecting persons take

appropriate consideration for or of themselves in conducting their lives and may or may
 20
15
not believe their plans are good or their talents particularly up to them. A person like

Grace, for instance, confidently believes her familial altruism is worth carrying out and

confidently believes she is right to desire greater consideration from her family. Yet in

failing to change her conduct in ways that would extract due consideration from them,

she exhibits a lack of self-respect. Skip, on the other hand, has self-confidence to burn.

But he is lacking in other equally important dimensions of self-respect—he takes himself

to be worthy of much more than self-respect permits.

It may be that lacking confidence in one’s plans or ability to carry them out often

causes a person to lack self-respect. This seems to be a big part of Joan’s problem, for

instance. But, as Sarah’s case suggests, this need not always happen. She is quite self-

deprecating, seeing her plans and accomplishments as of modest value. This may indeed

show that she lacks self-esteem to some significant degree. But this does not prevent her

from accepting her ordinary shortcomings and avoiding servility. Furthermore, as Skip’s

case illustrates, having self-esteem does not guarantee that one will have self-respect,

since having that requires more than accepting one’s ordinary faults and avoiding

servility.

Apparently in response to similar criticisms, Rawls in his later work speaks solely

in the language of self-respect. 16 This change in usage does not, however, solve the

problem for his account, since he does not also change its substance. Thus, in Justice as

Fairness, for instance, Rawls reaffirms the account in Theory by stating that, “The social

bases of self-respect…[are] those aspects of institutions normally essential if citizens are

to have a lively sense of their worth as persons and to be able to advance their ends with

self-confidence.” 17 So, though Rawls’s account of self-respect is an astute account of

 21
self-esteem, it fails altogether to grasp the basic distinction between self-respect and self-

esteem.

In contrast to Rawls, Stephen L. Darwall advances a view that nearly grasps the

basic distinction. 18 However, it includes an element that only needlessly obscures it.

Before this can be shown, Darwall’s more general account of respect for persons must be

introduced, since his account of self-respect is one part of this more general theory.

Respect for persons as such is the sort of respect all persons are owed simply in

virtue of their being persons. According to Darwall, understanding what this sort of

respect involves requires distinguishing “two rather different ways in which persons may

be the object of respect.” 19 On one of these ways, when we speak of someone as

deserving our respect, we mean to say that she deserves a positive appraisal because of

the merits of her character (or excellences attributable to her agency). This way of

respecting a person, which Darwall aptly dubs ‘appraisal respect,’ is like esteem in that

the “respectingness” shown for the object of it consists in the positive evaluation or

appraisal itself. On the other hand, sometimes when we say that a person deserves our

respect, we do not mean that she merits a positive appraisal given her character. Rather,

what is meant is that we are obliged to recognize the mere fact of her being a person as a

restriction on how we may permissibly conduct ourselves toward her. As Darwall states

it, “To have recognition respect for someone as a person is to give appropriate weight to

the fact that he or she is a person by being willing to constrain one’s behavior in ways

required by that fact.” 20 Darwall aptly calls this way of respecting a person ‘recognition

respect’ and plausibly identifies it as the sort all persons are owed merely as persons. This
 22
is because appraisal respect may be justly withheld whenever a person lacks good

character, but there are ways we may not treat a person even if she lacks good character.

Turning to the self, Darwall maintains that appraisal and recognition respect both

“are attitudes which one can bear to oneself.” 21 Recognition self-respect is what a person

has just when she “recognizes the rights and responsibilities of being a person,” or

otherwise conducts herself in ways expressive of appropriate consideration for self as a

person. 22 Darwall’s recognition self-respect is thus equivalent to what the basic

distinction simply calls “self-respect.” On the other hand, appraisal self-respect is what a

person has just when she positively appraises herself for excellences of character, i.e. her

merits attributable to her agency. Note then that Darwall’s ‘appraisal self-respect’ is

included in what the basic distinction calls “self-esteem,” and distinguishing it thus

obscures the basic distinction between self-respect and self-esteem. Instead of

distinguishing these traits as the basic distinction does, Darwall prefers to distinguish

self-esteem as a separate sort of positive self-evaluative trait. Why? In making his case

for his set of distinctions, Darwall correctly observes that:

Those features of a person which form the basis for his self-esteem or lack of it

are by no means limited to character traits, but include any features such that one

is pleased or downcast by a belief that one has or lacks it. One’s self-esteem may

suffer from a low opinion of, for example, one’s appearance, temperament, wit,

physical capacities, and so forth. One cannot always be what one would wish to

be, and one’s opinion of oneself may suffer. Such a failing itself does not give rise

to lack of appraisal self-respect, although it may suffer if one attributed the failing

to a lack of will, an inability to bring oneself to do what one wanted most to do.
 23
So far forth the failing would be regarded as arising from a defect in one’s

character and not solely from, for example, a lack of physical ability. (Darwall,

“Two Kinds of Respect,” 1995, 194)

But none of this supplies decisive reason to distinguish appraisal self-respect from self-

esteem, given that distinguishing it obscures the basic distinction and both are simply

positive evaluations of the self. This is so even though everything Darwall says here is

true and in some way important. Some of our good (or bad) qualities are indeed

attributable to our wills while some are not. And doubtless we are capable of thinking to

ourselves things like, “Well, I might not have the prettiest mug, but I can still sell ice in

the Arctic, so it’s no skin off my back,” thereby preserving our self-esteem against

injuries to it arising from features of ourselves over which we have no control.

Distinguishing positive self-appraisals we might make on the basis of our agency-

character from those we might make on the basis of traits over which we lack control,

e.g. our physical appearance, captures an important sense that we might exercise some

control over our self-esteem. But this makes sense only if appraisals we make on the

basis of our agency-character count toward or detract from our self-esteem. Hence, none

of what Darwall says gives us any decisive reason to distinguish a concept of ‘appraisal

self-respect’ from self-esteem. Since the attitude toward the self each finally denotes is

one of positive or negative self-appraisal, the ‘appraisal self-respect’ concept is nothing

more than convenient shorthand for self-esteem having a certain narrow basis. Hence,

Darwall’s account gives us no real reason to include it in our conceptual scheme and

thereby obscure the basic distinction.

 24
A somewhat different account of self-respect by Elizabeth Telfer appears to give

good reason for distinguishing a self-evaluative concept of self-respect distinct from self-

esteem. 23 Telfer does not mention self-esteem or say how it is different from self-respect.

But according to Telfer, self-respect should be seen as having two aspects, a conative and

an estimative aspect. The conative aspect is “the desire to behave worthily for its own

sake,” and as Telfer elaborates it, it implies desiring to avoid conduct like servility, self-

pity, or cowardliness. 24 It is thus very similar to the ideal of self-respect captured by the

basic distinction (although, since conative self-respect is identical to a desire, this ideal is

somewhat narrower).

On the other hand, Telfer observes that in phrases such as, “I could never respect

myself again if I were to…”, “respect” seems to refer to a person’s self-evaluative belief

that “he attains at least some minimum standard,” or “comes up to scratch.” 25 This is

Telfer’s “estimative self-respect.” This concept is like self-esteem in being self-

evaluative, but unlike it in that the evaluation it embodies is not positive. Rather, it

evaluates the self as adequate or inadequate. In elaborating it, Telfer thus adduces

considerations that seem to warrant distinguishing it as a self-evaluative sort of self-

respect distinct from self-esteem. She states

Now respect for someone else, in the sense of thinking highly of him,

implies that he is above the ordinary, has unusual merits. But self-respect does not

carry the same implications. A man who has self-respect merely thinks he comes

up to scratch. This can be seen by considering loss of self-respect, which does not

merely mean ceasing to think well of oneself but rather thinking badly of oneself,

regarding oneself as inadequate, below par, and so on. The emotional aspect of
 25
loss of self-respect is not merely loss of pride or of pleasure in one’s

achievements, but disgust, contempt or despair. [Estimative self-respect] then

seems to be a man’s belief that he attains some minimum standard, and the

emotion which goes with this, if any, is something like peace of mind. Loss of

[estimative self-respect] is the loss of this belief, either as a result of conduct

judged to fall short of the minimum standard, or because for some other reason a

man comes to see himself in a new and unfavourable light. It is often caused by a

single action which is such as to alter one’s whole view of oneself. Thus people

say: “I could never respect myself again if I were to…” (Telfer, “Self-Respect,”

1995, 108; emphasis original)

There are a few things Telfer asserts here that are clearly correct. There is clearly an

important difference between highly or positively evaluating the self and believing that

one is adequate or decent. Second, Telfer is correct that in phrases such as, “I could never

respect myself if I were to…”, “respect” seems to mean “to evaluate as adequate or

decent,” not “evaluate highly.” Finally, it is clearly correct that a person who does not

evaluates herself as less than adequate lacks self-respect. But do these claims really

justify introducing a self-evalutive concept of self-respect different from self-esteem?

They do not. As was the case relative to Darwall’s ‘appraisal self-respect,’ the

‘evaluative self-respect’ concept is confusing and needlessly obscures what self-respect

is, as well as how it is different from self-esteem. This is because, though all self-esteem

is indeed positive, another concept besides self-respect refers to the same background

sense of adequacy that self-respect requires and which ‘estimative self-respect’ is

intended to denote. This is the concept of self-acceptance. Consider that nothing seems to
 26
be lost by replacing “accept” for “respect” in “I could never respect myself again if…” In

both cases, loss of this attitude toward the self implies not just “ceasing to think well of

oneself but rather thinking badly of oneself, regarding oneself as inadequate, below par.”

Joan’s case, for example, supports this understanding. As Telfer would presumably agree,

the problem in her case is not just that she does not to think well of herself, i.e. lacks self-

esteem, but that she is not accepting of her faults and constantly critiques herself as

inadequate. But if the lack of self-respect in such cases consists precisely in lack of

appropriate acceptance of one’s faults, it is more illuminating to say so than to introduce

another concept of self-respect.

This section has reviewed a few prominent accounts of self-respect and argued

that all should be rejected. Rawls’s account fails altogether to distinguish self-respect

from self-esteem. On the other hand, Darwall’s and Telfer’s obscure the distinction

between them by introducing self-evaluative concepts of self-respect. But the concepts

they introduce do not serve any essential conceptual purposes not already filled by other

concepts. Hence, neither gives sufficient reason for obscuring the basic distinction

between self-respect and self-esteem.

4. Why Getting it Right Matters

The previous section showed that a number of prominent accounts of self-respect miss

the basic distinction altogether or inexcusably obscure it. This section argues that getting

the distinction right matters for assessing self-respect’s role in politics. It matters since

self-respect and self-esteem, understood in terms of the basic distinction, are not of equal

political value, self-respect generally having more. Self-respect generally merits greater
 27
political concern than self-esteem. If so, philosophers treating self-respect as an

organizing political value most certainly should not confuse it with self-esteem.

This section proceeds as follows. I begin by clarifying what it means to say that a

thing has political value and merits greater political concern than another thing. I then

clarify what is intended by claiming that self-respect generally has greater political value

than self-esteem. Finally, I offer two arguments in favor of this view.

It is necessary to say some words about when a good merits political concern or

has political value. A good merits political concern or has political value just when it is

worth securing through political means, i.e. by exercises of political authority or power,

and the more a good is worth securing through political means, the greater its political

value. But the extent to which a good is worth securing politically depends on the

intrinsic value of doing so or the usefulness of doing so to realizing other political values.

So, I will say that a good has intrinsic political value just when politically securing it is

obligatory or worthwhile for its own sake. Normally, politically securing something is

obligatory or worthwhile for its own sake just when justice requires that all citizens

should be guaranteed its realization or be given significant opportunities to realize it.

Freedom from indefinite imprisonment without charge, for example, has intrinsic

political value since justice regards its provision as obligatory. On the other hand, justice

requires that various measures should be undertaken that supply significant opportunities

to lead a good life, and politically securing such opportunity is intrinsically valuable.

Finally, a good has instrumental political value just when politically securing it is useful

in securing other intrinsically or instrumentally valuable political goods. Economic

efficiency, for example, has no intrinsic political value, but it does have instrumental
 28
political value. Greater economic efficiency tends to result in greater opportunity for

more people to lead good lives, thus usefully realizing an important intrinsic political

value.

Terminology so established, I maintain that self-respect generally has greater

political value than self-esteem, both intrinsically and instrumentally. Generally, self-

respect merits greater political concern both for its own sake and for its usefulness in

realizing other social goods. Hence, when conflicts between them arise so that politically

supporting one comes at a cost to the other, it is normally best to favor self-respect. These

claims are modest in a way. Maybe there are some circumstances wherein self-esteem

merits greater political concern or is worth some cost to self-respect. But if so, these

circumstances are exceptions to the rule, not the rule itself.

The argument to follow will proceed by separately examining differences in the

instrumental and intrinsic political value of self-respect compared to self-esteem. Sub-

section (a) examines difference in their instrumental value and sub-section (b) differences

in their intrinsic value. Taken together, the discussions show that self-respect has greater

political value than self-esteem overall.

a. Self-Respect’s Greater Instrumental Political Value

To begin with instrumental political value, self-respect generally has more of it than self-

esteem. Now this could be the case if and only if the social goods that can be expected to

result from people having self-esteem are fewer in number, of lesser importance, or less

certain than those than can be expected from their having self-respect. And this is so.

To begin to see this, consider some of the ways in which self-esteem is thought to

be a very great social good. 26 First, the confidence in one’s abilities self-esteem implies is
 29
widely thought to be crucial for successfully pursuing one’s goals (Rawls, for instance,

clearly held this view). Second, it is often claimed that self-esteeming people, in being

happier because satisfied with themselves, are more likely to be non-violent, just, or kind

to others. Many also believe that they are more successful academically, more productive

at work, and (in adolescence) less likely to use dangerous drugs, smoke, or engage in

early sex. These are certainly very good and socially useful qualities. If they belonged to

self-esteeming persons, then self-esteem’s instrumental political value would be

significant.

While there is some merit to these points, they do not show that self-esteem is a

greater social good than self-respect. First, though the point about self-confidence is an

important one, it should conceded only with considerable qualification. Generally,

preoccupation with self-doubt both prevents efficient engagement in productive activity

and seriously diminishes its quality. This is both bad for self-doubting persons

themselves as well as socially undesirable. The importance of this point should therefore

not be understated. On the other hand, clearly it can be overstated. Consider that were

secure confidence an indispensibly necessary condition of success, people could not build

confidence through success. But people do, often taking up an activity with very

considerable doubts only to pleasantly surprise themselves. Furthermore, it would be a

mistake to think that confidence is a sufficient condition of success. Overconfident

persons lack the skills that successful pursuit of their aspirations also requires, while even

those who are appropriately confident (given their skill) may fail due to causes beyond

their control.
 30
Moreover, as concerns the second set of points, it is not at all clear that these

qualities really do belong to self-esteeming persons. 27 It is true that self-esteem seems to

be very strongly related to happiness both conceptually and causally. It is strongly related

to it conceptually insofar as self-esteem just is satisfaction with oneself, and happiness or

life satisfaction are impossible if a person is dissatisfied with herself. Psychological

studies have also generally found that self-esteeming persons report being happier, one

major survey even concluding that self-esteem leads to greater happiness. 28 Nevertheless,

self-esteem’s causal connections to non-violence, academic achievement, work

productivity, and good adolescent behavior are uncertain and widely disputed among

psychologists. Some researchers, in fact, find that the highest rates of bullying in children

are among those having both the highest and the lowest self-esteem, while others find

that academic achievement is as likely a cause of high self-esteem as the reverse. 29 They

also find that while high self-esteem persons are more likely to persist in a task after an

initial failure (a good quality), they are also more likely to be guilty of in-group

favoritism or exclusionary social conduct. Of course, these observations only show that

self-esteem does not clearly have the social utility commonly claimed for it, not that self-

esteem is of lesser instrumental political value than self-respect. But some other

considerations do show this.

First, unlike self-esteem, self-respect is conceptually connected to many and

weighty socially useful traits. These include non-arrogance, non-servility, integrity, and

self-development. People who are self-respecting just are people who have these socially

useful traits to some significant degree. Self-esteeming people, on the other hand, may or

may not have them. Skip, for instance, has self-esteem but his conduct is arrogant and
 31
disintegrated. And even if Skip’s business increases happiness in some quarters, his

business practices still immorally wrong many and should be avoided. Thus, self-respect

is necessarily connected to possession of many very weighty and socially useful traits to

which self-esteem is only contingently connected.

But second, self-respect is also necessarily connected to appropriate self-

acceptance. Though self-respecting people need not be particularly self-esteeming,

neither are they self-hating or self-contemptuous. So, like self-esteeming persons, self-

respecting persons are generally content or at peace with themselves. Hence, if it is self-

satisfaction that is causally responsible for the socially valuable behavior widely

attributed to self-esteeming persons, there is reason to expect similar behavior from self-

respecting persons. Hence, not only is self-respect conceptually connected to many

socially valuable traits to which self-esteem is not. It may also be as strongly connected

as self-esteem to the socially valuable traits commonly attributed to self-esteeming

persons.

I conclude that self-respect has greater instrumental political value than self-

esteem. The data connecting self-esteem to socially useful behavior are equivocal. But

self-respect is conceptually connected to the possession of many socially useful traits to

which self-esteem is only contingently connected. At the same time, self-respect might be

equally connected causally to the socially valuable traits commonly attributed to self-

esteeming persons.

b. Self-Respect’s Greater Intrinsic Political Value

Self-respect’s intrinsic political value is also greater than self-esteem’s. The extent of a

good’s intrinsic political value depends on the value to justice of its provision. The value
 32
to justice of some goods is such that they require people should be guaranteed their

realization (freedom from arbitrary indefinite detention, for instance). In contrast, the

value of other goods is such that justice only requires people to be provided significant

opportunities for them. Since self-respect and self-esteem cannot be transferred, justice

cannot require that people are guaranteed either of them. But since social circumstances

can be more or less conducive to the development and exercise of either, justice can

require that they should have significant opportunities to realize each.

Intuitively, self-respect and self-esteem are both important enough that people

should want to be provided with significant opportunities for both. If so, it is a

requirement of justice that people are provided with those opportunities. However, I

argue that self-respect has greater intrinsic political value than self-esteem. It is more

urgent from the standpoint of justice that people are provided with significant

opportunities to develop and exercise self-respect than self-esteem. This, I will argue, is

because self-respect has greater value for people than self-esteem, since it makes more

valuable contributions to their well-being. That is, people are better off having self-

respect and lacking self-esteem than they are having self-esteem and lacking self-respect.

There are two reasons for thinking so.

First, self-respect is internally related to more of the things that make life go well

than self-esteem. What makes life go well is very contentious and complicated, so the

claims I make here connecting self-respect and well-being must be supported later (and

will be in chapters 3 and 4). But it is widely agreed that a person cannot be well off if she

is unhappy or fails to successfully pursue goals worth pursuing for their own sake. Now

as mentioned above, self-esteem is very strongly related to happiness or life satisfaction

 33
both conceptually and causally. It is thus internally related to one of the things that makes

life go well. But as also argued above, self-respect requires appropriate self-acceptance,

which, as Elizabeth Telfer might have described it, is peace with oneself. And a person

cannot have self-esteem if she is not at peace with herself or basically self-accepting. So,

this aspect of self-respect is the couch on which the pillow of self-esteem sits. 30 Hence, if

self-esteem is strongly connected to happiness, so is self-respect.

But furthermore, self-respect is (to say it again) related to other important traits to

which self-esteem is only contingently connected. And these traits are worth pursuing for

their own sake, so that successful pursuit of them makes us better off. Self-development,

for instance, is worthwhile for its own sake and also necessarily requires developing our

talents in ways that make us better off. Self-esteem, on the other hand, is only causally

related to self-development and is not itself obviously worth pursuing for its own sake.

On the contrary, it seems somewhat perverse to value self-esteem (i.e. positively

evaluating oneself) for its own sake. Maybe this is worthwhile for the happiness or life

satisfaction it can bring, but not for itself.

Similar claims can be made on behalf of the other aspects of self-respect. As I will

argue at length in chapter 3, integrity and non-servility, for instance, are both worthwhile

developing for their own sake and in such a way that developing them makes us better

off. But self-esteem is only contingently connected to these traits, whereas self-respect is

conceptually connected to them.

Hence, while self-respect is internally related to several things that make life go

well, self-esteem is not. On the other hand, though self-esteem is closely related to

happiness, so is self-respect. I conclude that self-respect has greater intrinsic political

 34
value than self-esteem. That is, it is generally more urgent from the standpoint of justice

that people are provided with significant opportunities to develop and exercise self-

respect than self-esteem.

* * *

Sub-sections (a) and (b) have argued that self-respect generally has greater instrumental

and intrinsic political value than self-esteem. Self-respecting people can be expected

more reliably to conduct themselves in more socially useful ways than self-esteeming

ones. At the same time, since self-respect is more closely related than self-esteem to the

things that make life go well, it is more urgent that people are provided with opportunities

for self-respect than for self-esteem. Since the overall political value of a good depends

on its social usefulness and the urgency to justice of opportunity for it, self-respect’s

overall political value is generally greater than self-esteem’s. Generally speaking, self-

respect merits greater political concern than self-esteem. If so, theorists who would treat

self-respect as an organizing political value must be clear about how it is different from

self-esteem.

5. Conclusion

This chapter has articulated and argued in favor of a basic way of distinguishing self-

respect from self-esteem. According to this basic distinction, to esteem the self is to in

some way positively evaluate it (either generally or in regards to some more specific

dimension of assessment), whereas to respect the self is to in some way give appropriate

weight or consideration to it or its evaluatively relevant features, especially in practical

deliberations. Though this way of distinguishing self-respect from self-esteem usefully

 35
illuminates character, some prominent accounts of self-respect either omit the distinction

altogether or needlessly obscure it. But it is important for political philosophy not to omit

or obscure it, since self-respect and self-esteem as understood in terms of it have very

different political value. Self-respect has greater political value and merits greater

political concern than self-esteem.

Given the importance of the difference between self-respect and self-esteem, I

turn in the next chapter to further develop the accounts of self-respect and self-esteem

found in the basic distinction. This discussion will further clarify the relations that do and

do not obtain between these two traits and offer further support for the account of self-

respect. This discussion will also further clear the way for deeper discussion of self-

respect’s value for well-being and its precise political importance relative to other

political values.
 36
NOTES: CHAPTER 1
1
John Rawls, for example, identifies self-respect and self-esteem and understands them broadly as a
person’s “sense of his own value,” but also narrowly in terms of confidence in himself or in the merit of his
plans, and also confidence in his ability to carry them out. See A Theory of Justice, (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971), p. 440, and Political Liberalism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p.
318. In contrast, Bernard Boxill speaks solely in the language of self-respect and understands it only
broadly in terms of a sense of self-worth not requiring confidence in oneself, plans, or abilities. See “Self-
Respect and Protest,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 6, 1 (1976), pp. 58-69. Finally, Thomas E. Hill,
Jr. describes two different sorts of self-respect, neither being described as either a sense of self-worth or
confidence in oneself or one’s abilities. See Hill’s “Servility and Self-Respect,” Monist 57 (Jan., 1973), pp.
87-104, repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1995),
chapter 3, and his “Self-Respect Reconsidered,” Respect for Persons, Tulane Studies in Philosophy, O.H.
Green, ed, Vol. 31, (1985), pp. 129-137, also repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, op. cit.
2
Charles Taylor, for example, talks solely in the language of self-esteem in Multiculturalism and “The
Politics of Recognition”, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 25-26. On the other hand,
Robin S. Dillon has in numerous works declined to use the language of self-esteem, though in using the
term “self-respect” she seems to mean both what psychologists have called “self-esteem” as well as what
philosophers have called “self-respect”; see her “How to Lose Your Self-Respect,” American Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 29, 2, (Apr., 1992), pp. 125-139; and “Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect,” in
Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, chapter 15; and “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, and Political,”
Ethics, Vol. 107, 2, (Jan., 1997), pp. 226-249.
3
See, for example Stephen L. Darwall’s “Two Kinds of Respect,” Ethics, Vol. 88, 1 (Oct., 1977), pp. 36-
49, repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon, ed.; and Laurence Thomas’s “Self-Respect:
Theory and Practice,” Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917,
Leonard Harris, ed., (New York: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, Co, 1983), also repr. in Dignity, Character, and
Self-Respect; and Avishai Margalit in The Decent Society, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996),
pp, 44-48.
4
This formulation is very similar to Stephen Darwall’s well-known ideal of “recognition self-respect.” See
his “Two Kinds of Respect,” op. cit. I discuss Darwall’s total account of self-respect below and show how
it differs from the account offered by the basic distinction.
5
This case is adapted from Steven J. Massey’s “Is Self-Respect a Moral or a Psychological Concept?”
Ethics 93 (1983), repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed.
6
This case is built up from two sources. The first is a very similar case, The Deferential Wife, by Thomas
E. Hill, Jr., in his “Servility and Self-Respect.” The second is a “real life” posting on an internet message
board expressing largely the same claims. See http://www.power-
surge.com/php/forums/index.php?s=1deaf0da76b4f1694cb102b33c969f57&showtopic=9155
7
This case is built up from several sources. Robin S. Dillon coins the phrase “The Self-Unforgiving” and
discusses this general type in “How to Lose Your Self-Respect,” op. cit. Second, many of the phrases in the
example are derived from statements used to measure self-esteem on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and
the Texas Social Behavior Inventory. These questionnaires measure self-esteem by asking the subject to
respond with strong agreement, agreement, disagreement, and strong disagreement to statements such as,
“Sometimes I think I’m just no good,” or, “I have trouble starting conversations at parties.” For these
scales, see Jonathon Brown’s The Self, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), chapter 8. Finally, Lester H.
Hunt discusses a similarly self-abusive type in Character and Culture, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1997), chapter 2, section 5.
 37

8
This case is built up from similar ones found in the following sources: Robin S. Dillon’s “How to Lose
Your Self-Respect”; Thomas E. Hill, Jr.’s “Self-Respect Revisited”; and Elizabeth Telfer’s “Self-Respect,”
The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 18, 71 (Apr., 1968), pp. 114-121, repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-
Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed.
9
For a similar point, see Robin S. Dillon’s “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political,” though Dillon does
not distinguish self-respect from self-esteem.
10
It is mentionable that, though this conception of equality is similar to the utilitarian ideal (according to
which the interests of all should count for one and not more than one), accepting it does not commit one to
utilitarianism. Understanding equality in terms of a mandate to give equal consideration to the well-being
of all is compatible with judging that, in some circumstances, aggregate utility should be sacrificed in favor
of some individual’s well-being.
11
See again Robin S. Dillon’s “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political” for a similar argument.
12
For more discussion of this point, see James Griffin’s Value Judgment, (Oxford University Press, 1996),
chapter 2.
13
See for example Robin S. Dillon, “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, and Political”; Thomas E. hill, Jr.,
“Servility and Self-Respect” and “Self-Respect Revisited”; Stephen J. Massey, “Is Self-Respect a Moral or
a Psychological Concept?” Ethics, Vol. 93, 2 (Jan., 1983), pp. 246-261, repr. in Dignity, Character, and
Self-Respect; and Laurence Thomas, “Self-Respect: Theory and Practice.”
14
Massey’s account in his “Is Self-Respect a Moral or a Psychological Concept?,” for instance, is clearly
informed by Rawls’s and Telfer’s account, Darwall’s account forms the critical basis for those offered by
Dillon, Hill, and Thomas. See, for example, Dillon’s “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political,” Hill’s
“Servility and Self-Respect” and “Self-Respect Revisited,” and Thomas’s “Self-Respect: Theory and
Practice.”
15
For a similar argument to the one I advance here, see Laurence Thomas’s “Self-Respect: Theory and
Practice.”
16
See, for example, Stephen J. Massey’s “Is Self-Respect a Moral or a Psychological Concept?” and
Laurence Thomas’s “Self-Respect: Theory and Practice.”
17
Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, (Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 59.
18
See Stephen L. Darwall, “Two Kinds of Respect.” Page references are to the reprint.
19
Ibid, 183.
20
Ibid, 191.
21
Ibid, 193.
22
Ibid.
23
Elizabeth Telfer, “Self-Respect,” repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect. Page references are to the
reprint.
24
Ibid, 110-11.
 38

25
Ibid, 108.
26
Here I draw on a review of the psychological literature on self-esteem and good performance of various
sorts by Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger, and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Does High
Self-Esteem Cause better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?”
Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4:1 (2003), 1-44.
27
See ibid.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
This clever way of putting it is due to Constance E. Roland and Richard M. Foxx’s “Self-respect: a
neglected concept,” in Philosophical Psychology, 19:3 (2003), 248-287, p. 271.
 39
CHAPTER 2

THE VIRTUE VIEW OF SELF-RESPECT

1. Introduction

Chapter 1 argued that it is important for political philosophers to clearly note the

difference and relationship between self-respect and self-esteem, at least because the

former merits significantly greater political concern than the latter. But the discussion of

Chapter 1 may leave some residual doubts. The accounts of self-respect and self-esteem

forming the basic distinction are imprecise and the exact differences obtaining between

them not systematically articulated. Furthermore, there are other prominent accounts of

self-respect rejecting the basic distinction that Chapter 1 left unaddressed. These include

accounts by Robin S. Dillon, Stephen J. Massey, and Laurence Thomas.

This chapter further supports the conclusions of Chapter 1 by taking on two tasks.

First, it aims to elaborate the basic distinction it into what I will call the virtue view of the

difference and relationship between self-respect and self-esteem. The virtue view contains

more refined accounts of the two traits and entails the following self-respect thesis about

how they are different: self-respect is a virtue supporting some self-esteem, while (high)

self-esteem is a contingently virtuous mental state disposition not necessary for self-

respect. Second, this chapter considers and responds to the accounts of self-respect by

Dillon, Massey, and Thomas in order to meet any challenges they pose to the virtue view

and its self-respect thesis.

The argument of this chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2 introduces the virtue

view. It then clarifies and argues for the self-respect thesis, responding along the way to

some objections to it found in Robin S. Dillon’s account of self-respect. Section 3 further

 40
defends the virtue view and self-respect thesis against objections discernible in the views

of Massey and Thomas.

2. The Virtue View

The virtue view takes the simple accounts of self-respect and self-esteem found in the

basic distinction and refines and elaborates them. These are as follows.

2.1 The Cognitive/Affective Account of Self-Esteem as a Trait 1

According to the cognitive/affective account of self-esteem, to esteem oneself is to

positively evaluate oneself, either generally as a person (‘global self-esteem’) or relative

to some more specific dimension of assessment (‘local self-esteem’). In addition to being

local or global, self-esteem can also be dispositional (‘trait self-esteem’) or occurrent

(‘state self-esteem’). State self-esteem is all those self-evaluative feelings or judgments a

person undergoes at a given moment, whereas trait self-esteem is the level or degree to

which a person is disposed to undergo them. In either mode, as self-evaluative self-

esteem can vary by degrees and can take as its object any features of the self that can be

regarded as good or bad, including the merits of one’s character or, for example, one’s

personal beauty. Trait self-esteem is stable and high just when a person is enduringly

disposed to regard herself as possessing many good qualities, low just when she is not so

disposed, and moderate when she is somewhere in between. But since all self-esteem is

positive, low trait self-esteem is not necessarily to disesteem the self, but to omit rating

oneself as having very many very excellent qualities. It thus includes those who evaluate
 41
themselves with ambivalence or indifference (“I’d say I’m a decent person all in all”) and

not simply those who disesteem themselves (“I’m no good”). 2

Thus, though self-esteem involves self-evaluative mental states, as enduring and

dispositional, self-esteem is a trait of persons. Furthermore, the evaluations of self-esteem

can be more or less explicit and need not be expressed in self-conscious judgments. A

number of emotions, especially self-acceptance, pride, shame, guilt, self-confidence, and

a sense of social belonging, can be seen as implicitly expressing self-evaluations, and

having high self-esteem is as much a matter of being disposed to experience the good

feelings as it is to self-consciously judge oneself favorably. However, conceived as

signifying favorable assessments of the self, a person’s self-esteem feelings can always

be critically interrogated as having reasonable or unreasonable grounds and meriting

endorsement or rejection. 3 In sum, having stable high trait self-esteem is to be enduringly

disposed to make favorable judgments and experience good feelings about oneself

generally or any of one’s features (unless noted otherwise, henceforth all talk of ‘self-

esteem’ refers to trait self-esteem.)

2.2 The Self-Respect as Standards Account of Self-Respect 4

A person has self-respect just when her will and conduct are organized by recognition

that certain standards of behavior and treatment are appropriate to or worthy of her given

who or what she is. These standards (to be enumerated more precisely below) include

those applying to her both as a person generally and as one occupying certain social roles

or having certain ideal commitments. In recognizing them as appropriate to her and

valuing their fulfillment (i.e. identifying them as her will), the self-respecting person
 42
expects that she will behave certain ways and that others will treat her certain ways.

These expectations then define some limits on what she is willing or unwilling to herself

do or tolerate from others without shame, frustration, loss of pride, resentment, anger, or

humiliation. Thus, while the psychological aspect of self-respect is primarily volitional,

i.e. a matter of how the self-respecting person’s will is structured, this structure

constitutes a sense of self-worth rendering the self-respecting person liable to certain

emotions in certain conditions. In particular, when she acknowledges failure to meet the

expectations she has of herself, the self-respecting person is liable to experience shame—

if she lacks this liability, it is doubtful (though not certain) that her will is organized by

recognition of the standard. On the other hand, when she is not treated by others as she

expects them to treat her, the self-respecting person is liable to experience humiliation,

resentment, or anger.

According to self-respect as standards, some of the self-respecting person’s

standards are universal and shared with all others, whereas some are personal and relative

to her as the person she is. But all are objective in being grounded in some aspect of her

identity. 5 The personal standards of self-respect are those grounded in the self-respecting

person’s identity as one occupying certain social roles or as having certain aspirations or

ideal commitments. So, for example, a self-respecting political leader (a social role)

should be ashamed of behaving like the world’s class clown, a self-respecting teacher (a

role and aspiration) should resent repeated classroom insubordinations, and a self-styled

“artist of integrity” (an ideal commitment) might rather suffer some deprivation than

vulgarize her work for fame and fortune. 6

 43
On the other hand, the universal standards of self-respect are those all self-

respecting persons must recognize as appropriate to them simply as persons. These

particularly include those appropriate to them as beings owed equal moral concern and

having a few evaluatively significant qualities, including embodiedness, fallibility and

finitude, and capacities for reason, rationality, critical self-reflection, and to decide what

is good and worthwhile pursuing. As such, the universal standards form a core of self-

respecting will and conduct toward which all self-respecting persons should aspire.

Though there may be more, they arguably include:

a. Non-servility—refusal to approve, at least psychically, of being treated as

befits a constitutionally inferior being, and maintaining the autonomy needed to

make one’s life one’s own,

b. Personal and Moral Integrity—commitment to self-chosen principle (personal

integrity), honesty, reliability, and basic fairness (moral integrity),

c. Self-knowledge—avoiding deliberate self-deception,

d. Humility (non-arrogance)—self-praise or pride moderated by recognition of the

role of good fortune in achievement,

e. Self-acceptance—self-criticism or shame moderated by recognition of human

fallibility,

f. Self-development—taking pride in one’s pursuits (e.g. work) and courage and

resilience over self-pity in confronting life’s ordinary challenges (rational self-

control),
 44
g. Minimum sexual prudence—omitting needless self-prostitution and

maintaining a preference for lasting relationships to very frequent changes of

partner.

I leave open the precise conditions for the possession of these virtues and admit it is

controversial that self-respect requires them all. That it indeed requires at least some will

be further defended in the discussions to follow. For the moment, consider that, as

Thomas E. Hill, Jr. has observed, it is implausible that a self-respecting person can

commit herself to just any standard. Rather, standards of self-respect must be capable of

being taken seriously as limits to what one is willing to do or tolerate without shame. As

Hill states, “One who claimed it as his ideal, or minimum value, to get as fat as he could,

or avoid exerting himself, or to tear bits of paper all day, would hardly be convincing…” 7

However, following Elizabeth Telfer, self-respect as standards goes beyond this

by identifying the source of standards for self-respect.8 It sees them as grounded in what

is appropriate to persons given their general nature as persons (or occupants of certain

social roles), and this is how the list of virtues enumerated above is derived. Non-

servility, integrity, humility, self-acceptance, and sexual prudence are worthy of persons

conceived as rational and self-reflective, but embodied and fallible beings owed equal

moral concern. Beings owed equal moral concern should not servilely defer to others, nor

arrogantly ignore them. Nor should they should give themselves sexually to others

without expecting due concern in exchange for it. They should not lie to others, let them

down, or treat them unfairly since these also conflict with seeing the self and others as

equals. But neither should fallible, embodied beings be too hard on themselves but

somewhat self-accepting instead, since there really are limits to what they can be held
 45
responsible for. On the other hand, non-servility, self-knowledge, moral integrity, and

self-development are appropriate to the same beings but also conceived as able to

develop and pursue a conception of what is worthwhile pursuing. Hence, because the

standards of self-respect are so grounded, they are objective—a person cannot excuse

herself from adherence to them by, for example, protesting that she didn’t choose to be a

person (or a professor, or the President). 9

That self-respect is objective in requiring adherence to definite standards does not

necessarily mean that self-respect does not admit of degree, nor that we are always

blameworthy for lacking self-respect. Self-respect admits of degree because it involves

multiple standards, some of which, moreover, may in some situations be more important

than others. So according to self-respect as standards, a person is more or less self-

respecting depending on the degree to which she recognizes the important standards

applying to her. Furthermore, while omitting to meet a standard is usually a lack of self-

respect, self-respect as standards does not assert that we are always blameworthy for

lacking self-respect. There might be overriding reasons favoring omission, or a person’s

circumstances may be such that she cannot be held responsible for lacking self-respect.

There is nothing in self-respect as standards to deny this. Hence, it does not assert that we

are always blameworthy for lacking self-respect.

In sum, the self-respecting person is one who expects to conduct herself worthily

and others to treat her appropriately, as a person generally or as one having a certain

social role, status, or ideal commitment. And as self-respect as standards conceives it, at

least some of the truly self-respecting person’s standards are objective, so that self-

respect, unlike self-esteem, represents an ideal toward which persons ought to aspire.
 46
2.3. The Virtue View and the Self-Respect Thesis

There are a number of theses about the relationship between self-respect and self-esteem

that the virtue view supports. As stated above, they are summarized by the self-respect

thesis: self-respect is a virtue supporting some self-esteem, while high self-esteem is a

mental state disposition not necessary for self-respect and only contingently connected to

virtue. The self-respect thesis is built up from a few more specific claims that should be

distinguished:

1. Independence thesis: self-respect does not conceptually or causally require high

self-esteem, i.e. moderate or even low self-esteem persons can be self-respecting.

2. Virtue thesis: self-respecting persons necessarily thereby possess a virtue, high

self-esteem persons do not necessarily thereby possess a virtue.

3. Asymmetry thesis: self-respect necessarily protects and justifies some self-

esteem, while increased self-esteem does not justify increased self-respect nor

decreased self-esteem decreased self-respect.

These theses need some clarification and defense. The next few sub-sections undertake to

satisfy that need. In doing so these sections also defend the soundness of the virtue view’s

accounts of self-respect and self-esteem. The virtue view inherits the plausibility of the

theses it supports.

2.3.1 The Independence Thesis.

This thesis claims that a generally self-respecting person need not, as a matter of

philosophy (logic and ethics) nor psychology (causes), have high self-esteem. The flip

side of this thesis is that a low self-esteem person is not thereby necessarily lacking in
 47
self-respect or rendered incapable of respecting herself. This claim is highly contentious

in the literature on the political value of self-respect, some wholeheartedly endorsing it

(e.g. Laurence Thomas), and others vehemently rejecting it (e.g. Robin S. Dillon). 10

The philosophical independence claim has two parts, a formal/logical part and a

substantive/ethical part. The next several pages take up the formal part.

Formally, the reason self-respecting persons can be low self-esteemers is that high

self-esteem is not an a priori requirement of the idea of conduct and treatment worthy of

persons as such, i.e. it is not contained in the concept of self-respect so understood. There

is no conceptual absurdity in a person’s having self-respecting standards and expectations

but lacking any disposition to very favorably assess herself or experience feelings of

pride, self-confidence, and so on. Furthermore, according to the virtue view, there is no

need of distinguishing a concept of self-respect according to which esteem for self would

be a conceptually necessary part of having it. Some have argued otherwise, and the next

several pages address their views.

As discussed in Chapter 1, Stephen L. Darwall, for instance, has argued that there

are two kinds of ‘respect’ corresponding to different uses of the concept, a ‘recognition’

kind and an ‘appraisal’ kind. 11 Self-respect as standards is a theory of ‘respect’ in the

recognitional sense, according to which one person respects herself (or another) just

when she gives proper weight to the fact that she (or the other) is a person (or the boss,

the drill Sergeant, Mom) in the determination of her conduct. This ‘due consideration’

notion of ‘respect’ is different from the ‘appraisal respect’ a person might have for

herself, which only requires that she positively appraises herself for character excellences

(or as Darwall more precisely argues, meritorious traits attributable to her agency).
 48
Hence, it is internal to this concept of ‘respect’ that having it requires esteem. Why does

the virtue view omit to distinguish a concept of appraisal self-respect?

The virtue view omits to do this because the idea of appraisal self-respect is

absorbed by its cognitive/affective account of self-esteem. Positively appraising oneself

for what one perceives to be one’s good character is just another way of esteeming

oneself, and therefore just another aspect of a person’s overall self-esteem. On the other

hand, there is no other concept equivalent to self-respect in the recognitional, ‘due

consideration’ sense. It is true that a person might make a claim such as, “I could never

respect myself again if…” where the intended sense of ‘respect’ is the appraisive,

esteeming sense. But if what is really meant in such contexts is ‘esteem myself,’ it is less

confusing to say so. The virtue view seeks to reduce confusion by working exclusively

with a recognitional concept of ‘respect’ and assimilating the idea of ‘appraisal self-

respect’ to the cognitive/affective account of self-esteem.

Another author, Robin S. Dillon, objects to the view that recognition respect is

conceptually unique as a form of respect. 12 First, Dillon insists (without argument) on

retaining the idea of appraisal self-respect rather than assimilating it to self-esteem. But

second and more importantly she argues that we must also distinguish a kind of ‘basal

self-respect,’ an “orientation toward the self” embodying “a prereflective, unarticulated,

emotionally laden presuppositional framework, an implicit “seeing oneself as” or taking

oneself to be” that structures our explicit experiences of self and worth.” 13 Clarifying

somewhat, Dillon explains that

The heart of basal self-respect is our most profound valuing of ourselves. The

worth it grants and takes for granted is intrinsic and unconditional, wholly
 49
independent of performance or character and so unlike merit, but simpler, less

inferentially structured than status worth. When secure and positive, basal self-

respect involves an implicit confidence, and abiding faith in the rightness of my

being, the expressed and unquestioned (indeed, unquestionable) assumption that it

is good that I am. But when damaged or insecure, basal self-respect is incessant

whispering below the threshold of awareness: “you’re not good enough, you’re

nothing.” And where basal self-respect is weak or distorted, recognition of

personhood is small comfort, cognizance of merit a hollow consolation, for the

basal interpretation is uncompromising: this is what I am most fundamentally, and

nothing I do or become can change that fact, nothing can alter its implications.

And because this primordial valuing sets the basic terms for all subsequent

conceptualizations of self and worth, it retains its power to control self-

understanding and self-valuing even if we manage to excavate it and lift it to

consciousness. (Dillon, “Self-Respect,” 1997, 242)

To condense this, basal self-respect is a positive or negative regard for self (a “valuing of

ourselves”) not identical to and preceding any positive appraisal of oneself for

excellences of character (appraisal self-respect or what Dillon refers to as “cognizance of

merit”) but also not identical to and preceding the ability to give proper weight to one’s

status as a person (recognition self-respect or what Dillon refers to as “recognition of

personhood”). Furthermore, this “primordial self-valuing” structures and limits a person’s

possibilities for recognition and appraisal self-respect, so that when basal self-respect is

negative a person cannot genuinely give proper weight to her personhood or positively

appraise her merits.

 50
Dillon supports these claims (that basal self-respect is not identical to and

precedes/structures the other kinds) by reference to the following cases.14

a. Anne is a highly accomplished academic who despite her efforts cannot feel

responsible for and proud of her accomplishments, even though she knows they

are numerous, significant, and attributable to her efforts. Worse, she is unable to

free herself from shame over minor shortcomings even though she knows they are

common to all people. This further perceived shortcoming causes her even more

shame.

b. Beth is a woman who, since becoming a feminist, wholly rejects the patriarchal

view of women’s bodies. Yet she continues to feel disgust when she menstruates

or looks at her naked body. As a feminist, she also feels ashamed of being unable

to relieve herself of this disgust.

c. Carissa is a woman who has never been mistreated, firmly appreciates her

moral worth as a person, and expects appropriate treatment from others. But

nevertheless she resents people who treat her in ways she knows are not unjust,

e.g. those who ask her for favors, telephone solicitors, and “especially people who

own nicer homes or have better jobs than she.” Firmly believing her resentment is

disrespectful of others, Carissa is ashamed of her resentment.

Dillon maintains that these cases show that a person can have all the expectations and

standards characteristic of appraisal and recognition self-respect but not really respect

herself. “Anne should feel proud and self-accepting, Beth should not feel ashamed of her

body, Carissa ought not to resent those who have done her no wrong.” 15 Furthermore, she

hypothesizes that the difficulty for Anne et al is bad basal self-respect—their

 51
fundamental, core self-valuing is deeply negative, thereby preventing them from

experiencing the feelings they know they ought to feel.

Dillon’s argument draws attention to the important matter of the causal

relationship between self-respect and feelings of self-worth. This section addresses that

issue in detail below, though it argues that positions like Dillon’s are overstated.

However, as it relates to the virtue view’s distinction between self-respect and self-

esteem, the argument fails to establish the need for a ‘basal self-respect’ concept and for

two reasons.

First, the argument does not establish need for a ‘basal self-respect’ concept since

it is not obvious that Anne et al in fact disrespect themselves. While the misplaced

emotions they experience certainly express an undeservedly negative image of

themselves, the shame they experience in response to it is in fact entirely well placed and

serves to preserve their self-respect. Consider that in the absence of such shame, Anne

and Beth would be merely overly self-critical without any sense that they deserve to be

less so, while Carissa would merely be resentful of others inappropriately. In other words,

without the shame they would most certainly be lacking in self-respect. Furthermore, the

misplaced emotions entail that they are self-disrespecting people only if these emotions

themselves count as self-disrespecting. This is so since in firmly opposing their wills to

them Anne et al are in regards to their conduct and expectations for themselves as self-

respecting as can be. But, and this is the second point, their emotions should not be

counted as self-disrespecting since to count them as such ignores altogether the concept

of self-esteem, of which their misplaced emotions (though not their shame over them)

certainly signify a lack. Moreover, the cognitive/affective conception of self-esteem as a

 52
trait accounts for their experience in a way more plausible than the ‘basal self-respect’

concept. The next three paragraphs elaborate why.

The cognitive/affective account of self-esteem understands self-esteem as the

level at which a person is enduringly disposed to favorably assess herself or experience

good self-relevant feelings. Trait self-esteem thus includes the cognitively structured

judgments we deliberately make of ourselves (including those of ‘appraisal self-respect’),

as well as the (possibly recalcitrant) feelings of self-worth a person is given to experience

independently of those assessments (Dillon’s ‘basal self-respect’). But while Dillon’s

basal self-respect concept understands these latter phenomena as controlled by a further

sort of self-valuing, this putative valuing is vaguely defined (a “’seeing oneself as’ or

‘taking oneself to be’”) and positing it as the ground of other self-worth feelings is less

plausible than positing trait self-esteem as their ground. There are two reasons for

thinking so.

First, the ‘basal self-respect’ hypothesis is less plausible because it appears to

misrepresent the nature of the relevant phenomena in a way the trait self-esteem concept

does not. The ‘basal self-respect’ concept does this because it is characterized as an

“orientation toward the self” or self-valuing that makes other sorts of self-valuing

possible. But this picture of sense of self-worth takes too seriously the role of the word

‘sense’ in it, apparently conceiving sense of self-worth as a sort of occurrent mental

attention to or regard for self. But people having secure self-worth are not those who are

constantly feeling good or thinking positive thoughts about themselves (at least, not those

who are sane; I discuss narcissistic self-esteem below). Rather, they are people for whom

the self is normally not present to consciousness at all, so that their mental energies can
 53
be focused toward accomplishing a task, experiencing enjoyments, or whatever.

Understanding self-esteem as dispositional, this is how the cognitive/affective account of

self-esteem as a trait conceives the experience of stable high self-esteem. Stable high self-

esteemers, though always ready to make a positive judgment or experience a good feeling

should the self come into view as a question, simply engage tasks without the self as an

object of consciousness at all. Interestingly, in one passage Dillon recognizes this quality

of secure self-worth. She says, “to be blessed with secure basal self-respect is to be able

to move through life oblivious to issues of self-worth—for the issues have always been

resolved—to be free to attend to the independent value of other people and things.” 16 The

trouble for Dillon’s basal self-respect concept is that it does not incorporate this insight

by conceiving secure self-worth as directly constituted by freedom from concern for self-

worth. Instead, it conceives it as an orientation toward the self (242) that enables such

freedom.

This error yields another that makes the ‘basal self-respect’ hypothesis less

plausible than the trait self-esteem one. Because the ‘basal self-respect’ hypothesis posits

an orientation toward the self or self-valuing as the ground for other feelings of self-

worth, it invites an infinite regress. If a person’s ability to, for example, experience pride

in her accomplishments, depends on her having a certain antecedent positive orientation

toward the self, what positive orientation is the antecedent ground of this one, and which

is the antecedent ground of it (and so on)? The trait self-esteem ideal denies that there is

any such antecedent orientation. Rather, a person’s sense of self-worth just is the level at

which she is disposed to evaluate herself favorably and experience good self-relevant

feelings. This level may or may not in turn be affected by the assessments of self-worth a
 54
person self-consciously makes—a person who self-consciously makes them is thereby

self-esteeming to some if small degree, but since making such judgments is not sufficient

for high self-esteem, a person who nevertheless regularly experiences negative self-

relevant feelings is not very high in self-esteem.

Thus, the virtue view’s cognitive/affective account of self-esteem comprehends

the experience of unfortunates like Anne and company who, despite making the right

judgments, have rather low self-esteem. This does not show they lack self-respect. On the

contrary, through their reflective shame they identify themselves against their misplaced

emotions and with the judgments they self-consciously make, revealing that they very

clearly understand what is worthy of and appropriate to them. Their wills are organized

just as self-respect requires. So, on the virtue view Anne et al are low self-esteem, self-

respecting persons.

So far I have argued that high self-esteem is not, as a matter of the logic of the

concepts, necessary for self-respect. The next few pages deepen the conceptual

independence of self-respect and high self-esteem by arguing that, as a matter of ethics,

self-respect also does not substantively require high self-esteem. That is, I argue it is not

ethically self-disrespecting to lack high self-esteem.

High self-esteem is not a substantive requirement of self-respect, analogous to the

way non-servility is. Part of the explanation of this is still conceptual. First, people we

might describe as solidly self-respecting can still be more or less self-respecting. But

then, even if high self-esteem is a substantive requirement of self-respect we may judge a

particular low self-esteem person to have self-respect on the whole, given that she is self-

respecting in other important ways. Second, however, the classes of high and low self-
 55
esteem persons are both heterogeneous in ways affecting whether a given high/low self-

esteem person is also self-respecting. 17

First, the class of high self-esteem persons is heterogeneous in including people

whose positive self-image is (to some extent) warranted, or in any case permissible, but

also those whose high self-image is just delusion or other irrational belief about

themselves. 18 Many psychological studies find that the self-assessments of high self-

esteem persons are unrealistic in failing to match the ratings others make of them or

involving ratings of themselves as better than their peers. 19 But habits of unrealistically

rating oneself too highly or rating oneself higher than one’s peers is self-deception or

arrogance, and these traits conflict with the self-knowledge and humility in pride that

arguably belongs to self-respect. Concerning this second trait, recognizing that all

persons are objects of equal moral concern, and that a person’s accomplishments or other

merits are as attributable to natural talents (for which no one can claim praise) as well as

the help and good will of others, the self-respecting person generally resists thinking that

her special merits make her an especially meritorious person. Insofar as this is correct,

believing this about oneself also constitutes an important piece of self-knowledge.

Second, the class of low self-esteem persons is also heterogeneous in ways

affecting their capacity for self-respect. The low self-esteem group includes both those

who are generally modest or guarded in positively assessing themselves as well those

whose self-esteem is low in a more absolute sense. 20 Since people in the first low self-

esteem group still positively assess themselves to some extent, it is not sleight of hand to

include them in the class of self-esteeming persons. But surely people in this group are

not self-disrespecting just because they are modest in rating themselves highly. Such
 56
persons might be subject to more self-doubt than high self-esteem persons, take failure

more personally, be less inclined to take great risks, or might give up more easily on

difficult tasks. 21 But they are not necessarily crippled in the pursuit of worthwhile goals,

and the flip side of their character is that they are less inclined to arrogance and less

likely to experience shocks to their self-esteem. 22 Moreover, it has been repeatedly found

that high self-esteem is not a significant causal factor of outcomes such as academic

achievement, suggesting that low self-esteem persons are not as rule prevented from

succeeding in the pursuit of worthwhile goals. 23

So, as a matter of ethics self-respect does not require high self-esteem and may

even proscribe a degree of it. This establishes the half of the independence thesis

asserting that self-respect does not conceptually require high self-esteem. However, the

argument so far has not yet addressed the causal relationship between the two. The next

few pages address that.

The independence thesis maintains that self-respect does not causally require high

self-esteem. Note then that it does not deny that low self-esteem may make self-respect

more difficult, nor that very low self-esteem may make it impossibly difficult. That it can

is a point well supported by Dillon’s arguments reviewed above. The point rather is that

low self-esteem as such, without further qualification, does not necessarily prevent the

exercise of self-respect. And this view is already supported by the arguments above and

the conceptual point that the classes of high and low self-esteem persons are

heterogeneous—low self-esteemers are not necessarily hopeless self-haters, but some

high self-esteemers are arrogant or deluded—as well as by intuition based on this fact.

For example, in seeing no insult in always being made to defer to others, some servile
 57
persons may have very high self-esteem, while some low self-esteemers may not be at all

confused about just how insulting this is.

But the view also finds some support in psychological research on the behavioral

and other effects of high/low self-esteem, though the strength of any conclusions drawn

from this research must be attenuated for a number of reasons. There are numerous

studies and some produce conflicting results. The findings in many cases are modest.

Much of the data only establish correlations, not directions of causation while also

deploying questionably reliable self-report measures of self-esteem and other variables. 24

Furthermore, the concept of self-respect is relatively absent in psychology and there are

no (or no widely discussed) studies specifically on the causal relation between self-

respect and self-esteem.

That said, however, there are many studies on the relationship between high/low

self-esteem and other things that may serve as proxies for self-respect or its lack. These

include willingness to speak up in groups or criticize them (non-servility), narcissism

(arrogance), in-group favoritism (arrogance again), proneness to anger or violence (self-

control), reaction to failure (resiliency over self-pity), occupational success and academic

achievement (taking pride in one’s pursuits), and sexual promiscuity. And the results of

this reseach strongly suggests that there is no clear one way causal relationship between

having high self-esteem and being a self-respecting person. Rather, the data suggest that

high and low self-esteem each both promote the exercise of some virtues of self-respect,

but are unrelated to or even inhibit others. For example, high self-esteem is mildly related

to greater willingness to speak up in groups, challenge a group’s approach, and persist in

pursuit of a goal after a single failure. 25 But it also predicts higher rates of narcissism, in-
 58
group favoritism, certain vulnerabilities to anger and violence proneness (including

bullying among children), and is barely related to academic achievement at all once other

factors (especially economic status) are controlled for. 26

I conclude that high self-esteem is neither conceptually nor causally necessary for

self-respect. High self-esteem is not internal to the most plausible concept of ‘self-

respect,’ nor is it required as a matter of ethics. This is partly because self-respect is a

degree concept while the classes of high/low self-esteem persons are also mixed, high

and low self-esteem persons both tending to exhibit qualities that conflict with self-

respect. Finally, psychological studies at best suggest that the causal relationship between

high self-esteem and self-respect is weak—it causes the exercise of some virtues of self-

respect, is unrelated to others, and even inhibits still others.

2.3.2 The Virtue Thesis

According to the virtue thesis, self-respecting persons thereby possess a virtue

(alternatively, respecting oneself is sufficient for exercising a virtue) while high self-

esteem persons do not thereby possess a virtue. This claim is not entirely uncontroversial,

especially its first part. While most accept that it is possible for a person too have “too

much self-esteem” in a manner conflicting with virtue, some have also maintained that it

is possible for a person to have too much self-respect, so that its exercise is not always

virtuous. 27 Self-respect as standards denies this.

Before entering the argument, it is necessary to clarify in this context what is

meant by “such-and-such is a virtue.” By claiming that such-and-such is a virtue, I shall

mean that it is a trait needed to live well or flourish as a human being. 28 On this
 59
understanding, a trait is not a virtue just when it is not needed to live well and a vice

when it prevents a person from living well. Incidentally, this understanding allows that

some non-virtuous traits are not necessarily vices and so clarifies what it means to say

that a trait is only contingently connected to virtue—a trait is contingently virtuous just

when it neither necessarily promotes nor interferes with flourishing.

Concerning high self-esteem, I maintain that it is contingently virtuous. This

means that there are some forms of high self-esteem that either do not clearly promote

flourishing or which in fact hinder it. And the main premise for this claim has already

been given. This is that the class of high self-esteem persons is heterogeneous and

includes normally self-accepting people but also those whose favorable self-image is

narcissism, arrogant self-conceit, or outright delusion. The latter traits are forms of high

self-esteem well-described as ways of having too much of it or a level that does not

reflect their real estimability. Furthermore, such forms of high self-esteem detract from

leading a good life and so are vices. Extreme delusion and narcissism are for good reason

counted by psychologists as mental health disorders. Delusions prevent a person from

pursuing worthwhile ends in a productive manner, while narcissism or arrogance impede

the development of stable and good relationships with others. But (as I will argue at

length in the next chapter) successfully pursuing worthwhile goals and building good

relationships are necessary elements of a flourishing life. Hence, there are vicious forms

of high self-esteem.

On the other hand, the case is more complicated relative to self-respect. It is

intuitive that traits characteristically belonging to self-respecting persons (like non-

servility, personal standards) are needed for flourishing. But that this is so will need much
 60
more argument and so will have to wait till the next chapter on self-respect’s value.

However, some argument can be undertaken at this point. This is because whether it is

sensible to say that a person can have “too much self-respect” in a manner conflicting

with virtue partly depends on what meaning might plausibly be given to this claim and

what reasons there are for adopting that meaning. If self-respect as standards is mistaken

to assert that people cannot have too much self-respect/be too self-respecting, then some

one of these meanings is plausible and self-respect as standards unable to accommodate

it. The next few paragraphs consider three and argue that the consequent of this

conditional is false.

A first meaning, articulated by Kristján Kristjánsson, states that a person has too

much self-respect if “her standards are too high for anyone to live up to

(perfectionism).” 29 Thus, “consider a perfectionist schoolgirl who does not dare write

letters to her best friend, who is on an exchange programme in another country, for fear

of making spelling errors.” This suggested meaning of “too much self-respect” presents

no real difficulty for self-respect as standards. It is plausibly inappropriate of persons as

such to hold themselves to standards too demanding for normally decent people to

achieve, particularly since this conflicts with the proper humility or modesty in self-

criticism called for by appreciation of their human fallibility. It may be an appropriate

standard for English professors never to make spelling errors, but for most everyone else,

if it is relevant to self-respect at all, it suffices that they uphold some minimum standard.

Furthermore, taking oneself to be constitutionally worthy of such high standards may

even constitute a sort of arrogance (“We here at The New Yorker do not make spelling

errors.”).
 61
A second meaning, suggested by Stephen J. Massey, states that a person has too

much self-respect when she takes an attitude toward herself more favorable than she

ought, or which is otherwise morally bad. 30 So, for example, a mediocre basketball player

who incessantly brags about his jump shot has too much self-respect in this sense.

However, while self-respect as standards agrees that such arrogance is bad, it disagrees in

calling it self-respect at all, since doing so confuses self-respect and self-esteem. I argue

against this sort of confusion in detail in section 3.2 below.

A final possibility, suggested (though not finally endorsed) by Lester H. Hunt,

states that a person has too much self-respect in situations of the following sort: when he

“takes the concerns of self-respect too far” by acting from excessive desire to be

perceived, by himself and others, as a worthy or meritorious sort of person. 31 In other

words, a person has too much self-respect whenever he acts to “protect or enhance” 32 his

reputation and self-esteem more than is worthwhile. To borrow Hunt’s example, imagine

a highly talented, upcoming movie actor passing up his big break by declining his first

major lead role, correctly believing that the role is “shallow and phony” and that his

talents merit better. 33 In such a situation, it seems that self-respect requires declining the

role, since it is unworthy of him. But it also seems that he ought to set aside concern for

what is worthy of him and thus that refusing to do so is to respect himself too much.

This argument is the most compelling so far considered but does not refute the

virtue thesis. Its conclusion is premised on the implicit view that any conduct aiming to

protect or enhance a person’s self-esteem is self-respecting. 34 But this view is not

plausible, even if acting in order to protect or enhance self-esteem is compatible with

acting from self-respect and success in respecting the self justifies having some self-
 62
esteem (as will be discussed in the next section). Consider that if self-respect is identical

to action motivated by concern to protect or enhance self-esteem, then arrogant people

cannot be lacking in self-respect so long as their arrogance aims to preserve or (God

forbid) enhance their self-esteem. But acting in order to preserve or enhance inflated self-

esteem is a paradigmatic failure of respect for oneself as a person, one which self-respect

as standards straightforwardly proscribes.

The view Hunt finally endorses in fact recognizes this. According to that view,

self-respect is the Aristotelian or mean virtue of appropriate concern, neither too much

nor too little, to protect or enhance self-esteem, servility being among the deficiencies

and arrogance the excesses. 35 However, an outstanding difficulty for this view is that it

gets the motive of self-respect wrong. It is not plausibly thought that self-respecting

conduct is normally motivated by concern specifically for self-esteem, since deliberate

esteem-seeking behavior is unworthy and widely regarded as such, so that conduct

overtly aiming for it tends to be self-defeating. 36 Rather, self-respect is motivated simply

by concern to conduct oneself appropriately as a person for its own sake, and this, as will

be discussed in the next section, just happens to justify a person in having some self-

esteem.

Furthermore, the psychology of Hunt’s view gives it considerable difficulty

explaining moderate or high self-esteem cases of servility. It is plausible to describe

servility as deficient concern to protect or enhance self-esteem only if servile people

generally are low self-esteem or should be more worried about their self-esteem than they

are. Though doubtless there are such people (Thomas E Hill, Jr.’s famous case of the

“Self-Deprecator,” 37 for example), there are also perfectly plausible cases of moderate or
 63
even high self-esteem servility, for example, Hill’s case of “the Deferential Wife.” The

Deferential Wife is a woman “who is utterly devoted to serving her husband,” and so who

“buys the clothes he prefers, invites guests he wants to entertain, and makes love

whenever he is in the mood,” and so on. She does this not because she believes she or

women generally are constitutionally inferior, but because she believes it is required as

part of her duty to serve her family, a duty which she takes great pride in believing she

discharges very well.

As a matter of fact, much of her happiness derives from her belief that she fulfills

this role very well. No one is trampling her rights, she says; for she is quite glad,

and proud, to serve her husband as she does. (Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect,”

78)

Hence, her servility leaves her self-esteem perfectly intact and in no way threatened in

her eyes, hers being the only ones that matter. Hence, it is implausible to see her servility

as a deficiency relative to self-esteem.

Hunt has a further reply. This reply claims that it is unrealistic to see her case as

moderate/high self-esteem servility: “Any plausible explanation that would show why she

subordinates her will so completely to that of her husband…will imply that she thinks

that she is inferior to him in her ability to make and carry out decisions that are fully her

own.” 38 However, this response doesn’t prove its conclusion. It is perfectly compatible

with high self-esteem to believe that many of one’s talents are inferior to those of others,

just so long as one believes one has other valuable talents. Indeed, this is precisely the

case for the Deferential Wife as Hill describes her. Even if she does believe that she is

inferior to her husband as, say, a decision-maker, her self-esteem is unaffected by this
 64
judgment because she her stock of self-esteem is fully invested in her superior talent as a

homemaker.

While self-respect’s status as a virtue needs more argument, I tentatively conclude

that high self-esteem is only contingently connected to virtue while self-respect is

necessarily connected to it. A person can have too much self-esteem and some forms of

high self-esteem are vicious. But there is no meaningful sense to the idea of having too

much self-respect.

However, while the idea of too much self-respect is not compelling, it does point

to another trait worth distinguishing. This trait might be called “mere respectability.” The

merely respectable person is concerned to conduct herself in ways giving the appearance

of merit or dignity, but her standards are pretentious, shallow, or phony. She might have

perfect table manners, straight-and-narrow sexual mores, or be exceptionally courteous.

But she might also be unable to appreciate slightly off-color jokes or be too quick to

unthinkingly accept the commands of authorities. But self-respect does not proscribe the

former while the latter manifests servility. Hence, though the merely respectable person’s

will is organized in a manner similar to the self-respecting person’s, the sorts of conduct

around which it is organized are not standards of self-respect.

2.3.3 The Asymmetry Thesis

The asymmetry thesis maintains that self-respect necessarily protects and justifies some

self-esteem, while increased self-esteem does not justify increased self-respect nor

decreased self-esteem decreased self-respect. This thesis is complex and will be more

easily addressed piece by piece:

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1. Self-respect protects self-esteem.

2. Self-respect justifies some self-esteem.

3. Decreased/increased self-esteem does not justify decreased/increased self-

respect.

1. Self-respect protects self-esteem in that the self-respecting person exercises habits

preventing the deterioration of self-esteem at her own hands but also defending it against

injury by others.

To begin with the second claim, self-respect consists partly in the exercise of

habits allowing a person to protect her self-esteem from injury at the hands of others. A

centrally important habit here is non-servility. Though the precise conditions for non-

servility are debated, it is widely agreed that a proper understanding and appreciation of

intrinsic moral equality as a person is fundamental to the self-respecting person’s

autonomy. The self-respecting person understands that her due simply as a person does

not depend on her merits and that she is owed certain sorts of consideration as a matter of

course. For example, the self-respecting person understands that she does not have to

earn equal concern before the law, the liberty to develop her own self-chosen conception

of the good, or to express disagreement with the beliefs and plans of others. In having this

understanding the self-respecting person is able to react to injustices in ways that protect

her interests, including her self-esteem, with the indignation or resentment (or even

shame) manifesting unwillingness to consent to be treated unjustly by others.

Interestingly, some work in psychology also favors this view of the relationship between

self-respect and self-esteem, though without the language of self-respect. 39 According to

this work, the relationship between experiencing prejudice against oneself (or against
 66
people in one’s social group) and self-esteem is mediated by the cognitive appraisals and

coping strategies the person deploys in response to it. For example, attributing

discrimination against oneself to the arbitrary prejudice of the perpetrator shifts blame for

it away from a fault in oneself to a character defect in the other, thereby protecting self-

esteem. But it is precisely the self-respecting person, the one who understands and

appreciates her moral due, who will make such an attribution when subjected to arbitrary

discrimination. This is not to say that a person whose self-esteem suffers in response to

prejudice is lacking self-respect, nor that repeated subjection to discrimination can have

no negative effect on the self-esteem of self-respecting persons. Rather, it is just to say

that self-respect is a trait genuine possession of which helps protect self-esteem from

injury.

Self-respect also protects self-esteem in that the self-respecting person exercises

habits preventing the deterioration of self-esteem at her own hands. One dimension of

this is the substantive requirements of humility and self-acceptance, or modesty in pride

and shame. These requirements recommend a level of willingness to criticize or praise

the self compatible with taking adequate responsibility for things for which a person can

reasonably be held responsible. But it also recommends a level of self-acceptance

compatible with recognizing the substantial limits of one’s own control over the world,

the consequences of one’s actions, even the regulation of one’s own conduct. By

declining to attribute every shortcoming in herself to a shortcoming of agency or will, the

self-respecting person balances self-criticism against self-acceptance in a way that leaves

(trait) self-esteem relatively unaffected by success or failure. 40 Precisely what level of

self-criticism versus self-acceptance this is is subject to debate. But it would be

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implausible to deny that there is some such level and that a self-respecting person can

have a reasonably accurate, intuitive grasp of what it is. However, a deeper understanding

of this level can be sought in the next aspect of the asymmetry thesis, according to which

self-respect justifies some self-esteem.

2. Exercising virtues of self-respect justifies some self-esteem in that their exercise is

meritorious and so supplies good reason for a person to take herself to have some genuine

merit as a person. In supplying such reasons, self-conscious exercise of virtues of self-

respect is a rational way of maintaining or enhancing self-esteem, and one over which

individuals can (at least in principle) exercise some significant self-control. 41 However,

this is not to say that all self-respecting persons are guaranteed high self-esteem, nor even

that they are justified in holding themselves in very high esteem.

First, a self-respecting person may be unaware of the precise extent of her merits.

Or, as discussed relative to the cases of Anne et al above, she may be unable to fully

appreciate them due to recalcitrant low self-esteem.

Second, the virtues of self-respect, while doubtless meritorious traits of character,

are not definitive of moral sainthood. Non-servility, rational self-control, and moral

integrity are certainly merits, but they are more akin to basic moral decency rather than

spectacular excellence. They are thus qualities more apt to be the basis of a stable modest

or even low self-esteem rather than high self-esteem. Furthermore, it is plausible that

high self-esteem premised specifically on the fact of one’s having self-respect would be

arrogance, which respect for self proscribes as unworthy of persons generally.

Third, while having self-respect certainly does justify some self-esteem, another

moderating factor is that, while immorality is unworthy of persons as such and is

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generally incompatible with moral integrity, self-respect as standards does not conceive

self-respecting persons as models of perfect virtue. This is the case partly because it

allows that otherwise self-respecting persons can be more or less self-respecting—a

person need not perfectly exercise all the virtues of self-respect for us to grant that she is

self-respecting on the whole. But then she need not be perfectly moral either. Moreover,

there may be many sorts of conduct worthy of persons as such, which are therefore

perhaps sufficient for self-respect, but which may be unimportant or perhaps even

unnecessary for it. For example, it may be a requirement of self-respect that people do

not excessively pepper their speech with explicative in public or professional settings

(e.g. in the classroom, at important meetings with world leaders). But it may be

indifferent to whether a person does so in her private life even though a person who

liberally swears is not clearly a model of perfect virtue. So there are some sorts of ideally

worthy conduct not clearly required by respect for self as a person.

These qualifications may make it appear as if respecting oneself is not so very

supportive of self-esteem after all. However, this appearance is moderated by the fact that

my own version of the asymmetry thesis importantly omits a claim commonly held to

belong to it. This claim maintains that (culpably) failing to respect oneself mandates a

lowering of self-esteem. 42 This claim is intuitive, since a lack of self-respect certainly is a

demerit. However, I believe it is false for at least two reasons.

First, as already mentioned, it is a plausible substantive requirement of self-

respect that self-respecting persons exercise moderation in judging themselves given their

fallibility as humans. This requirement recommends general modesty in self-esteem

rather than a lowering of self-esteem for any deficiency in self-respect (or other defect).
 69
Consider that for some already low self-esteem person, it may be more important that she

work on enhancing her self-esteem than that she berate herself for some relatively minor

failure of self-respect (e.g. she needlessly compromised on a matter of only relative

importance to her). Second, while it may be appropriate that (otherwise) self-respecting

persons experience shame for culpably failing to respect themselves (since this is indeed

a demerit), this claim does not imply that self-respecting persons must undergo decreased

self-esteem. There are a few reasons why this is so.

First, while various emotions, including shame, express negative self-assessments,

this shame at worst adversely affects only state self-esteem and not necessarily trait self-

esteem. But as John Deigh has argued, even this is not clear, as the relationship between

shame and self-esteem is much weaker than is commonly thought. 43 First, decreases in

overall or trait self-esteem are not always accompanied by shame. To borrow an example

from Deigh, a young tennis athlete who is the best in his small town may lose some self-

esteem upon discovering that he compares modestly to the best players in his state. But

this loss may be experienced as disappointment rather than shame. Second, in motivating

persons to behave in ways designed to preserve an image of themselves as estimable,

shame often contains an implicit sense of self-esteem as perhaps threatened but intact

rather than diminished. For example, a person who is ashamed of having carelessly

broken her loved one’s favorite teapot may attempt to replace it before the blunder is

discovered rather than confess to it.

In summary, self-respect justifies having some self-esteem while failing to respect

oneself does not necessarily justify decreased self-esteem when this is understood as a

trait. Moreover, the shame to which self-respecting persons are liable does not in fact
 70
necessarily result in loss of trait self-esteem. Rather, this shame may weaken state self-

esteem while leaving trait self-esteem intact.

3. The final aspect of the asymmetry thesis states that decreased/increased self-esteem

does not justify decreased/increased self-respect. In other words, thinking more highly of

oneself does not alone supply good reason for having higher standards of self-respect, nor

does thinking less of oneself alone supply good reason for believing oneself to be worthy

of less as a person.

One way in which this aspect of the asymmetry thesis may seem to be mistaken is

as follows. The self-respecting person has certain expectations concerning how others

ought to treat her and how she ought to conduct herself. These expectations are grounded

in her sense or conception of what sorts of treatment and conduct are worthy of her (what

sorts she believes she is owed, deserves, or merits) given who or what she is, including as

a person generally or as a person occupying some social position. But judgments a person

make about what is worthy of her partly depend on assessments she makes of her own

value, the value of who or what she is, i.e. partly on her level of self-esteem. Moreover, if

she rightly rates herself lowly, she ought to infer that she is not worthy of much, whereas

if she rightly rates herself highly, she ought to infer that she is worthy of much. But

lowering one’s expectations is to lose self-respect, raising them to enhance it. Therefore

(in either case), an increase/decrease in self-esteem justifies an increase/decrease of self-

respect.

The virtue view’s response to this argument has two parts. First, the requirement

to meet standards of self-respect for persons as such does not depend on their merits but

on their status merely as persons. All persons, simply as persons, ought to exercise
 71
virtues of integrity, avoid servility or arrogance, and take pride in their pursuits, whatever

their merits or whatever their perception of them. While it is true that people may take

their merits as reasons for having higher or lower standards for themselves, the virtue

view denies that they ought to. Merits or demerits are not themselves reasons for raising

or lowering universal standards of self-respect.

Second, the virtue view maintains that this is true even in situations in which

merit is relevant to what sorts of conduct are worthy of a person. This is because in these

situations, change in merit is accompanied by change in status, and it is conventions of

worthy conduct associated with aspects of this newly acquired status that in turn supply

reasons for changes in standards, if any do. Thus again, what is worthy of a person

depends on considerations of status not merit per se.

Suppose for example Jones has won the race, and the winner of the race is, by

convention, owed a trophy. It is this convention, not simply Jones’s merits, which alter

her status from one who is not worthy of the trophy to one who is. But then Jones should

expect to be given the trophy not because she believes she was the best runner that day, in

the world, or is a very good runner generally, but because she won the race and receipt of

the trophy is promised to the winner. Hence, her expectation is not justified by her self-

esteem, but by her correct beliefs about what is due winners of the race. Note furthermore

that what is due the winner is a matter of conventions associated with that status, not

simply as a direct moral consequence of one’s merit—in the absence of the convention,

having won the race may not be a reason to demand receipt of the trophy. Justified

changes in expectations do not then depend simply on changes in merits, but rather on

concomitant changes in status that alter the standards appropriate to a person.

 72
* * *

This section introduced the virtue view of the difference and relationship between self-

respect and self-esteem and discussed several features of this relationship. These features

can be summarized by the self-respect thesis, which states that self-respect is a virtue

supportive of self-esteem, but high self-esteem is a mental-state disposition not required

by self-respect and only contingently connected to virtue. Insofar as the conclusions

drawn from the discussion so far are plausible, they supply initial evidence for the

soundness of the virtue view. But the virtue view has detractors. In particular, self-respect

as standards is not universally accepted. The next section addresses two criticisms of it

that would in one way or another undermine the self-respect thesis.

3. Objections to Self-Respect as Standards

Some theorists reject certain aspects of self-respect as standards in favor of accounts of

self-respect that conflict with some aspect or other of the self-respect thesis. This section

addresses objections to two of these. One aspect is the claim that (1) self-respect requires

adherence to standards of appropriate conduct, and to this extent, requires good character.

The second is the claim that (2) the standards of self-respecting conduct are objective, i.e.

there are some a self-respecting person is not free to reject.

3.1. Self-Respect Requires Adherence to Standards and So Good Character

A first objection to self-respect as standards, due to Laurence Thomas, states that having

self-respect does not require meeting any standards of appropriate conduct, and is

therefore not at all a matter of having good character. 44 This is (supposedly) the case
 73
since if true, it follows that a person must have good character to be deserving of her own

respect. But having self-respect entails understanding one’s full moral status and rights as

a person. And understanding these requires understanding that there is nothing a person

must do in order to deserve the treatment worthy of a person having full moral status, i.e.

as one having some rights that must be respected, whatever the merits of one’s character.

Furthermore, the objection continues, because self-esteem is a merit-based assessment of

self, thinking of self-respect in terms of appreciation of moral status (and associated

rights) does not require denying there is a self-regarding trait of persons requiring good

character—since self-esteem is a merit-based assessment of self-worth, it requires good

character. Therefore, it is necessary and sufficient for a person’s respecting himself that

“he has the conviction that he is deserving of full moral status, and so the basic rights of

that status, simply in virtue of the fact that he is a person.” 45

If this argument is sound, self-respect as standards is seriously flawed. The

argument entails that self-respect does not require virtues of self-control, non-servility,

humility, or anything but a proper understanding of one’s full moral status. And though it

does not threaten the independence or asymmetry of self-respect and self-esteem (rather it

strengthens them), it claims that self-esteem is strongly connected to virtue.

However, Thomas’s argument is not sound. First, the claim that self-esteem

requires good character is mistaken. It is true that self-esteem expresses a favorable

merit-based assessment of oneself, and because of this, it is likely that a person lacking

many merits will have difficulty esteeming herself whereas one with many will have less

difficulty. However, self-esteem does not in fact require that one actually have good

character. Rather, it requires just that one believes one has it. Vicious people who esteem
 74
themselves highly are not lacking in self-esteem on account of their vice. Furthermore, it

is plausible that (sane) persons who have unwarrantedly high self-esteem are guilty of a

certain self-regarding vice, namely arrogance. If so, this vice cannot be characterized as a

lack of self-esteem, though it can be well characterized as a lack of self-respect. The

expression of arrogance in action conflicts with conduct appropriate to persons as such,

and in understanding this, self-respecting persons take steps to avoid arrogance or its

expression.

Second, the objection’s main argument against self-respect as standards is

unsound. This argument claims that conceiving self-respect in terms of adherence to

standards implies an absurdity, namely that self-respecting persons are deserving of their

own respect only if they have good character. However, this absurdity does not follow.

As was argued earlier, the standards (and accompanying expectations) of self-respect for

persons as such are all ones they ought to have for themselves whatever their merits.

These standards include non-servility, which, as I described it above, partly requires

refusal to approve of being treated as an inferior being. But adhering to this standard is

both required by understanding one’s full moral status and sufficient for having some

good character—a person who capitulates to being treated as inferior is servile and one

who refuses has some good character. Hence, Thomas’s argument depends upon a false

dichotomy between two putatively distinct ideals of self-respect, self-respect as

standards and what might be called ‘self-respect as moral status/rights appreciation.’ But

appreciating one’s full moral status/rights just is to conform to a self-respecting standard

partly constitutive of having good character.

 75
An objection to my response might be entered at this point. This objection states

that it misunderstands Thomas’s initial objection. The problem for self-respect as

standards is not that it absurdly implies a person must have good character in order to be

deserving of self-respect. Rather, it absurdly judges that people who succeed in thinking

of themselves as having full moral status are not self-respecting if they do not also

exercise virtues of self-control, pride in their pursuits, some humility, courage, and the

other virtues, even if they are incapable of them. Thomas seems to make precisely this

objection to self-respect as standards when he states that

If it is one of our considered moral judgments that a person’s moral status ought

not to be a function of what her natural endowments are or how she behaves, then

this judgment is captured by the view of self-respect that [only requires the

conviction that one is deserving of full moral status simply in virtue of the fact

that one is a person]. What is more, it follows, on my view, that in order to have

self-respect, a person need not have a morally acceptable character…For there can

be no question but that having a morally accepted character calls for abilities and

capacities that we do not all possess equally. (Thomas, “Self-Respect: Theory and

Practice,” 1995, 254)

A suppressed premise is then added to this to get the conclusion that self-respect requires

only an appreciation of our full moral status and not at all good character. This is that all

persons are equally deserving of their own respect. Given that this is so, and given that

not everyone is equally capable of exercising virtues of integrity, courage, rational self-

control, and so on, it follows that self-respect must consist solely in appreciating one’s

full moral status and not at all exercise of these virtues.

 76
This argument is not sound. First, the argument proves too much if it proves

anything. It proves too much since appreciation of full moral status arguably requires

“abilities and capacities that we do not all possess equally.” To name a couple, it requires

that a person clearly understands the content of her rights and the conditions under which

they can be validly waived and when they cannot. 46 But it also requires the resolve to

withhold consent to inferior treatment or to decline invalidly waiving rights when others

encourage one to do so. If so, Thomas’s argument defeats his own view.

Second, the conclusion depends on the highly implausible premise that a person is

blameworthy for lacking a virtue of self-respect even if she lacks the ability to exercise it.

To avoid the appearance of saddling Thomas with a straw person argument, note that

without this added premise, that people equally deserving of self-respect are unequally

capable of meeting its requirements is insufficient for concluding that it requires only

those capabilities equally shared by all. Rather, an alternative conclusion to Thomas’s

immediately emerges if we reject this premise, namely that self-respect requires all to

exercise virtues of personal integrity, rational self-control, and the like to the best of their

abilities, not necessarily equally to everyone else. Then, a person can be justly charged

for lacking self-respect when she falls short of her abilities (to some degree that need not

be established here).

In contrast to Thomas’s position, this more closely matches some important

intuitions about different cases. If Jones had a hard childhood (or an abusive early

intimate relationship) and consequently has difficulty standing up to people, we do not

cease to expect that she learn to stand up to them. Rather, our efforts to get her to change

will take the form of encouragements and sympathetic advice (“You know you really
 77
shouldn’t let so-and-so push you around like that—you deserve better”). On the other

hand, if Jones has had every opportunity to establish her autonomy but continues in a life

that can only lead to her subordination, our efforts to get her to change may take on a

more critical tone (“I really can’t understand why you just do everything so-and-so

asks—can’t you see you are being used!?”).

I conclude that Thomas’s arguments do not succeed. Self-respect does require the

character involved in living up to standards of conduct worthy of persons as such.

Furthermore, since poor character is no bar to believing that one’s character is quite good,

high self-esteem and virtue are not necessarily connected.

3.2. The Standards of Self-Respect Are Objective

A second objection to the virtue view’s ideal of self-respect, which I draw from Stephen

J. Massey, maintains that there are no objective standards of self-respecting conduct

(where objective means required independently of our preferences). 47 According to this

objection, servile persons, the arrogant, and the wholly disintegrated can be perfectly

self-respecting. This conclusion, though it is unclear whether Massey accepts it

unequivocally, is derivable from arguments he offers in which he distinguishes (what he

calls) a ‘subjective concept of self-respect.’ If it is correct, self-respect as standards is a

deeply flawed account of self-respect.

According to Massey’s subjective concept, a person has self-respect just when she

takes a favorable attitude toward herself in the belief that she conducts herself in accord

with her conception of worthy behavior. This is in contrast to Massey’s objective

concept, according to which a person is self-respecting just when she bases her favorable
 78
attitude toward herself on living up to objectively worthy standards of conduct. Thus, to

borrow an example from Massey, if an Elizabethan literature professor believes it would

be positively shameful of her, qua Elizabethan literature professor, to appear on a game

show (imagine she thinks to herself, “Of all people who should not participate in such

silliness!”), she respects herself subjectively if she declines and thereby preserves her

favorable self-image. 48 On the other hand, if her colleague accepts in the belief that it is

not unworthy of Elizabethan literature professors to appear on game shows, he also

respects himself subjectively. And the reason both respect themselves subjectively is that

both act according to their respective conceptions of worthy conduct, and in doing so

maintain a favorable image of themselves. On the other hand, if there is a standard of

worthy conduct forbidding Elizabethan literature professors from appearing on game

shows, than only the first professor is self-respecting, even though the second continues

to believe that he respects himself.

It should be evident that Massey’s subjective concept of self-respect is equivalent

to what I have called state self-esteem. Massey’s discussion even explicitly identifies the

two. 49 As I will argue, this is a fatal liability for his arguments. Nevertheless, it will be

useful for the purposes of argument to momentarily adopt the language of a subjective

concept, since as Massey sees it, distinguishing this concept undercuts the reasons we

might have for thinking that self-respect is necessarily objective, i.e. requires adherence

to definite standards like integrity, non-servility, and so on. This is supposedly the case

because

Thinking of self-respect as a subjective concept requires that we separate two

questions: (1) does a person respect himself? and (2) is the person’s basis of self-
 79
respect appropriate (or morally good)? It is possible to give an affirmative answer

to question 1, yet insist that a person’s current bases of self-respect are morally

unacceptable, and that he ought not to respect himself on those bases. (Massey,

“Is Self-Respect a Moral or a Psychological Concept?” 1995, 202)

But furthermore (in Massey’s opinion) once the subjective concept of self-respect is

distinguished and these questions separated, an important argumentative strategy in favor

of self-respect’s objectivity is seriously undermined. This strategy simply draws attention

to persons having a favorable self-attitude but who, because they are (for example) overly

deferential to others or lack basic integrity, we would on intuitive grounds hesitate to say

respect themselves. Massey believes his distinctions undermine the force of such appeals

because drawing them makes it is possible to criticize, for example, overly deferential

persons not for lacking self-respect, but for having self-respect that “lacks certain morally

desirable bases, and should therefore not be encouraged on its present bases.” 50 Or, to

take another example from Massey, rather than say that a person lacks self-respect who

arrogantly usurps massive wealth through morally disintegrated fraud and bribery, it is

possible instead to say that “his self-respect is not of a morally good sort.” 51

If these arguments are sound, self-respect as standards is so wildly mistaken that

almost no aspect of the self-respect thesis is true—self-respect and self-esteem are not

independent, self-respect is not generally a virtue, and the relationship between self-

respect and self-esteem is not clearly asymmetrical. This is because if they are correct,

there is no need to distinguish between self-respect as a recognitional concept and self-

esteem as a self-evaluative concept. Rather, the only philosophical need distinguishes

self-respect/self-esteem (it is indifferent which if Massey is correct) that is good

 80
(objective self-respect) from self-respect/self-esteem that may or may not be good

(subjective self-respect). However, Massey’s arguments fail to show that self-respect is

not necessarily an objective, recognitional concept distinct from self-esteem.

If Massey is correct, then for every putative case of a lack of self-respect in the

recognitional sense, we instead can criticize the person’s self-esteem as morally bad and

deserving to be discouraged on its present bases. But this mistaken—such substitution of

criticisms is possible only if self-respect is identical to self-esteem or a favorable attitude

toward the self. This is the case since if the fault is identified instead with the poor quality

of the person’s standards, we will have thereby adopted a recognitional/objective account

of self-respect. But in fact there are cases of a lack of self-respect in which what is

lacking is not morally good self-esteem, but commitment to an appropriate standard.

Massey’s own case of overly deferential persons is a case in point.

To elaborate. First, presumably Massey does not want to say that servile persons

ought necessarily to esteem themselves less. Relative to low self-esteem cases of

servility, this would seem to be an exceedingly harsh or insensitive response, a bit like

saying, “You need to work on your self-esteem, you stupid idiot.” 52 However, neither

should we necessarily want to say that servile persons ought to esteem themselves on

different grounds than they presently do. This would be desirable only if high self-

esteem, servile persons premised their self-esteem on belief in the goodness of their

servility per se. But it is highly implausible that they do this. Rather, they most likely

premise their self-esteem on traits of theirs that really are virtues, e.g. friendliness,

kindness, generosity, or willingness to seek compromise. Hence, their problem is not

really that their self-esteem has morally bad bases and lacks morally good ones. Rather, it
 81
is simply that they fail to understand or recognize a further principle of conduct, non-

servility, for the self-regarding virtue that it is. If so, their lacking self-respect is not at all

well explained as morally bad self-esteem, though it is well explained as a lack of self-

respect, a failure to recognize and act on a standard of conduct worthy of them simply as

persons.

The problem for Massey’s argument then is that it is premised on wholesale

failure to distinguish the recognitional sense of ‘respect’ from the esteeming, appraisal

sense described by Darwall. Both the subjective and objective concept of self-respect are

concepts only of ‘appraisal self-respect,’ the difference between them being only that

objective self-respect is good self-esteem/appraisal self-respect while subjective self-

respect is self-esteem/appraisal self-respect that is either good or bad. The deficiency in

this conceptual scheme is that ‘appraisal self-respect’ is a sort of respect in name only,

and the scheme is therefore blind to the concept of self-respect in the form in which it is

unique. This is respect for self in the recognitional sense of appropriately responding,

through one’s deliberations and conduct, to the fact of one’s status as a person (or as the

professor, the President, and so on). Furthermore, it is simply too plausible that there

really are such ways of responding to one’s status as a person. To name a few, it is too

plausible that it really is appropriate for people generally, simply as human beings, to

take responsibility for their actions and pride in their pursuits, to resent being unjustly

pushed around by others or having their interests systematically ignored by them, to

expect themselves to be finally responsible for their own flourishing, or to cautiously

protect access to their bodies. On the other hand, it is too plausible that it is inappropriate

of them as such to, for example, let disruptive addictions control their lives (to spend
 82
hour upon hour, day after day viewing internet pornography, for example), to jealously

keep wealth far beyond what any person could possibly use in belief one has a God-given

right to it, or sell access to one’s body without the least concern for one’s physical well-

being or for what sort of person one is becoming.

In appealing to intuition in defense of self-respect as standards it is not necessary

to deny the existence of controversial cases. Pole dancing is an aerobically exhausting

activity requiring considerable bodily strength, but also commonly associated with

professional strip-tease. Do women who take it up as exercise lack self-respect, or is it an

excess of sexual Puritanism to think so? 53 It would be ideal if self-respect as standards

were supplemented by a formal theory of self-respect, one supplying necessary and

sufficient conditions specifying when some activity satisfies or conflicts with the sorts of

conduct worthy of persons relevant to their self-respect. However, accepting self-respect

as standards does not depend on articulating this theory just so long as there are easy

cases. I submit that it is indifferent to self-respect whether Elizabethan literature

professors (or most anyone else) appear on game shows, opposed to it that they, for

example, permit rebellious students to overtake control of their classrooms, and mandated

by it that they (as for all people) take some pride in their pursuits and some responsibility

for their quality. I conclude that Massey’s arguments fail to show that self-respect as

standards is an unsound account of self-respect.

3. Conclusion

Chapter 1 maintained that it is important for political philosophers to take note of the

difference between self-respect and self-esteem, at least because the former merits greater
 83
political concern. This chapter has sought to support Chapter 1’a conclusions by

elaborating and further defending the accounts of self-respect and self-esteem found in

the basic distinction. This elaboration I called the virtue view, according to which self-

respect is a virtue supporting some self-esteem, while high self-esteem is a contingently

virtuous mental-state disposition neither causally nor conceptually necessary for self-

respect. Some other prominent theories of self-respect reject various aspects of this self-

respect thesis. But, I have argued, this is reason to reject these theories, not the self-

respect thesis. I conclude that the accounts of self-respect and self-esteem found in the

basic distinction are sound and that the conclusions of Chapter 1 hold up.
 84
NOTES: CHAPTER 2

1
This ideal of self-esteem is built up from a review of positions commonly discussed in recent
psychological literature, including those found in Self-Esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard, Roy F.
Baumeister, ed., (New York: Plenum Press, 1993); Susan Harter’s The Construction of the Self, (New
York: Guildford Press, 1999); and chapter 8 of Jonathon D. Brown’s The Self, (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1998).
2
Though the point is conceptual, psychologists are now also widely agreed that the class of low self-esteem
persons, as commonly referred to in their literature, consists primarily of those whose self-esteem is low
only relative to those with the highest self-esteem. Hence, the self-esteem of most ‘low self-esteem’
persons is moderate in absolute measures. This point is discussed by Dianna M. Tice in “The Social
Motivations of People With Low Self-Esteem,” in Baumeister (1993), pp. 40-41; see also Brown’s
discussion in The Self, p. 203. This agreement is a consequence of a widely accepted method of selecting
high versus low self-esteem persons from a given sample. According to this method, the top third of scores
should be placed in the high self-esteem group, the bottom third in the low self-esteem group, and scores in
the middle third disregarded (since controversial how they should be classed). This classification scheme
ends up placing responses that are moderately high by absolute measures in the low self-esteem group
because the majority of total scores commonly cluster between 60-70 percent positive in the direction of
high self-esteem, few falling below the 50 percent range. Hence, by this very commonly used procedure,
low self-esteem persons are low only relative to the very highest scores.
3
For extensive discussion of reasonable versus unreasonable grounds for self-esteem, see Richard
Keshen’s Reasonable Self-Esteem, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996).
4
This account of self-respect is very similar to Elizabeth Telfer’s ideal of ‘conative self-respect’ in her
Elizabeth Telfer’s “Self-Respect,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 18, 71 (Apr., 1968), pp. 114-121,
repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed., (New York: Routledge, 1995), chapter
5. All page citations reference the reprinted version.
5
Here I follow closely Telfer’s account of ‘conative self-respect.’
6
The artist case is due to Thomas E. Hill, Jr. in his “Self-Respect Revisited,” Respect for Persons, Tulane
Studies in Philosophy, O.H. Green, ed., Vol. 31, (1985), pp. 129-137, repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-
Respect Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed., 117-124 (all citations reference the
reprint).
7
Hill, “Self-Respect Revisited,” 121.
8
See Telfer, “Self-Respect,” especially pp. 112-13.
9
This point is brought out by Telfer, ibid.
10
See “Self-Respect: Theory and Practice,” Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American
Philosophy from 1917, Leonard Harris, ed., (New York: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, Co, 1983), repr. in
Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, op. cit.; and Robin S. Dillon’s “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, and
Political,” Ethics, Vol. 107, 2, (Jan., 1997), pp. 226-249.
11
See Darwall, “Two Kinds of Respect,” Ethics, Vol. 88, 1 (Oct., 1977), pp. 36-49, repr. in Dignity,
Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon, ed.
12
Dillon, “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political.”
 85

13
Ibid, 241.
14
Ibid, 232-3.
15
Ibid, 234.
16
Ibid, 242.
17
See Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger, and Kathleen D Vohs, “Does High
Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?”
Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4, (2003), 1-44.
18
Ibid, 5.
19
See for example Jonathon D. Brown, “Evaluations of self and others: Self-enhancement biases in social
judgments,” Social Cognition, 4, 353-376; also, Baumeister et al, 2003, 5-6.
20
See Tice’s “The Social Motivations of People With Low Self-Esteem,” in Baumeister (1993), pp. 40-41;
also Brown’s discussion in The Self, 1998, p. 203.
21
See Brown, 1998, chapter 8.
22
Ibid.
23
See Baumeister, 2003, 10-13.
24
See especially ibid on these two claims.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
27
For arguments suggesting this view, see chapter 2, sections 5-7 of Lester H. Hunt’s Character and
Culture, (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997); also, Kristján Kristjánsson’s “Self-respect,
Megalopsychia, and Moral Education,” Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 27, No. 1, (1998), 5-17.
28
Here I follow Rosalind Hursthouse’s presentation in “Virtue Theory and Abortion,” Philosophy and
Public Affairs, 20 (1991), 223-46.
29
Kristján Kristjánsson’s “Self-Respect, Megalopsychia, and Moral Education,” 8.
30
See Massey, “Is Self-Respect a Moral or a Psychological Concept?” Ethics, Vol. 93, 2 (Jan., 1983), pp.
246-261, repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect.
31
See Hunt, Character and Culture, page 50.
32
Ibid, 42.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid, 42.
35
See Hunt, Character and Culture, 50
 86

36
For some interesting discussion of just how self-defeating the overt pursuit of esteem is, see Geoffrey
Brennan and Philip Pettit’s The Economy of Esteem, (Oxford University Press, 2004), chapter 2.
37
This is a man who acknowledges himself as having and indeed has little merit or much to be proud of,
and so allows himself to be pushed around by others. See Hill’s “Self-Respect and Servility.”
38
Hunt, Character and Culture, 47.
39
See Jennifer Crocker, Voelkl, K., Testa, M., and Major, B, “Downward comparison, prejudice and
evaluations of others: effects of self-esteem and threat,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52,
907-916; and Brenda Major, Shannon K. McCoy, Cheryl R. Kaiser, and Wendy J. Quinton., “Prejudice and
Self-Esteem: A Transactional Model,” in W. Stropebe and M. Hewstone, eds., European Review of Social
Psychology, vol. 13, (2003), pp. 77-104.
40
Of course, this means that self-esteem is also not much enhanced by success even if it is not much
diminished by failure. For discussion of these points in the psychological literature, see Bruce Blaine and
Jennifer Crocker’s “Self-esteem and self-serving biases in reactions to positive and negative events: An
integrative view,” in Self-Esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard, Baumeister, ed., 1993, chapter 4.
41
This point is forcefully presented in chapter 2, sections 5-7 of Hunt’s Character and Culture, 1997.
42
For the most explicit presentation of this claim, see David Sachs’s “How to Distinguish Self-Respect
from Self-Esteem?” Though it is less clear that they endorse the claim without qualification, the views
advanced by Elizabeth Telfer in “Self-Respect” and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. in “Self-Respect Revisited” reflect
the sentiment that failing to respect oneself merits loss of self-esteem. The Darwallian ideal of ‘appraisal
self-respect’ also suggests this standard.
43
See Deigh “Shame and Self-Esteem: A Critique,” Ethics, Vol. 93, No. 2 (Jan., 1983), 225-245, reprinted
in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon, ed., pp. 133-156.
44
See Thomas’s “Self-Respect: Theory and Practice.”
45
Ibid, 253.
46
For this last point, see Thomas E. Hill, Jr.’s “Servility and Self-Respect,” Monist 57 (Jan., 1973), pp. 87-
104, repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed., chapter 3.
47
See Massey, “Is Self-Respect a Moral or a Psychological Concept?”, repr. in Dignity, Character, and
Self-Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed. Page citations reference the reprinted version.
48
Ibid, 200-201.
49
See ibid, p. 202.
50
Ibid, 205.
51
Ibid.
52
Thanks are due to Lester Hunt for drawing my attention to the absurdity of this sort of criticism.
53
For interesting discussion of this question, see Jacqui Head’s story “Dirty dancing,” BBC News, (April
25, 2006), http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4939752.stm
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CHAPTER 3

SELF-RESPECT AND WELL-BEING

1. Introduction

Chapters 1 and 2 distinguished self-respect as the virtue a person has when her will and

conduct are organized by certain norms of worthy thought and behavior, including non-

servility/autonomy, integrity, non-arrogance/humility and self-acceptance, and self-

development. This chapter turns in detail to the question of self-respect’s value for human

well-being. It argues that though it has instrumental value for well-being, it also has

intrinsic value as an achievement important to living a completely good life. This claim,

which I will call the capability thesis, will have importance in the chapters to follow. The

capability thesis shows that in political argument, self-respect is best conceived as a

valuable functioning or capability justice might promote rather than an all-purpose means

to pursuing other goods it guarantees, i.e. an intrinsically valuable opportunity rather than

a primary good.

The discussion of this chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2 elaborates the

capability thesis and discusses a complication confronting any argument for it. Because

self-respect is complex, any account of its value needs a somewhat narrower target than

has been so far provided. Section 3 supplies that target by selecting a few core traits

belonging to paradigmatically self-respecting persons. Section 4 then argues that the traits

of paradigmatically self-respecting persons have both instrumental and intrinsic value for

their well-being.
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2. The Capability Thesis

The capability thesis claims that as an achievement crucial to living a completely good

life, self-respect’s value for well-being is not exhausted by its usefulness in the pursuit of

other ends of value. It has intrinsic value also. This claim has a few parts in need of

independent elaboration and defense. The next several sections undertake to defend the

following elaborations:

1. self-respect has instrumental value in that it facilitates realization of other

goods of value, such as finding a satisfying way of life, good relationships, and

self-esteem.

2. self-respect has intrinsic value in that it is worth achieving for its own sake as

part of a completely good life.

3. self-respect is worth pursuing for is own sake as part a completely good life in

that its absence directly diminishes well-being to some extent and its achievement

enhances it.

Section 4 below addresses claim 1 and section 5 addresses claims 2 and 3.

Before this can be undertaken, it is necessary to address a complication for any

attempted account of self-respect’s value. The complication is that because self-respect is

a complex trait consisting of will and conduct organized by other traits like autonomy,

self-knowledge, integrity, and so on, its value cannot be fully assessed independently of

these traits but is instead a function of their value. So the precise nature of self-respect’s

instrumental value partly depends, for example, on the instrumental value of autonomy,

while whether it is a necessary feature of a completely good life depends partly on

whether non-autonomous persons can be completely well off.

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This chapter proposes to handle this complexity in the following way: I will select

a couple core, reasonably well understood virtues that are also widely agreed to belong to

characteristically self-respecting persons. This selection will permit a more focused and

(relatively) non-controversial conceptualization of the paradigmatically self-respecting

person. The paradigmatically self-respecting person then so conceived can be the subject

of evaluation. Insofar as his core traits satisfy claims 1 through 3 above, the capability

thesis is supported.

The traits I will ascribe to the paradigmatically self-respecting person include

autonomy/non-servility and personal integrity. These traits are suitable for the present

task first because they are widely ascribed to self-respecting persons. 1 Second, though

theorists of these traits disagree about their details, there are commonly shared intuitive

conceptions of what each consists in. Third, these traits complement one another in a way

making the paradigmatically self-respecting person a distinct character type. Thus,

ascribing them to him supplies a focused and (relatively) non-controversial target of

assessment.

The previous chapter gave some brief statements of what non-servility and

personal integrity consist in. These statements sufficiently served that chapter’s purposes

but this one requires more detail. The next section turns then to further elaborating them

with the purpose giving a more vivid picture of the paradigmatically self-respecting

person.
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3. The Paradigmatically Self-Respecting Person

The paradigmatically self-respecting person (a) has personal integrity and (b) is

autonomous and non-servile. This section elaborates these traits in more detail than they

were given in the previous chapter in order to make self-respect sufficiently vivid for the

purpose of assessing its value. It also aims to show that (c) these two traits are strongly

complementary in a way making the paradigmatically self-respecting person a distinctive

character type. This type of person exercises some self-control in the pursuit of valuable

ends which define him as the unique person he is. Another way to put this is to say that

the paradigmatically self-respecting has distinctive character or personality.

The discussion to follow treats points (a) and (b) individually, then considers (c),

the complementarity of personal integrity and autonomy.

a. Personal Integrity

The paradigmatically self-respecting person has some ideal standards of personal

integrity. This section argues that although the personally integrated person’s ideals need

not be common to all personally integrated people, not just any ideal will do. Rather, his

ideals must (1) guide his conduct in ways that might lead him to forgo other desirable

ends, especially those of self-interest like pleasure, esteem, wealth, leisure, or comfort,

but also (2) toward goals of recognizably intrinsic importance or value. 2

A person is commonly thought to have moral integrity when he is honest, fair, or

reliable, and personal integrity when he has and consistently acts on self-selected ideal

principles themselves exhibiting internal consistency or cohesion. The personally

integrated person is thus commonly thought to have the wholeness and (relative) stability

of identity that comes from commitment to internally coherent ideals—he is not confused
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about who or what he is or stands for and does not wantonly follow impulse or just go

with the crowd (at least not when impulse or the crowd conflict with his ideals). 3 These

are good qualities, but as just characterized no other restrictions are placed on ideal

standards of personal integrity. Are there no limits apart from the demands of consistency

on the personally integrated person’s ideals?

Strong intuitions suggest otherwise. It is conceivable that a person decides to

make the pursuit of pleasure his ideal and sticks to it closely. Or a person might make the

single-minded pursuit of esteem or wealth his ideal. But it is difficult to understand these

commitments as manifesting personal integrity.

It might be thought that the explanation of this is that the single-minded pursuit of

pleasure, esteem, or wealth must lead a person to act immorally. But while perhaps a

personally integrated person can be immoral, a morally integrated one cannot. Hence, the

examples trade on conflating moral and personal integrity.

This explanation may be right for certain cases but will not do for all. Consider,

for example, a case by Thomas E. Hill, Jr.: 4

Suppose an artist of genius and originality paints a masterwork unappreciated by

his contemporaries. Cynically, for money and social status, he alters the painting

to please the tasteless public and then turns out copies in machine-like fashion. He

does it deliberately, with full awareness of his reasons…(Hill, “Self-Respect

Reconsidered,” 1991, 19)

The artist in Hill’s case “sells out” thereby violating a standard of artistic integrity that

might be summarized by the ideal standard, “Pursue the advancement of art as an end in

itself.” In his case adhering to this ideal is costly to his self-interest—his genius is
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unappreciated and has not brought him a level of wealth he would like to have. But

breaking with his standard and pursuing esteem and wealth instead do not obviously lead

him to act immorally. Hence, if his actions lack integrity, this lack is personal not moral.

Hill’s example points to a general principle brought out by another theorist Lynn

McFall. 5 According to McFall, ideal standards of personal integrity must guide a

person’s conduct in ways that might prevent him from realizing other goods he normally

wants, especially goods of self-interest. For if they did not, he could never be tempted to

break with his ideals. But ideals are precisely those that a person must be able to resist

temptation to break with—fortitude in the face of temptation is the hallmark of integrity.

Hence, since everyone wants some pleasure, esteem, or wealth, single-minded

commitment to their pursuit trivially cannot tempt one away from their realization. So

exclusive commitment to their pursuit cannot be personally integrated.

Hence, one limit to ideal standards of personal integrity is that they preclude

single-minded pursuit of self-interest or other normally desired goods. But, I argue, they

must also direct a person’s conduct toward ends of intrinsic importance, e.g. creating art.

Adding this condition is necessary since some ideal commitments may possibly conflict

with self-interest yet not count (or count much) toward a person’s personal integrity.

Imagine that I am devoted to always eating organic or never drinking cheap wine. These

goals can conflict with my self-interest—both are expensive and not always available

when one might need to eat or drink. But they do not clearly promote my personal

integrity. This seems to be because eating organic and drinking expensive wine are not

themselves ends of intrinsic value, but instrumental value at best.

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These considerations do not purport to supply a full account of personal integrity.

But they do establish some limits to ideal standards for it. Not any standard will do even

though not everyone must have the same standards. Non-artists need not have standards

of artistic integrity, and perhaps some art industry professionals, e.g. graphics designers,

have personal integrity by taking their work seriously in other ways, e.g. they do not

aspire to advance the form, but always execute their assignments with care. Altogether,

these considerations give a partial picture of the paradigmatically self-respecting person

conceived as one having personal integrity. This person does not just wantonly follow

impulse or go with the crowd but has some ideal commitments guiding his conduct

toward ends of value beside those of self-interest and giving him a (relatively) stable and

coherent identity.

b. Non-Servility

The paradigmatically self-respecting person avoids servility. One common conception of

servility, initially advanced by Thomas E. Hill, Jr., maintains that it is the moral defect of

disavowing equal moral status by either misunderstanding or under-appreciating the

rights of that status. 6 This section agrees that non-servile persons must understand their

rights vis-à-vis others and desire that they are respected, but argues that a lack of personal

autonomy rather than proper rights-appreciation is responsible for many common cases

of servility, including those Hill’s (sort of) view is intended to explain. 7

The argument for this conclusion will proceed most naturally given prior

elaboration of the relevant ideal of personal autonomy. The next sub-section undertakes

this by reviewing an account by Steven Wall. 8 I then return to how avoiding servility

requires personal autonomy (henceforth, just ‘autonomy’).

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b.1. Personal Autonomy

Autonomy in the sense I shall intend is different from the Kantian or moral autonomy

belonging to the moral person’s will. Borrowing a formulation from Steven Wall,

autonomy in the intended sense

…is the ideal of people charting their own course through life, fashioning their

character by self-consciously choosing projects and taking up commitments from

a wide range of eligible alternatives, and making something out of their lives

according to their own understanding of what is valuable and worth doing. Those

who realize this ideal take charge of their affairs. They discover, or at least try to

discover, what they are cut out for and what will bring them fulfillment and

satisfaction. They neither drift through life, aimlessly moving from one object of

desire to another, nor adopt projects and pursuits wholesale from others. In short,

autonomous people have a strong sense of their own identity and actively

participate in the determination of their own lives. (Wall, Liberalism,

Perfectionism, and Restraint, 1998, 128; emphasis added)

This ideal is complex. But the key aspect of it is that autonomous persons “take charge of

their affairs” and thereby actively contribute to the development of their character and the

direction of their lives. But what more exactly does this involve?

Wall explains that there are two things it does not necessarily involve. Autonomy

does not necessarily mean living a life unified by unwavering pursuit of a single aim—an

autonomous person might actively pursue many different projects throughout his life. Nor

does autonomy necessarily mean pursuing unconventional aims—the autonomous

person’s goals might ultimately fit into well-established social practice. 9

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What is crucial to autonomy is the exercise of capacities to choose and pursue

projects with a certain degree of independence from others. 10 These capacities include

cognitive ones such as to conceive of alternatives and “evaluate different courses of

action according to how well they would further [one’s] projects.” 11 But they also include

more volitional ones, “such as the mental resolve to make decisions and the strength of

character to stick to them once they have been made.” Actual exercise of these capacities

is critical to autonomy, since without it, people remain passive in the determination of

their own lives, whereas autonomy requires active determination.

However, Wall plausibly maintains that exercising the capacities of project

pursuit is not sufficient for autonomy. An autonomous person “must exercise them in

such a way as to make [his] life [his] own,” and “To do this one needs a measure of

independence from others.” 12 So if a person’s choices are in various ways dependent on

those of others, they are not his own. Which ways exactly?

Wall explains that autonomy subverting dependence on others can come from two

general sources, external pressure by other people or a misplaced internal tendency to

rely on them. 13 External sources of dependency commonly include coercion and

manipulation. These undercut autonomy if they compel a person to act for reasons that

conflict with his own understanding of what is valuable and worth doing. Being

confronted with a threat of “Your money or your life,” is a paradigm case of autonomy

subverting coercion. On the other hand, being subjected to lies or emotional appeals

exemplify autonomy subverting manipulation—they undercut autonomy by getting us to

act on reasons or desires that do not reflect our own priorities.

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However, Wall plausibly maintains that coercion and manipulation do not always

undercut autonomy. If it is one of my values to give ten dollars a month to a certain

charity, it is not clear how my autonomy is undercut if, by some odd circumstance, I am

threatened into giving it. 14 Similarly, a lie or emotional appeal may inspire me to give

more charitably than I am presently inclined to, but this does not clearly undercut my

autonomy if I would agree that one ought to give as charitably as one can. Nevertheless,

since coercion and manipulation are commonly deployed to motivate responses that

conflict with people’s own plans or ideals, they commonly generate the sort of

dependency incompatible with autonomy.

Finally, autonomy subverting dependence upon others can come from more

internal sources as well. As Wall explains, autonomy generally requires not just freedom

from coercion or manipulation, but also a certain degree of independent-mindedness. To

see what is meant by independent-mindedness, consider for example a young girl who is

brainwashed or socially conditioned to believe that she must become a housewife.

Imagine, that is, that this belief operates to regulate her thought and behavior so that, as

she grows older, she rejects opportunities that might lead her toward a different way of

life. This young girl is not autonomous in believing that she must become a housewife,

and neither therefore is she autonomous if she actually becomes one. This is because an

autonomous person pursues projects in a way making her life her own by pursuing them

according her own ideals of what is worthwhile. Because of the conditioning this girl has

undergone, however, she simply accepts the ideals (or beliefs, values, desires, or reasons)

of others as her own. Her case is thus one of a radical lack of independent-mindedness,

i.e. an inability to act for reasons of her own, or reasons she holds autonomously.
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Brainwashing or social conditioning are particularly extreme examples of how

various processes of belief or preference formation can subvert independent-mindedness

and autonomy. However, less extreme but equally autonomy subverting processes clearly

exist. People who are unable to escape oppressive social circumstances, for instance, may

consciously or unconsciously alter their beliefs about their circumstances in an effort to

make them tolerable. Even less dramatically, school-aged children adopt practices in

order to earn friends and adult-aged children choose their holiday plans in response to

guilt laid on them by their parents.

The last two examples suggest that independent-mindedness is often of limited

importance. As Wall observes, all our projects are normally pursued in an unchosen

social context inevitably influencing the beliefs, values, or plans we come to adopt. No

one chooses his parents or country of origin, for example, though these certainly

influence the plans a person will likely come to value. But surely they do not necessarily

undercut autonomy. If they did, no one could ever be autonomous. Hence, independent-

mindedness and autonomy cannot demand freedom from all social influences in all

domains of life. Neither need they, since some choices are trivial, whereas autonomy

concerns the shape and direction of one’s life:

Someone who chooses his projects for reasons of his own, but who does not care

about fashion and is happy to wear the clothes that everyone else is wearing

would not fail to possess the virtue [of inependent-mindedness]. [Autonomy] is

the ideal of people shaping their lives by choosing projets that reflect their

understanding of what is valuable and worth doing. The virtue of independent-

mindedness is necessary if people are to make these self-determining choices, but

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possession of the virtue does not mandate independence in all choices. (Wall,

Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint, 1998, 137)

In general, it might be reasonably held that a person lacks the psychic independence

autonomy requires if she is unable to choose any of her life- or character-shaping projects

for reasons she recognizes as her own, because, say, the thought of doing so overwhelms

her with shame or guilt.

To summarize then, personal autonomy is the ideal of actively determining one’s

life and character by exercising capacities of project pursuit according to one’s own

understanding of what is worthwhile. This is not the same as the ideal of living a unified

or unconventional life, though some autonomous persons might live such lives. It does,

however, require exercise of capacities commonly associated with them. Autonomous

persons must compare alternative projects according to their own understanding of what

is worthwhile, settle on some, and stick with them.

Before proceeding to the role of autonomy in avoiding servility, it is worth

considering an objection concerning how people become autonomous. It might be

objected that while the ideal of autonomy just outlined is desirable, it is too unrealistic to

be of interest. This objection might seem especially pressing given cases like the young

girl’s, together with the observation that our understanding of what’s worthwhile always

develops within a social context inevitably influencing the beliefs, preferences, or values

informing the choices we make. If independent-mindedness requires that persons choose

their plans for their own reasons or according to their own understanding of what is

worthwhile doing, how is this possible if their social circumstances necessarily influence
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which beliefs, preferences, ideals, or reasons they adopt as their own? How is the

independent-mindedness autonomy requires really possible?

How the independent-mindedness autonomy requires is possible is a hugely

controversial problem for advocates of autonomy. I cannot attempt to solve it here. But a

couple points in response deserve mention.

First, it is doubtless true that some forms of social influence are deeply subversive

of autonomy. But insofar as autonomy is important and these forms of influence are

artificial, this is reason to reject these forms of social behavior, not the present ideal of

autonomy. For instance, if there are styles of parenting capable of preventing young girls

from considering ways of life other than housekeeping, these parenting styles merit

condemnation. But they do not show that there is anything mistaken or troublingly

unrealistic about the present ideal of personal autonomy.

Second, relative to social influences that really are inevitable and affect what

values a person finds herself with, it is not necessarily the case that she is stuck with

holding those values non-autonomously or autonomously abandoning them. 15 Rather, it

is ordinarily possible for a person to reflectively subject her values to rational criticism.

She can, for instance, critically interrogate the process by which she came to acquire her

values. Or, she can critically assess their merit by considering what reasons there are for

believing them and what reasons there are for rejecting them. If they survive this process,

it is reasonable to say that those values now comprise her own understanding of what is

worthwhile and are held autonomously.

So the independent-mindedness autonomy requires really is possible, often even

when the beliefs or preferences that inform our choices are influenced by our social
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circumstances. It is possible because we are ordinarily capable of reflecting on our beliefs

and preferences and subjecting them to rational criticism. As other authors have

observed, this means that the practice of autonomy requires the acquisition and exercise

of various skills. As Harry Brighouse has argued, “teachable skills can enable us to avoid

or overcome many instances of non-autonomy.” 16 For instance,

We can be taught methods for evaluating the truth and falsehood, or relative

probability, of various claims about the world. We can be taught…the difference

between anecdotal evidence and statistical evidence and the differences in

reliability with respect to truth. Manipulation can be avoided, to some extent, by

ensuring that we have the developed ability to investigate truth claims with

somewhat reliable tools, on our own. We can be taught that adaptive and

accomodationist preference-formation are features of human behaviour, and

people, to some extent, can avoid these by ‘stepping back’ from their

commitments and reflecting on how they were formed. (Brighouse, School Choice

and Social Justice, 1998, 66-7)

These points certainly suggest that acquiring and exercising the independent-mindedness

autonomy requires is more sophisticated and demanding than Wall’s account of it lets on.

But they also show that it is not impossible.

b.2. Autonomy and Non-Servility

To recall, a common account of servility (due to Thomas E. Hill, Jr.) maintains that it is

the moral vice a person avoids only if he properly understands and appreciates his moral

rights. On this sort of view, non-servile persons are those who refuse to consent to

mistreatment at the hands of others. I agree that non-servile persons must understand their
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rights vis-à-vis others and desire that they are respected, but maintain that a lack of

appropriate autonomy rather than proper rights-appreciation is responsible for many

ordinary cases of servility.

It will be helpful to review Hill’s account in detail. The next several paragraphs

do so.

According to Hill, there are (at least 17 ) two general cases of servility, that owing

to a person’s misunderstanding his rights and that owing to his under-appreciating them.

Elaborating the first, he explains that a person fails to properly understand his rights

when “he does not fully understand what his rights are, how they can be waived, and

when they can be forfeited.” 18 Hill appeals to the following cases to illustrate how

servility results from such ignorance:

1. The Uncle Tom—This is an “extremely deferential black” who “always steps

aside for white men; he does not complain when less qualified whites take over
his job; he gratefully accepts whatever benefits his all-white government and
employers allot him and he would not think of protesting its insufficiency. He
displays the symbols of deference to whites, and of contempt towards blacks; he
faces the former with bowed stance and a ready “Sir” and “M’am”; he reserves
his strongest obscenities for the latter. Imagine, too, that he is not playing a game.
He is not the shrewdly prudent calculator, who knows how to make the best of a
bad lot and mocks his masters behind their backs. He accepts without question the
idea that, as a black, he is owed less than whites. He may believe that blacks are
mentally inferior and of less social utility, but that is not the crucial point. The
attitude which he displays is that what he values, aspires for, and can demand is of
less importance that what whites value, aspire for, and can demand.”

2. The Self-Deprecator—This is a man who “is reluctant to make demands. He

says nothing when others take unfair advantage of him. When asked for his
preferences or opinions, he tends to shrink away as if what he said should make
no difference. His problem…is…an acute awareness of his own inadequacies and
failures as an individual. These defects are not imaginary: he has in fact done
poorly by his own standards and others’. But, unlike many of us in the same
situation, he acts as if his failings warrant quite unrelated maltreatment even by
strangers. His sense of shame and self-contempt make him content to be the
instrument of others. He feels that nothing is owed him until he has earned it and
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he has earned very little. He is not simply playing a masochist’s game of winning
sympathy by disparaging himself. On the contrary, he assess his individual merits
with painful accuracy.”

3. The Deferential Wife—“This is a woman who is utterly devoted to serving her

husband. She buys clothes he prefers, invites guests he wants to entertain, and
makes love whenever he is in the mood. She willingly moves to a new city in
order for him to have a more attractive job, counting her own friendships and
geographical preferences insignificant by comparison. She loves her husband, but
her conduct is not simply an expression of love. She is happy, but she does not
subordinate herself as a means to happiness. She does not simply defer to her
husband in certain spheres as a trade-off for his deference in other spheres. On the
contrary, she tends not to form her own interests, values, and ideals; and when she
does, she counts them as less important than her husband’s. She readily responds
to appeals from Women’s Liberation that she agrees that women are mentally and
physically equal, if not superior, to men. She just believes that the proper role for
a woman is to serve her family. As a matter of fact, much of her happiness derives
from her belief that she fulfills this role very well. No one is trampling on her
rights, she says; for she is quite glad, and proud, to serve her husband as she
does.”

(Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect,” 1995, 77-78)

Each of the people in Hill’s examples is clearly servile and so lacks self-respect. But their

servility is easily explained in terms of misunderstanding their rights. The Uncle Tom’s

deference to whites exemplifies simple misunderstanding of what one’s rights as a moral

equal are: “He does not realize or apprehend in an effective way, that he has as much

right to a decent wage and a share of political power as any comparable white.” The Self-

Deprecator’s conduct exemplifies misunderstanding what sorts of shortcomings

constitute forfeiture of moral rights: “He does not understand, or fully realize in his own

case, that certain rights to fair and decent treatment do not have to be earned.” Though

more complicated, the Deferential Wife exemplifies misunderstanding the conditions

under which consent constitutes a valid waiver of rights:

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If her consent is coerced, say, by the lack of viable options for women in her

society, then her consent is worth little. If socially fostered ignorance of her own

talents and alternatives is responsible for her consent, then her consent should not

count as a fully legitimate waiver of her right to equal consideration within the

marriage. All the more, her consent to defer constantly to her husband is not a

legitimate setting aside of her rights if it results from her mistaken belief that she

has a moral duty to do so. (Recall: “The proper role for a woman is to serve her

family.”) If she believes that she has a duty to defer to her husband, then,

whatever she may say, she cannot fully understand that she has a right not to defer

to him. (Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect,” 1995, 83)

On the other hand, Hill persuasively argues that the servility of the Uncle Tom and

company is not well explained by considerations unrelated to their rights, e.g. utility,

merit, or perfection. Utility does not explain it since their servility may or may not

maximize aggregate happiness—even if it causes them some suffering, utilitarian

considerations still may not condemn their behavior since, “When people refuse to press

their rights, there are usually others who profit.” 19 Failure to appreciate merits does not

explain it either. The Deferential Wife in fact does acknowledge her merits, and the

Uncle Tom may be assumed to have many he recognizes. Since the Self-Deprecator by

hypothesis lacks merits, acknowledging them cannot improve his self-respect. Finally,

considerations of perfection, or respect for humans on grounds of their capacity for

rationality, morality, excellence, or autonomy, seem to be beside the point. This is

especially clear in the Self-Deprecator’s case since his failure to successfully exercise

such capacities suggests he substantially lacks them. But “The Uncle Tom and the
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20
Deferential Wife…may in fact [also] have quite limited capacities of this sort…”

Nevertheless, they ought not defer to others as they do.

Hill’s case to this point is persuasive. In the oppressive social contexts the Uncle

Tom et al inhabits, they cannot avoid servility while misunderstanding their rights vis-à-

vis others as they do. But since, as Hill maintains, some tend to profit when others do not

press their rights, properly understanding one’s rights as an equal vis-à-vis others seems

to be a perfectly general requirement of avoiding servility.

Hill’s argument for the second general case of servility is less persuasive,

however. This case is one in which a person is enlightened about his rights but is said to

be servile because he under-appreciates or “cares little for them.” 21 As Hill elaborates it,

servile failure to appreciate rights involves systematically and publicly disavowing them

in the absence of an excusing reason for doing so, where these include acting in order to

promote a morally good end, to save one’s life, or to subvert the oppressor. 22 For

example, if we imagine that the Uncle Tom fully understands his rights but “shuffles and

bows to keep the Klan from killing his children, to save his own skin, or even buy time

while he plans the revolution,” then “it seems inappropriate to call [his behavior]

servility.” 23 On the other hand, “The story is quite different…if [he] continues in his

deferential role just from laziness, timidity, or a desire for some minor advantage.” In this

case, “He shows too little concern for his moral status as a person…if he is willing to

deny it for a small profit or simply because it requires some effort and courage to affirm

it openly.” 24 Similarly, Hill argues that, “a [deferential wife] throws away her rights too

lightly if she continues to play the subservient role because she is used to it or is too timid

to risk a change.” 25
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Hill’s assessment of the morally enlightened Uncle Tom and Deferential Wife’s

conduct is compelling. It is servile and unworthy of them if it is motivated by laziness or

timidity or minor advantage. However, I maintain that his conception of the precise

defect their servility embodies (namely, the moral one of failing to properly appreciate

their rights) is not similarly compelling. It should be rejected in favor of an account

directly in terms of their lacking an appropriate degree of autonomy. On this view, the

defect of their servility is that it prevents them from achieving the level of autonomy that

would, within justice, best promote their self-interest and well-being. The full argument

for this view will, of course, have to await proof that such autonomy has instrumental and

intrinsic value for well-being. But this view has immediately discernible advantages to

the rights-appreciation account of servility.

According to Hill’s conception, the defect of the enlightened Deferential Wife and

company is the moral one of failing to properly appreciate their rights. But a problem for

this account is this: A person’s rights vis-à-vis others either include a right to defer to

them if she wishes, or they do not. But taking either horn of the dilemma, the account of

servility in terms of rights-appreciation is implausible in a way the account in terms of

autonomy is not.

Take the first horn. If a person’s rights include a right to defer, then such

deference cannot constitute failure to appreciate her rights and associated moral status (at

least not for a person who understands these). Furthermore, considering such cases as the

enlightened Deferential Wife (or an enlightened Self-Deprecator), it is intuitive both that

she acts within her rights to defer to others if she wishes to, but also that such deference

would constitute a sort of undesirable servility. And this servility would have to consist
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simply in a lack of an appropriate degree of autonomy—it would involve failure to

exercise the capacities of project pursuit to a degree that would make her active rather

than passive in the determination of her character and life.

On the other hand, if a person’s moral rights do not include a right to defer, then

servile deference constitutes not failure to appreciate one’s rights and moral status vis-à-

vis others, but failure to appreciate a duty vis-à-vis oneself. In arguing for the claim that

servility is specifically a moral defect, Hill in fact shifts from the language of rights to the

language of duty and obligation. Hill maintains that servility (understood as disavowal of

rights through misunderstanding or “caring little for them”) is specifically a moral defect

because it conflicts with a general duty to respect morality “as a system of equal

fundamental rights and duties,” 26 a duty that is discharged only by adopting a general

stance of intolerance toward any moral injustice. Such intolerance carried to its logical

conclusion forbids a person to endure violations of his own rights without protest, if not

because of the disrespect this expresses for himself, because of that it expresses for

morality. Thus, Hill argues that

A person who fully respected a system of moral rights would be disposed to learn

his proper place in it, to affirm it proudly, and not to tolerate abuses of it lightly.

This is just the sort of disposition that the servile person lacks…If…the servile

person knowingly disavows his moral rights by pretending to approve of

violations of them, then, barring special explanations, he shows an indifference to

whether the provisions of morality are honored and publicly acknowledged. This

avoidable indifference…is contrary to the duty to respect morality. (Hill,

“Servility and Self-Respect,” 1995, 87)

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Considered as an explanation of the defect of the enlightened Deferential Wife

and company, this view is considerably less plausible than one directly in terms of lack of

appropriate autonomy. First, and trivially, the account no longer explains servility in

terms of misappreciation of rights but rather in terms of misappreciation of duty. But this

view is very different from, and in a way much less appealing than, the original and

popular statement of it. The original statement is appealing in that it tacitly expresses the

very strong intuition that the primary if not sole reason why people have a right against

servile deference to others is that they have a very important interest in avoiding it.

According to this intuition, genuinely servile persons are deeply confused about what is

in their own best self-interest or about what best promotes their well-being. But the

account of non-servility in terms of duty-appreciation denies all this. It claims instead that

people have a right against servile deference simply because they are morally obligated to

avoid it, whether this serves their interests or not.

This objection might not seem to be decisive. It may be replied that the newly

revised account is worth a certain cost to intuition. However, the argument for the altered

account is in other ways decisively defective—the account is either committed to

something implausible, or parasitic on something like the autonomy account. Take the

first disjunct. The argument for the revised account maintains that people are obligated to

avoid servility because they are generally obligated to ensure that moral justice is done.

This argument thus portrays all servility as improper tolerance of injustices committed

against one, such as having one’s rights violated. But this misdescribes many common

instances of the phenomena. Commonly the error of servility is not that of deferentially

tolerating violations of one’s rights. Rather it is of complicity in the creation of social

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conditions hostile to one’s autonomy, wishes, interests, desires, or freedoms, as well as to

one’s rights. Imagine a deferential wife-type who has never been confused about her

rights, realizes there are many legitimate opportunities beyond marriage and family,

whose husband does nothing that could reasonably be seen as wrongly eliciting her

deference, and so on. She simply prefers generally deferring to his judgment. Now this

might well result in unjust circumstances for her which “A person who fully respected a

system of moral rights” would protest. But if so, this cannot be explained by reference to

its involving violation of her rights. Rather, it must be explained by reference to

something like the autonomy she is prevented from achieving. Hence, the view is either

committed to an implausible understanding of servility or it is parasitic upon something

like the autonomy account.

I conclude that the autonomy account of servility explains many ordinary cases

better than Hill’s rights-appreciation account. This does not mean rights are irrelevant to

avoiding servility. A person who does not properly understand his rights as an equal vis-

à-vis others cannot avoid it. But some who do understand their rights might nonetheless

prefer servile deference. If in acting on this preference they act within their rights, the

defect in their servility cannot be explained in terms of failure to appreciate rights. On the

other hand, such servility prevents a person from achieving the degree of autonomy

needed to make his life his own. Insofar as failing to achieve this is bad for a person

generally, it is something a self-respecting one would, other things equal, avoid. Hence,

the paradigmatically self-respecting person avoids that degree of servile deference

incompatible with achieving the autonomy needed to make his life his own.
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c. The Paradigmatically Self-Respecting Person

Sections (a) and (b) argued that the paradigmatically self-respecting person has some

personal standards and avoids servility. I maintained earlier that these traits are

complementary in a way giving the paradigmatically self-respecting person a distinctive

character. This should now be evident from the accounts of what each involves.

Paradigmatically self-respecting persons are not characterless types who lack any traits or

habits setting them apart from others as unique in some way. In having some personal

integrity, they set themselves apart by standing on some ideal principles rather than just

following impulse or going with the crowd. And in avoiding servile deference or reliance

upon the opinion of others, their commitments and conduct reflect their own ideas about

what is valuable and worthwhile doing.

4. The Value of Self-Respect

The capability thesis maintains that while self-respect is useful in the pursuit of other

ends of value, it also has intrinsic value as a constitutive part of a completely good life.

This section argues for this claim, beginning with self-respect’s instrumental value.

4.1. Self-Respect’s Instrumental Value

This section argues that the personal integrity and autonomy belonging to

paradigmatically self-respecting persons usefully facilitate the realization of other

weighty goods for them. In particular, the autonomy self-respect entails facilitates the

discovery and pursuit of a worthwhile and satisfying way of life, as well as the

maintenance of good personal relationships. On the other hand, the personal integrity
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belonging to characteristically self-respecting persons gives them a clarity and sureness

concerning who or what they are and stand for conducive to secure self-esteem. Since

self-esteem, good personal relationships, and the pursuit of satisfying, worthwhile ways

of life are very significant goods, the self-respect that facilitates them has substantial

instrumental value.

This section proceeds as follows. It begins by discussing the instrumental value

accruing to self-respect from the personal integrity it paradigmatically implies. It then

discusses the value deriving from autonomy. Before commencing either discussion, it is

worth clarifying a preliminary point. This concerns what exactly it means to say that, e.g.

the personal integrity of paradigmatically self-respecting persons has instrumental value

in facilitating their self-esteem. In the present context, this claim is not intended to assert

that the personal integrity self-respect implies is either necessary or sufficient for

achieving self-esteem. A person can have personal integrity but substantially lack self-

esteem or even be contemptuous of himself. Rather, what is intended is that in having

personal integrity, paradigmatically self-respecting persons are more likely to have self-

esteem to some significant degree.

a. Personal Integrity’s Instrumental Value

As personally integrated persons, paradigmatically self-respecting persons are

consistently devoted to certain internally coherent ideal standards of conduct. As

discussed above, these ideals direct their behavior toward worthwhile ends and away

from impulse or simple conformity to the crowd. I argue in section 4.3 below that these

qualities themselves improve their lives. But the personal integrity self-respect implies

also facilitates another end of value for them, namely stable high trait self-esteem.
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Before commencing the argument for this claim, it is worth briefly reviewing

what self-esteem is and why it is of value. Self-esteem is the level at which a person is

disposed to positively evaluate and experience good feelings about himself. It is stable

and high just when a person is enduringly disposed to make such judgments and

experience such feelings. Though self-esteem can be manifested in a variety of thoughts,

beliefs, or feelings, an important manifestation is self-confidence or confidence in the

merits of one’s plans or one’s ability to carry them out. Such confidence says, “I’m good

enough to do this,” and helps clarify why self-esteem is a value. Self-esteem thoughts and

feelings are pleasant and related to higher rates of happiness both causally and

conceptually. While these are good and desirable, it is nevertheless difficult to see self-

esteem as worth pursuing for its own sake—this seems exceedingly egoistic, especially

given that lacking self-esteem is not the same as being ashamed or self-contemptuous.

Most low self-esteem persons, in fact, simply think of themselves in more modest or

neutral terms. On the other hand, the value of self-confidence is relatively clear. Self-

doubt prevents the concentrated engagement that successful pursuit of most worthwhile

activities requires. But successful pursuit of worthwhile activities is itself is necessary for

leading a good and satisfying life. Hence, while self-esteem may be of limited intrinsic

value, its instrumental value is substantial.

Turning now to the argument, personal integrity and self-esteem are only loosely

connected conceptually. A person may well be consistently devoted to standards of ideal

conduct, yet not rate himself very highly or find that he has much to be especially proud

of. This looseness is itself partly conceptual. Ideal standards of integrity commonly

represent a person’s minimum of worthy behavior, behavior that to the person having
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them is “only to be expected.” Hence, while breaking with such standards may be

grounds for self-criticism or shame, living up to them does not normally supply grounds

for esteeming the self or seeing it as having special merit. Rather, as Elizabeth Telfer has

put it, a person having the self-respect entailed by meeting personal standards “merely

thinks he comes up to scratch.” 27 Hence, while personal integrity generally supplies good

reason for self-acceptance, it does not guarantee high self-esteem.

Nevertheless, personal integrity importantly facilitates self-esteem. There are two

reasons for thinking so. One is philosophical and builds on the considerations just

adduced. Another comes from some interesting studies in psychology.

To begin with psychology, many psychological studies have observed an

important difference between high and low self-esteem persons. 28 Whereas high self-

esteem persons are eager to incorporate positive feedback about themselves and enjoy

little difficulty ignoring negative feedback, low self-esteem persons tend respond strongly

to both positive and negative feedback. Consequently, low self-esteem persons

experience more frequent fluctuations of mood and (self-esteem) thought and feeling, and

in general, the daily self-evaluations of low self-esteem persons seem to be highly

contingent external social cues. In attempting to explain these phenomena, however,

appeal to the differences in positive and negative levels of thought and affect between

high and low self-esteem persons is not sufficient. This appeal predicts that low self-

esteem persons will be averse to positive feedback, but this is not what is observed.

A better explanation appeals instead to a further quality commonly observed to

belong to low self-esteem persons. Though the causal relation between this further

quality and low self-esteem is unclear, compared to high self-esteem persons, low self-
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esteem persons exhibit higher levels of “self-concept confusion.” That is, their beliefs

about who or what they are or stand for are more uncertain, instable, and inconsistent. In

being thus confused about or unsure of themselves, low self-esteem persons are less able

to deploy defensive strategies that would make their self-evaluations more independent of

the opinions of others. A person who is clear about and confident of his own values may

easily doubt the validity of negative feedback presupposing values he confidently rejects.

“Self-concept confusion” is, of course, just a psychologist’s phrase for personal integrity.

Integrated persons know what they stand for and their ideal standards are internally

coherent and stable. Hence, if self-concept clarity predicts high self-esteem, so does

personal integrity.

It bears emphasizing that the causal relationship between high/low self-esteem

and self-concept clarity, and thus personal integrity, is not entirely certain. Jennifer

Campbell, for instance, argues that the causal relation between them is most likely

reciprocal and bound up in a nexus of other possibly mediating factors. 29 However, to the

extent that self-concept confusion or personal disintegration are correlated with low self-

esteem, it is reasonable to conclude that (personal) integrity facilitates self-esteem.

Even if the causal relationship between personal integrity and self-esteem turned

out to be weak, there are philosophical reasons for believing the former importantly

facilitates the latter. As mentioned earlier, in having and meeting some ideal standards of

conduct, an integrated person has good reason for believing that he “comes up to scratch”

or for evaluating himself as adequate or decent. And though this does not guarantee self-

esteem, it does conduce to having it in a few interrelated ways.

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First, though having good reason to believe one comes up to scratch does not

guarantee that a person will believe he does (he might not be aware of this reason),

having good reason to believe this increases the probability that a person will believe it.

This is partly because a personally integrated person is likely to be appreciated by at least

some others and socially accepted or included (though as Hill’s artist case suggests, there

is a limit here). Since external social cues are good supports for self-acceptance and self-

esteem for both high and low self-esteem persons, personal integrity facilitates self-

esteem by making it more probable that people will at least be self-accepting.

Second, though accepting the self is not to esteem it, accepting the self constitutes

a necessary readiness or precondition for esteeming it. A person who is not self-accepting

is certainly not prepared for self-esteem. Hence, insofar as personal integrity makes self-

acceptance more probable, it thereby facilitates self-esteem.

Third, insofar as a person’s integrity is a quality over which he exerts some

control, it further facilitates self-esteem. It further facilitates it by supplying a more stable

basis for the self-acceptance self-esteem presupposes than other traits upon which this

might be based, for example, personal appearance. Regrettably, people are often subject

to negative feedback for features over which they have very little or no control and

injurious to their self-esteem. Personal integrity can protect basic self-esteem in the face

of such feedback by supplying a stable level of self-acceptance beneath which self-

esteem may not fall.

This sub-section has argued that the personal integrity belonging to self-

respecting persons facilitates their self-esteem. The integrated person’s confident, stable,

and consistent beliefs about who or what he is or stands for make his self-esteem less
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dependent upon the esteem of others. Moreover, having personal integrity justifies and

makes more probable the acceptance of self or sense of adequacy that forms the

foundation for self-esteem. But in being pleasant, strongly related to happiness, and

crucial to self-confidence, self-esteem is worthwhile having. Hence, in usefully

facilitating self-esteem, personal integrity has substantial instrumental value for its

possessor.

b. Autonomy’s Instrumental Value

This sub-section argues that the autonomy belonging to paradigmatically self-respecting

persons also usefully facilitates the realization of other weighty goods for them, and

therefore has instrumental value. In particular, it argues that their autonomy facilitates the

discovery and pursuit of worthwhile and satisfying ways of life, but also the realization

and maintenance of good personal relationships.

To begin with the second point, autonomy usefully facilitates the realization of

good personal relationships. I assume that exploitative personal relationships are bad for

persons, even when they desire them. This claim is intuitively plausible, though it would

benefit from some explicit defense (I will argue for a similar claim in the next chapter).

But on the assumption that it is true, the instrumental value of autonomy to maintaining

good relationships is substantial.

Exploitative personal relationships are those in which one person routinely takes

undue advantage of some weakness or vulnerability in another for his own gain, whether

knowingly or unknowingly. Now when people servilely defer to another, this guarantees

that they lack autonomy with respect to him, though not that they are exploited by him.

Whether this is so depends on whether he uses their deference to his advantage. But the
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excessive deference to others characteristic of servile (i.e. non-autonomous) persons

makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation. It is an unfortunate fact that even

people in loving relationships are perfectly capable of exploiting each other.

Consider, for instance, the example of Grace from Chapter 1. Her family

systematically exploits her by using her desire to serve them as an excuse for leaving her

with most of the household labor and generally ignoring her wishes and interests. Though

these abuses are in a way relatively minor (she is not physically or verbally abused by

them, for instance), they seriously taint the quality her relationship with them. Instead of

enjoying the company of her family, she spends her time worrying about whether their

needs or desires are adequately met. If they are not, she is unable to resist taking it upon

herself to meet those needs or desires for them. In turn, this causes her to feel justifiably

resentful of them.

While it is unequivocally wrong to fault Grace for how her family treats her, the

source of her vulnerability to exploitation is clearly her servility and lack of autonomy.

More exactly, Grace apparently lacks the degree of independent-mindedness

(characteristic of autonomous persons) that would allow her to change her behavior and

remove the peculiar weakness that her family exploits. It is because she lacks this psychic

independence that, for instance, she is unable to just let the household work go undone, to

simply take the orange juice for herself without guilt, or to let others do the necessary

labor to meet their needs for themselves.

Hence, by making people less vulnerable to exploitation, the autonomy belonging

to paradigmatically self-respecting persons facilitates good personal relationships. Since

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(as will be argued later) good personal relationships are very important to living well,

autonomy therefore has significant instrumental value for its possessor.

But autonomy usefully facilitates good living in other ways, too. 30 In particular,

autonomy facilitates the discovery and pursuit of worthwhile and satisfying ways of life.

Since leading a worthwhile and satisfying way of life is a very important good,

autonomy’s instrumental value is very substantial.

There are a few reasons for thinking that autonomy importantly facilitates the

discovery and pursuit of worthwhile and satisfying ways of life. First, there are

innumerable activities pursuit of which may make up a worthwhile way of life. But not

all persons are equally well suited to succeed or find satisfaction in all of the same

activities or ways of life. 31 For example, heterosexuality and homosexuality may both be

equally worthwhile ways of life. 32 But homosexuals cannot live well as heterosexuals and

vice versa. Second, though people are often mistaken about their peculiar talents,

proclivities, and preferences, ordinarily people are in a better position to know these

things about themselves than others. 33 If so, people are ordinarily themselves in the best

position to discover what way of life will be worthwhile and satisfying for them. For if

people are differently suited to finding satisfaction in different worthwhile ways of life,

the experiences, advice, and example of others are only so useful to them in discovering

what sort of life they can live well. Instead, people of different talents and preferences

must to a certain extent develop their own understanding of what is worthwhile doing,

take charge of their affairs, and pursue them. They must to some extent be autonomous.

This sub-section has argued that autonomy facilitates good personal relationships

and helps people discover and pursue worthwhile and satisfying ways of life. Autonomy
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facilitates good personal relationships by decreasing people’s vulnerability to

exploitation. But people who take charge of their affairs and develop their own

understanding of what is worthwhile doing are in a better position to discover and pursue

worthwhile and satisfying ways of life. Since good personal relationships and the pursuit

of a worthwhile and satisfying way of life are enormously valuable, autonomy’s

instrumental value is very substantial.

* * *

This section has argued that the personal integrity and autonomy belonging

paradigmatically self-respecting persons have substantial instrumental value for them. In

having these traits, paradigmatically self-respecting persons are better able to realize

goods of value, including self-esteem, good personal relationships, and the pursuit of

worthwhile and satisfying ways of life.

4.2. Self-Respect’s Intrinsic Value (I)

The capability thesis claims that self-respect has intrinsic value as a crucial component of

a completely good life. This section clarifies this claim.

In saying that self-respect has intrinsic value, I mean that it is worth pursuing for

its own sake and not only as a means to other goods of value. This is different from the

stronger claim that self-respect’s value inheres in itself, i.e. has inherent value. 34

According to the capability thesis, if anything has inherent value, it is a completely good

life, and self-respect is worth pursuing for its own sake as a constitutive part of a

completely good life. By “constitutive part of a completely good life,” I mean to say that

a lack of self-respect in a person’s life by itself detracts from his well-being while its
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presence promotes it, whether or not he agrees. The claim is that self-respect promotes a

person’s well-being directly and not simply as a result of some further consequences it

has for him, e.g. causes him to be happy, elicits his endorsement, or satisfies his desires.

This conception of self-respect’s value is controversial in a couple significant

ways. First, many theorists of well-being are subjectivists about it, denying that anything

except certain of our own mental states has the kind of significance for well-being I claim

self-respect possesses, i.e. the kind a thing has just when it promotes well-being

independently of its consequences for his mental states. These thinkers accept what may

be called the endorsement thesis, elaborated by philosophers like L.W. Sumner, and

which states that “something can make me better off…only if I have (or would have

under appropriate circumstances) a positive attitude (of the appropriate sort) toward it.” 35

Second, among those who grant the first point and reject the endorsement thesis, it may

be wondered whether self-respect in particular has precisely this sort of significance. It is

a somewhat curious fact that while few authors deny that self-respect is a very important

part of well-being (though some claim that it has limited importance), 36 no one seems to

have considered whether its importance is independent of a person’s own assessments of

what promotes his well-being. 37

The next section undertakes the defense of self-respect’s worthiness of pursuit for

its own sake as a constitutive part of a completely good life. It proceeds by setting aside

worries about the endorsement thesis and directly presents intuitive cases and arguments

supporting self-respect’s intrinsic value. This discussion will supply strong initial support

for the capability thesis but will leave residual doubts stemming from the appeal of the
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endorsement thesis. Addressing these doubts justifies another discussion unto itself which

will be taken up in the next chapter.

4.3. Self-Respect’s Intrinsic Value (II)

The capability thesis states that self-respect is worth pursuing for its own sake as a crucial

part of a completely good life. This section supplies initial support for this claim by

presenting cases in which it is intuitive that the person’s life is not completely good and

the most natural explanation is that he is lacking a trait of belonging to the

paradigmatically self-respecting person, either personal integrity or autonomy/non-

servility. I begin with personal integrity.

To briefly review, a person has personal integrity just when he has some personal

standards of worthy conduct by which he is prepared to judge herself. As discussed

earlier, while the standards here are personal and not necessarily moral, not just any

standard can serve as a standard of self-respect. They have to be capable of being taken

seriously as a norm of worthy conduct. This means that there are at least a couple ways a

person can lack the personal integrity called for by respect for self—he can either have no

standards or his standards can be too low or otherwise inept.

The capability thesis claims that having some worthy standards is worthwhile for

its own sake as a constitutive part of a completely good life. This is to say that though a

person lacking self-respect may have a very good life (he might be very happy,

successful in pursuit of other worthwhile goals, and have very good relationships), he

would be better off if he had the self-respect manifested by having some standards.

Hence, consider the following case: 38

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Jim and Steven are both happily married (to faithful spouses, assume), successful

computer programmers who also happen to be good friends. Jim and Steven both also

enjoy their work and endorse it from the inside, i.e. they are autonomous in this pursuit.

And though they both always consider the advice of others carefully, they generally do

not simply defer to their opinions. They are not servile. All in all, their lives are very,

very good. However, as a consequence of a lifetime spent sitting at computer terminals

for long hours, both Jim and Steven are overweight (assume in fact that they have

precisely the same weight and the same associated risks of ill health). Neither is

particularly self-conscious or ashamed of his weight. In fact, Steven is proud of his body

and thinks other people are just being prejudiced when they remonstrate with him about

the health risks of obesity. Consequently, he resolves to make it his personal standard to

ensure he will stay as fat as he can—he will be careful to eat only the greasiest foods, will

avoid exerting himself as much as possible, and never be tempted to shame by the

opinions of others. By contrast, though Jim also is entirely secure emotionally about his

body, he is increasingly concerned about the possible risks for his health. Thus, he makes

it his personal standard to eat better and get more exercise. Assume now that both Jim

and Steven succeed in living up to their commitments, yet for whatever reason, with little

effect on their weight. Jim doesn’t lose much and Steven doesn’t gain very much.

Furthermore, though each finds his failure somewhat disappointing, neither loses his

resolve and continues to pin some pride to maintaining his standard. Both live happily for

a number of more years and dies of a heart attack at 65.

Before turning to the analysis of this case from the point of view of the capability

thesis, let me clarify that it in no way involves the claim that being overweight by itself
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detracts from leading a completely good life. This claim is not plausible—if body weight

has anything to do with well-being, this is only because of any further negative

consequences it may have for health or other functioning. The capability thesis says

nothing to contradict this claim.

To the analysis, then. Jim and Steven’s lives are each equally very good in many

different ways. They are each successfully pursuing a worthwhile career, have happy

marriages and some good friendships. Neither is servile, has low self-esteem, suffers any

major health problem (at least none not suffered by the other), or is unhappy or

dissatisfied with his life. What the capability thesis claims, however, is that Jim’s life

goes somewhat better than Steven’s because he has a measure of self-respect that Steven

lacks. While Jim’s standards manifest self-respect, Steven’s are just barely believable at

all and do not manifest self-respect. However, the contribution of Jim’s self-respect to the

quality of his life cannot be attributed to any instrumental benefits accruing to him from

it, since by hypothesis, it has little effect on it. Nor can it be attributed to any intrinsic

value besides self-respect that his life might be thought to have, e.g. he is healthier, since

his life otherwise consists of successes and failures equal to Steven’s. Hence, if Jim’s life

goes better than Steven’s, this is best explained by reference to the fact that Jim succeeds

in having a measure of self-respect that Steven does not.

One objection that might be made to this argument rejects Jim and Steven’s story

as too unrealistic. It is too unrealistic since if Jim really succeeds in eating better and

exercising more, in real life we could expect this to result in significant weight loss and a

corresponding improvement in health, whereas by contrast if Steven succeeds in eating

badly and avoiding exertion we could expect this to result in a significant increase in
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weight and corresponding weakening of his health. But then, any value accruing to Jim’s

life is attributable not directly to his self-respect but to the good consequences of it for his

health.

This objection does not succeed in derailing the argument. First, the case is not as

implausible as the objection has it. If you like, it may be assumed that Jim and Steven are

already morbidly obese, so Jim’s weight-loss efforts are relatively ineffective while

Steven’s weight-gain efforts make little difference. And so long as it is assumed that the

risks to their health remain equal, making this assumption presents no problem for the

argument. But even without making this assumption, it is a regrettable fact that though

diet and physical activity are the best known ways of controlling weight and health, they

do not alone control it and the self-respect of personally committing to them will not be

enough to control it. This might be thought to break any connection between well-being

and self-respect as manifested through personal standards of diet and exercise. But if any

link is broken by this thought, it is that between self-respect’s instrumental and not its

intrinsic value for well-being. After all, to say that self-respect has intrinsic value for

well-being is to say that it is worth pursuing for its own sake, independently of any

further consequences it may have for our lives.

Second, the objection fails since the conclusion does not obviously follow even if

its premise is granted, i.e. that Jim and Steven’s case is plausible only if Jim’s self-respect

benefits his health. Suppose Jim’s health does benefit from it. It is perfectly conceivable

that nevertheless both suffer commensurable health problems throughout their lives and

die from heart attacks at the same age. And it is necessary to evaluate their lives in this

case. Suppose further then that we think Jim’s life goes better for him. The objector will
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attribute this to any health benefits resulting from his self-respect rather than to his self-

respect itself. But at this point the benefits to Jim’s health owing to his self-respect and

his self-respect become somewhat difficult to disentangle, for we are supposing that his

improved health is specifically the consequence of his personal standards and not

something else, say, the effects of taking a weight loss drug or a gastric bypass operation.

So, suppose then that Steven gets a gastric bypass operation (to comfort a worried spouse,

say) while Jim commits himself to a routine of diet and exercise. In short order, both lose

significant weight and reap commensurable health benefits, even though Steven

continues in his old ways. Nevertheless, both suffer fatal heart attacks at 65.

The new scenario is plausible. Regrettably, even those who diet and exercise their

whole lives are vulnerable to the same risks as those of apparently stronger constitution,

who seem to smoke, drink, or overeat their way through life with few consequences. But

the capability thesis claims that Jim’s life goes better for him than Steven’s because he

exercises a degree of self-respect Steven does not. And this difference is not attributable

to any other difference in the success of their lives, including health differences, since it

is by hypothesis equal in all other ways. I conclude that having some self-respect as

manifested though commitment to some standards of personal integrity by itself

contributes to well-being.

The argument so far supports the claim that self-respect as manifested by having

some personal standards of integrity intrinsically advances well-being. It is worth

pursuing for its own sake as a constitutive part of a completely good life, so that having it

in this sense directly promotes well-being and its absence detracts from it, even if only in

some small way, and whatever a given person may think about it. This does not yet show
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that the same can be said for self-respect as manifested through autonomy/non-servility.

The remainder of this section takes up this claim.

The non-servile person refuses to approve of being treated as a constitutionally

inferior being and maintains and is autonomous in actively making her own choices and

reflecting on who she is or is becoming. In defending the intrinsic value of self-respect

for well-being as manifested through non-servility, I am going to focus on its second

aspect. While refusing to approve of being treated as constitutionally inferior may be in

some sense worthwhile for its own sake, intuitively, its instrumental and perhaps moral

value seem to vastly overshadow or outweigh whatever intrinsic value for well-being it

has. However, as argued earlier, non-servility requires the second aspect of autonomy as

much as the first.

Moving to the argument then, imagine June and Jenny, a happy successful couple

who have been in a romantic relationship with one another for a very long time. 39

Suppose that June is a successful psychologist who is happy in her career—for her, work

is a personal commitment. She also is autonomous in that throughout her life she has

maintained the independence needed to reflect on who she is or is becoming, form and

revise her ideals, and the will to actively pursue them. On the other hand, Jenny has been

successfully pursuing a career as a professional athlete. She also is happy with her choice

and takes her work seriously. However, unlike June, Jenny has abdicated autonomous

control over her life to another, June, in fact. Jenny has done this because she has grown

tired of making big life decisions and now finds it irritating. Furthermore, she believes

(correctly suppose) that if she will just defer completely to June, June will make good

decisions for her. Jenny makes this choice even though she also knows that she is
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perfectly capable making good decisions herself—she has, say, chosen professional sport

despite the discouragement of many neighsayers who she has by now proven wrong.

As in the previous scenario, June and Jenny both lead very good lives. Each is

successfully engaged in worthwhile pursuits, has some good relationships, is healthy, has

some personal standards (they take pride in their work), and endorses what they do.

Nevertheless, the thesis maintains that June is still somewhat better off than Jenny

because she maintains the self-respect of leading her life autonomously. Furthermore, the

thesis maintains that Jenny would be better off returning to autonomous living—saving

oneself some irritation is not worth servile abdication of autonomy. Hence, the thesis

maintains that self-respect as manifested through non-servility/autonomy is a worthwhile

achievement directly contributing to well-being.

Objection: June and Jenny are not equally well off in all aspects except their self-

respect. This is because Jenny finds decision-making tiresome and irritating whereas June

does not. Hence, the difference in their lives is explicable on grounds not related to self-

respect. Rather, what makes June’s life better is that it contains less annoyance, less

displeasure generally, or less unhappiness.

This objection is not sound. Suppose that June’s happiness is unaffected by taking

over Jenny’s decision-making—it does not cause her any new stress, anxiety, or

displeasure. Then, in abdicating her autonomy to June, Jenny thereby relieves herself of a

source of dissatisfaction, making her life comparable to June’s in terms of happiness. The

only difference between them then is that Jenny now defers entirely to the will of another

person.
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Another objection: It may be doubted that returning to autonomy would make

Jenny better off given that returning would by hypothesis cause her some irritation. But

this doubt is unwarranted. While irritation is somewhat unpleasant, pursuing many good

things in life requires enduring or overcoming irritation. Autonomy seems to be one of

these. Jenny is arguably on the whole better off autonomous and somewhat irritated than

non-autonomous and utterly unperturbed. Furthermore, the capability thesis is not refuted

even if we imagine that the agitation to Jenny of exercising autonomy ramifies into

overwhelmingly painful anxiety or stress. In this case, though she may be better off all

things considered giving control of her life to June, this is compatible with the judgment

that she would be even better off if she both overcame her anxiety and exercised

autonomy. But if so, then the self-respect manifested by exercising control over one’s life

by itself promotes well-being and its lack detracts from it.

5. Conclusion

This chapter argued that self-respect has both instrumental and intrinsic value for well-

being. It both helps a person to realize other ends of value, but self-respect is also an

achievement worth pursuing for its own sake as a constitutive component of a completely

good life. This, I have argued, is true of both aspects of the paradigmatically self-

respecting person, her personal standards and her autonomy/non-servility.

The arguments of this chapter may, however, leave some residual doubts

stemming from the appeal of the endorsement thesis. If the endorsement thesis is true,

relative to cases like “stressed-Jenny,” it cannot be correct to say that she would be better

if she could achieve both autonomy and overcome her anxiety. Rather, all that matters to
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her leading a completely good life is that she is free of anxieties or stresses that elicit her

disapproval and not that her activities or pursuits are otherwise worthwhile. It just matters

that they make her happy, that she approves them, or satisfy her desires. The next chapter

aims to defuse this argument by showing the superiority of a different conception of the

importance for well-being of endorsement. This conception maintains that leading a life

one can endorse is simply one among other independent values worth achieving for its

own sake.
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NOTES: CHAPTER 3
1
Non-servility is very widely ascribed to self-respecting persons. See Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Servility and
Self-Respect,” Monist 57 (Jan., 1973), pp. 87-104, and the many papers following that essay’s argument,
including Bernard Boxill’s “Self-Respect and Protest,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 6, 1 (1976), pp.
58-69, both reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed., (New York: Routledge,
1995); and Robin S. Dillon in “How to Lose Your Self-Respect,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 29
(1992), 125-139; and Laurence Thomas’s “Self-Respect: Theory and Practice,” Philosophy Born of
Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, Leonard Harris, ed., (New York:
Kendall/Hunt Publishing, Co, 1983), also repr. in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect. On the other hand,
articles ascribing personal standards of integrity to self-respecting persons include Stephen L. Darwall’s
“Two Kinds of Respect,” Ethics, Vol. 88, 1 (Oct., 1977), pp. 36-49; Thomas E. Hill, Jr.’s “Self-Respect
Reconsidered,” Respect for Persons, Tulane Studies in Philosophy, O.H. Green, ed, Vol. 31, (1985), pp.
129-137; and Elizabeth Tefler’s “Self-Respect,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 18, 71 (Apr., 1968), pp.
114-121, all reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect.
2
Here I draw on Lynn McFall’s “Integrity,” Ethics Vol. 98, 1 (1987), 5-20.
3
This point is brought out in Cheshire Calhoun’s “Standing for Something,” Journal of Philosophy Vol.
92, 5 (1995), 235-260.
4
Hill, “Self-Respect Reconsidered,” reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed.
5
See McFall’s “Integrity.”
6
Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect.”
7
For a similar view, Eamonn Callan’s “Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education,” Ethics 111,
(2000), 141-155, pp. 148-9 especially.
8
See Steven Wall’s Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), ch.
6. Wall in turn is drawing on the views of Joseph Raz in The Morality of Freedom, (Oxford: Clarendon,
1986), ch. 14. I draw from Wall since his presentation is somewhat more worked out.
9
Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint, 128-129. Wall also claims that being autonomous does
not necessarily involve being among a “critical self-examiner,” one who reflects on and deliberates about
his identity, since “It is no contradiction to say of someone that he was both unreflective and an active
shaper of his own life” (129). I do not follow Wall here. It is too plausible to suppose that all autonomous
persons must on occasion confront themselves as a problem, and that people who confront themselves as a
problem must undertake some deliberative self-reflection to solve it. This supposition is plausible inasmuch
as a human being who never confronted himself as a problem is probably incapable of autonomy, but is
instead what Harry Frankfurt has called a “wanton.” A wanton merely follows whichever of his desires is
strongest (see “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” in The importance of what we care
about, (Cambridge, 1988)). This also suggests that Wall’s claim is premised on an overly intellectualized or
“brainy” notion of critical self-reflection, one on which deciding whether one really wants sushi or Indian
for dinner is not an exercise of it. But, however minor or inconsequential for one’s life, such questions are
real occasions for autonomous choice having some consequences (choosing one over the other on a given
evening means not having the other).
10
Wall also ascribes two further features to autonomy, including self-consciousness and vigor in the
autonomous person, and an environment supplying a wide range of appropriate alternatives (see ibid 132). I
omit these aspects of autonomy since they are not especially relevant to the relation between autonomy and
non-servility.
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11
Ibid, 132.
12
Ibid, 133.
13
Ibid, pp. 133-136.
14
Wall discusses this example on ibid page 134. For more discussion of similar points, see Gerald
Dworkin’s “Paternalism,” in Monist 56 (1972): 64-84.
15
This paragraph draws on disucssion of the same point by Harry Brighouse in School Choice and Social
Justice, (Oxford University Press, 2000), Chapter 4, pp. 66-7 especially.
16
Ibid, 66.
17
Hill enters this qualification at least once, signaling that he does not take the account of “Servility and
Self-Respect,” to be exhaustive. See, e.g., page 85 of the reprinted version in Dignity, Character, and Self-
Respect, Robin S. Dillon, ed. My criticism of Hill is not that it is incomplete, but that rights appreciation is
the wrong explanation of most cases of servility, including some Hill intends his account to explain.
18
Hill, “Self-Respect and Servility,” 82.
19
Ibid, 79.
20
Ibid, 81.
21
Ibid, 85.
22
Hill gives this list of excusing reasons at ibid, p. 84.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid, 87.
27
Telfer, “Self-Respect,” repr. In Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, p. 108. Page citations reference the
reprinted version.
28
For discussion of the points to follow, see Jennifer D. Campbell’s “Self-Esteem and Clarity of the Self-
Concept,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59:3 (1990), pp. 538-49; Campbell and Loraine F.
Lavallee, “Who Am I? The Role of Self-Concept Confusion in Understanding the Behavior of People with
Low Self-Esteem,” in Self-Esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard, Roy F. Baumeister, ed. (New York:
Plenum Press, 1993), pp. 3-20; and Bruce Blaine and Jennifer Crocker, “Self-Esteem and Self-Serving
Biases in Reactions to Positive and Negative Events: An Integrative Review,” also in Self-Esteem, pp. 55-
81.
29
See Campbell, “Who Am I?”, p. 16.
30
See Brighouse, School Choice and Social Justice, ch. 4; and Wall’s discussion of autonomy’s usefulness
in the pursuit of self-development in Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint, pp. 150-9.
 131

31
Harry Brighouse emphasizes this point in his discussion of the same issue in School Choice and Social
Justice, chapter, p. 73 especially.
32
This example due to ibid.
33
This point is brought out by Wall in his discussion of autonomy’s instrumental value in Liberalism,
Perfectionism, and Restraint. See Chapter 6, p. 152. Wall in turn is drawing on similar remarks by John
Stuart Mill in On Liberty.
34
For discussion of these distinctions, see Kristine Korsgaard’s “Two Distinctions in Goodness,”
Philosophical Review 92 (1982).
35
Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, (Oxford, 1996), p. 38.
36
See for example Lester H. Hunt’s discussion in Character and Culture, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1997), chapter 2, section 7.
37
For example, though James Griffin agrees that autonomy directly promotes a person’s well-being, he
does not consider the possible contribution of self-respect. See Griffin’s Value Judgment, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996), chapter 2.
38
The case to follow draws on insights from Thomas E. Hill, Jr.’s “Self-Respect Revisited.”
39
The arguments to follow draw on those advanced by Steven Wall in Liberalism, Perfectionism, and
Restraint, pp. 145-50.
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CHAPTER 4

WELL-BEING AND ENDORSEMENT

1. Introduction

The previous chapter argued that self-respect has intrinsic value for well-being in

addition to instrumental value. Its presence directly promotes the well-being of its

possessor to some extent and its absence detracts from it, independently of her own

assessments of its value. This conception of self-respect’s value conflicts with a currently

popular style of theorizing about well-being, according to which a thing directly

promotes welfare only if she takes an appropriately favorable attitude toward it in the

right circumstances. 1 According to theories adopting this endorsement thesis, a person’s

own views about what makes life good are finally authoritative for determining what

makes it good for her—a thing is good for a person only if and partly because it is good

to her.

This chapter aims to refute the endorsement thesis. I argue that its appeal is not

that leading a life we can endorse limits what makes it good for us. Rather leading such a

life is one competing intrinsic value for well-being among others. A person is not

completely well off if she does not endorse her life or some of its conditions, but she can

otherwise be well very off if, for example, she successfully pursues some worthwhile

goals, has some good relationships, as well as some self-respect, even if she does not see

things this way.

The argument of this chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2 discusses how the

endorsement thesis fits into standard theories of well-being, including hedonism, desire

theory, and objective-list theory. Section 3 then describes a general difficulty facing
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theories accepting the endorsement theories. Sections 4 through 6 then argue that such

theories are unsound accounts of well-being.

2. The Endorsement Thesis and Subjectivism and Objectivism about Well-Being

Theories of well-being committed to some version of the endorsement thesis embody a

kind of subjectivism about well-being that I will call endorsement subjectivism.

Borrowing a formulation from L.W. Sumner’s work, the endorsement thesis says

“something can make me better off…only if I have (or would have under appropriate

circumstances) a positive attitude (of the appropriate sort) toward it.” 2 This formulation is

vague but sufficiently concrete to articulate a sort of subjectivism about well-being. The

subjectivism in this sort of view is that it gives the valuations of individuals final

authority in the determination of what promotes their own well-being. If a thing does not

inspire a person to take a pro-attitude toward its presence in her life, it cannot be good for

her. As Sumner has put the point, a person’s values constrain what is good for her in that

her “point of view on her life is authoritative for determining when that life is going well

for her.” 3 Thus endorsement subjective theories all in one way or another assert that a

thing is good for a person only if it is somehow good to her, e.g. is something she

wholeheartedly enjoys, approves of, or desires.

This conception of well-being’s subjectivity versus objectivity divides theories of

well-being along this axis a certain way. A theory is endorsement objective just when it

claims that at least one thing directly promotes a person’s well-being independently of

whether she takes an appropriately favorable attitude toward it, e.g. takes pleasure in it,
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approves of it, or desires it. Given this definition objective-list theories are trivially

objective, but so are some desire theories and some forms of hedonism.

Some desire theories are endorsement subjective and others objective. Actual

desire theory can be both. It is subjective when it states that having a thing directly

promotes a person’s well-being if and only if she wholeheartedly, or to some extent self-

consciously, desires it and objective when it states that it does so long as she desires it.

On the other hand, weak informed desire theory is endorsement subjective. It states that

realization 4 of a person’s desire for a thing promotes her well-being if and only if she,

reasoning logically and having knowledge of the natural facts about it, would

nevertheless want it. This theory might appear to be endorsement objective because it

constrains which of a person’s endorsed desires when realized promote her well-being—

only those formed logically in light of all natural facts. But the theory is endorsement

subjective because it denies that there are any unendorsed desires which when realized

promote well-being.

Finally, strong informed desire theory is endorsement objective. It might also be

called rational or ideal-adviser desire theory since it states that realization of a desire for

a thing promotes a person’s well-being just when an idealized advisor, i.e. one having

knowledge of all natural facts and deliberating not just free of logical error but also of

other sorts of irrationality, would say that it does. Thus, though rational desire theory

might reserve a role for endorsement at some level, it strictly speaking rejects the

endorsement thesis, since that claims that a thing promotes a person’s well-being only if

she agrees that it does. But it is possible that a person wholeheartedly desires a thing her
 135
ideal advisor rejects, e.g. she really wants all things considered to kill herself, but the

adviser denies that this would be good for her.

Finally, on this classification scheme, hedonism also comes in subjective and

objective forms. Hedonism is generally the view that a person is well off if and only if

she is happy, where happiness is understood in terms of the experience of pleasure and

the absence of pain. Hedonism is endorsement objective insofar as it claims that pleasure

promotes a person’s well-being whatever he thinks about it. On the other hand, it is

endorsement subjective inasmuch as it holds that only endorsed pleasure promotes well-

being. Since hedonism seems to be more widely understood in the endorsement

subjective way, I treat it this way in the argument to follow.

I maintain that endorsement subjective theories of well-being are mistaken

because it is false that a thing can be good for us only if we take a favorable attitude

toward it. I will argue in what follows that the appeal of the endorsement thesis is not that

some favorable quality of our attitude toward a thing constrains or determines whether it

is good for us. Rather it is just that taking some such attitude toward our life or some of

its conditions is one among other crucial goods directly promoting well-being, and

therefore necessary for a completely good life. Thus, this view does not claim that

endorsement has nothing to do with well-being, only that it must compete with other

goods of value rather than control them. On this sort of objectivist view, because both

autonomy and freedom from stress, say, are by themselves good for a person, it is indeed

correct to say that “stressed-Jenny” (see chapter 2, p. XX) is decently well off abdicating

her autonomy. But it is also correct to say that she is better off merely irritated and
 136
autonomous, and even better off still overcoming her anxiety/irritation and exercising

some autonomy.

The next section begins the argument in favor of this sort of view by raising a

general difficulty for endorsement subjective theories of well-being.

3. Two Ways of Being Well Off

A general difficulty for endorsement subjective theories is that while all are monistic

about what improves the quality of life, there are two distinct but equally coherent

general notions of what it is to be well off. 5 In a single sentence L.W. Sumner names

both but without distinguishing between them. He writes, “Common sense tells us that a

person’s welfare, or well-being, is a matter of how well she is doing, or how well her life

is going, or how well off she is.” 6 Now how well off a person is is just a general way of

referring to her level of well-being, so is not a notion of it. On the other hand, it is

coherently understood either in terms of how well she is doing, or in terms of how well

her life is going (or equivalently, ‘how things are going’). These then are notions of well-

being, of what it is to be well off. A person is well off just when she is doing well or

when her life is going well.

But how well a person is doing and how well things are going for her are not the

same. Doubtless they partially overlap. If I am not doing well (I am miserable or taking

things badly) my life is going in a way badly for me. But on common sense

understandings they can fail to coincide. It is possible for me to be doing well (e.g.

happy, satisfied) even when things are going badly for me (e.g. when my plans are being

frustrated or misfortunes befall me) and I can be doing badly even when things are going
 137
quite well for me. In adversity, we cope, manage, or make the best of it; but in flush we

often fail to appreciate how good things are for us. One might say the two notions pick

out fundamentally different ways of being well off. The ‘doing well’ way concerns

primarily the condition of my mind, e.g. that I am experiencing pleasure or satisfaction. 7

But the ‘going well’ way of being well off concerns primarily the condition of my life’s

events or contents, e.g. the success of my pursuits or their worthiness of pursuit.

Neither the doing well nor the going well notion is a priori privileged as the real

well-being. 8 A person may have much going for her but she is not entirely well off if

she’s unhappy with it or suffering. Likewise a person may be doing fine but she is not

really well off if everything is going badly. But standard subjective theories do privilege

one over the other. Hedonism and L.W. Sumner’s authentic happiness theory privilege

doing well over life’s going well. At the formal level of analysis they maintain that a

thing promotes well-being because it meets with ways of doing well, e.g. experiencing

pleasure or being satisfied. On the other hand desire theory privileges a going well notion

over a doing well one since it maintains that something promotes well-being because it

realizes our desires. But if neither basic notion is a priori privileged, these theories must

account for the typical accoutrements of well-being picked out by the other notion or

explain them away, if they are acceptable accounts of well-being.

In contrast the existence of the two notions presents no difficulty for objective

theories like rational desire theory or pluralistic objective-list theory. The second sort of

theory accounts for both notions (despite their failure always to coincide) by simply

placing goods relevant to each notion on its list of goods, including for example pleasures

(capturing the more subjective doing well notion) and accomplishment (capturing the
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9
more objective going well notion). Granted, objective-list theory does not supply a

formal theory specifying why something is good for us. But if well-being is pluralistic

and objective, then the search for a monistic formal theory is misguided.

These considerations set an agenda for what follows. If endorsement subjective

theories are plausible, then they are able to explain how things are going for us

adequately in terms of how we are doing or vice versa (as in the case of desire theory).

Sections 4 through 6 below argue that the consequent of this conditional is mistaken.

Well-being equally concerns how we are doing and how things are going for us and the

typical accoutrements of each must be separately accounted for. In advancing the

argument, sections 4 through 6 consider three varieties of endorsement subjectivism,

including hedonism, L.W. Sumner’s authentic happiness theory, and actual and informed

desire theory. Each of these theories is endorsement subjective and favors one notion of

well-being over the other. I argue that each fails to adequately account for aspects of

well-being connected with the disfavored notion.

4. Hedonism

Hedonism claims that we are well off just when we are happy and that we are happy just

when we are experiencing pleasure and the absence of pain. 10 So hedonism must account

for aspects of well-being connected to life’s going well in terms of an ideal of doing well.

Things are going well for us if and only if we are doing well in terms of the pleasantness

of our mental states. Is this adequate?

There are several well-known difficulties for hedonism, e.g. vulnerability to

counterexample like Nozick’s ‘experience machine’ case, and the difficulty of

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understanding which pleasant mental state constitutes happiness given the diversity of

pleasures. 11 I pass over these serious difficulties for two reasons. First, I do not doubt that

various pleasures by themselves promote well-being, if only in some small way. My

doubt is rather that happiness hedonistically understood is necessary for well-being in a

way that constrains what else promotes it. Second, these arguments approach the present

question obliquely while the following point by J. David Velleman approaches it

directly. 12

If hedonism is true, then the welfare value of any lengthy stretch of one’s life (or

life itself) must be some function (the sum, say) of the welfare value of the moments

comprising it. But this does not seem to be the case. Compare the following two lives

Velleman describes:

One life begins in the depths but takes an upward trend: a childhood of

deprivation, a troubled youth, struggles and setbacks in early adulthood, followed

finally by success and satisfaction in middle age and a peaceful retirement.

Another life begins at the heights but slides downhill: a blissful youth, precocious

triumphs and rewards early in adulthood, followed by a midlife strewn with

disasters that lead to misery in old age. (‘Well-Being and Time,’1991, 49—50)

We can easily enough imagine that the sum of happiness in these two lives is equal. But

the former life seems clearly to go better for its possessor than the latter. If well-being

depends solely on the sum total a life’s pleasures, however, this possibility, as Velleman

says “is ruled out a priori.” 13

The hedonist may attempt to explain our intuitions on such cases in a manner

consistent with the additivity of long-term well-being. She might suggest, “the highs and
 140
14
lows encountered in maturity are more extreme than those encountered in childhood.”

If so, the two lives really are unequal in happiness, and our preference for the latter life

remains a preference for the happier life.

It may be that pleasures and pains are quantitatively different in adulthood, but

this does not really help. We only need to imagine a case in which this possibility is

controlled for, and this seems easy enough. Just add compensating hardship to the painful

childhood, e.g. the mental stress of learning to manage a disability, being the subject of

cruel taunts, and so on. Utilities so equalized, the life that rises from the depths still

seems to be better for us than the one that ends in them. So differences in life-stage

intensities of feeling inadequately responds to plausible intuitions about the case. It seems

rather that upward trends in the direction of our lives are preferable to downward trends,

especially at life’s end, even though the upward pattern is not accompanied by overall

gains in utility. 15

Of course, barring some further explanation of our preferences, the explanation in

terms of them favors some form of desire theory over hedonism, not clearly endorsement

objectivism over subjectivism. Nevertheless, hedonism seems to be the less plausible

view—the implausible alternative accepts that a life ending in misfortune and failure goes

as well for us as one beginning with them, so long as utilities are equal. But faced with

the choice I would not hesitate to choose the latter and this choice would seem not

arbitrary but rational. Since hedonism gives me no reason for choosing one way or the

other, I conclude that it does not adequately explain features of well-being connected to

life’s going well in terms of happiness. Some lives go better than others even though the

two are equal in total happiness.

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5. Desire Theory

All desire theories committed to the endorsement thesis share in claiming that something

promotes well-being only if it meets or realizes wholeheartedly endorsed desires.

However, unlike hedonism these theories actually favor a going well notion of well-being

over a doing well one. We are well off whenever things are going well for us in terms of

our level of endorsed desire realization.

Do desire theories fare better than hedonism? In privileging a going well notion of

well-being over a doing well one, desire theories must explain features of well-being

relevant to doing well in terms of their notion of life’s going well. I argue in what follows

that actual and informed desire theory fail since people often really want things that will

not make them happy, a way of doing well. But people who are unhappy are not

completely well off.

5.1. Actual Desire Theory

Actual desire theory says that a person is well off just when her wholeheartedly endorsed

desires are satisfied, and that a thing directly promotes a person’s well-being just when

she wholeheartedly desires it. This section argues that this view is mistaken since getting

what we actually want sometimes does not make a person happy. But a person who is

unhappy is not completely well off.

Suppose that Tommy and Bill are getting everything they want. Suppose then that

Tommy’s uncle asks if he’d like to play 52-card pick-up. Being naïve this sounds very

pleasant to him, so he says yes, then asks how to play. His uncle then shows him just how

unpleasant it is. Or suppose Bill’s son Don asks him whether it would make Bill happy to
 142
loan him the car if he washes it. “Great,” Bill says, handing over the keys. But when Don

returns the car without washing it and Bill protests, Don explains that, as he has learned

in logic class, he never promised to use the car only if he washes it. Rather, Bill has

promised him that washing the car is sufficient but not necessary for its use. 16 This

infuriates Bill.

In both cases Tommy and Bill desire something that does not make them happy

because they do not know what they are really getting, either through basic factual

ignorance or reasoning incorrectly about it. Hence, getting what we want does not

guarantee that we will be happy with it. Since being completely well off arguably also

requires being happy with our life’s conditions, actual desire theory seems to be

inadequate.

Objection: Tommy and Bill’s unhappiness is the sort of relatively minor and

transient unpleasantness that is typical of a normal, completely good life. What really

matters to well-being is the realization of important, high priority desires. 17 Tommy’s

higher priority desire is to learn a sophisticated game and Bill more wants Don to wash

the car if he uses it (or for Don to respect his property, or to have a good relationship with

his son, and so on). So, if their cases show that they are not really well off, this is because

their highest priority desires are going unmet, not because getting what they want makes

them unhappy. In any case, their stories do not show that actual desire theory is an

unsound account of well-being.

It is true that Tommy and Bill’s experiences are not life wrecking, but this does

not mean they are unimportant. First, though the unhappiness resulting from realization

of their desires is relatively minor, they would arguably be doing somewhat better
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without it. This might be explained either in terms of the independent value of happiness

for well-being or in terms of the relative unimportance of getting the particular things

they happen to want. But either way, it is not and cannot be explained by reference to the

unimportance of realizing desires. Instead it must be explained in terms of something

about their particular desires, and this by itself draws into question the real importance

for well-being of mere desire realization.

Second, though it is fair to revise actual desire theory so that what really matters

is realizing high priority desires, the difficulties faced by Tommy and Bill in the pursuit

of their relatively trivial desires suggests a serious difficulty for this revision. Suppose

Sara most wants to lead a happy fulfilling life and believes that teaching philosophy will

give her one. Becoming a philosopher thus becomes a very high priority desire for her.

But having succeeded in becoming a philosopher she finds it unfulfilling. Sara thus

realizes a high priority desire, but this has led to a very major source of unhappiness that

makes her life less than completely good.

A natural explanation of the difficulty suffered in Sara’s case is that she lacks

sufficient information to decide well whether she will be happy in philosophy or in

something else. If this explanation is accepted, actual desire theory should be abandoned

in favor of at least weak informed desire theory. It should be accepted since the only

alternative is ad hoc. This alternative claims that though Sara does get something

important that she really wants, she is not completely well off because her high priority

desire of leading a happy fulfilling life has gone unrealized. This is ad hoc since, though

Sara may well have this desire, it is an empty, formal desire equivalent to the desire to be

completely well off. Hence, explaining her failure to be well off by reference to non-
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realization of this desire is to say that she is not well off because she is not well off. This

is inadequate. Whether actual desire theory succeeds depends on whether realization of a

person’s desires other than her general desire to be well off by themselves promote her

well-being. Since this does not always seem to be the case, actual desire theory should be

abandoned in favor of informed desire theory.

5.2. Weak Informed Desire Theory

Weak informed desire theory solves some of the problems of actual desire theory. It

states that realization of a wholehearted desire for a thing promotes well-being just when,

reasoning logically and having all the natural facts about it, she would want it. Now

Tommy knows that 52-card pick-up is not really a card game and Bill knows that Don is

not promising to wash the car if he uses it. Does this view adequately explain well-being

in terms of desire realization?

It does not. Suppose Jill wants to share an apartment with her best friend Bonnie

in the belief that it will be just fantastic. She is aware that such arrangements tend not to

go so very well, but Bonnie is her best friend and she believes (reasonably, suppose) they

will do just fine. But it does not go very well and she ends up dissatisfied. Or consider

Sara again. Suppose she knows all the facts about what is involved in studying

philosophy, being a teacher, her aptitudes for these things, and so on. Still, she ends up

unhappy. Or, Jane may know that always acting with the intention of pleasing others

leads her to frustrations, disappointments, and regrets over opportunities foregone. But

she refuses to believe she ought to change her ways because she, on account of years of

socialization, say, believes a self-abnegating morality is superior.

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These cases reveal problems for weak informed desire theory, though they

differently highlight them. Jill and Sara’s cases highlight that realization of desires

formed in light of all the natural facts does not necessarily promote happiness. Perhaps

this could be avoided if “all the natural facts” is interpreted in a particularly strong way,

so that, for Jill say, it includes all those facts about how things do finally go for her and

Bonnie. Now she knows the move will make her unhappy and so she no longer desires it.

But this move concedes that appeal to desire realization does not itself explain what

makes us happy. It no longer says that getting what we want makes us happy when we

understand the nature of the object and reason logically, but that getting what we want

makes us happy when we know that it will.

On the other hand, Jane’s case highlights that realization of desires formed free of

logical error does not necessarily promote happiness. Jane reasons logically and gets

what she wants on reflection. But her wants lead to discontents hindering her happiness

and are irrational in a robust sense not accounted for by weak informed desire theory.

They are the result of socialization processes operating behind her explicit reasoning and

leading her, say, to regard normally self-interested behavior as if it were perniciously

egoistic. And while this confusion might constitute ignorance of a fact relevant to the

formation of her desires, it is not a natural but an evaluative fact and so does not fall

within the scope of those provided by weak informed desire theory’s information

condition.

So weak informed desire theory does not do justice to commonsense intuitions

about the importance for well-being of happiness, since getting what we want in light of

facts and logic does not guarantee it in situations clearly affecting well-being. Now
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rational desire theory may be capable of solving some of these problems for informed

desire theory. Recall that this theory states that realization of a desire for a thing promotes

a person’s well-being just when an idealized advisor, i.e. one having all the natural facts

and deliberating free of logical error and irrationality, would say that it does. Being free

of the shackles of socialization, an ideal advisor could reason that Jane should not want

always to act so as to please others. However, this sort of move makes desire theory

endorsement objective rather than subjective. It is not endorsement subjective because it

deprives a person’s own value judgments of final authority in the determination of what

is good for her, handing it over instead to some thick standard of rationality for desires.

6. The Authentic Happiness Theory

Sympathetic to endorsement subjective forms of hedonism and desire theory but sensitive

to their difficulties, L.W. Sumner has advanced an alternative he calls the authentic

happiness theory (henceforth, the AHT). According to the AHT, “Welfare … consists in

authentic happiness, the happiness of an informed and autonomous subject.” 18 Like

hedonism, this theory favors a doing well notion of well-being over a going well one.

This section argues that also like hedonism, Sumner’s AHT fails to adequately account

for features of well-being associated with life’s going well in terms of its ideal of doing

well. First the theory needs considerable unpacking.

6.1. Authentic Happiness

The AHT claims that a person is completely well off if and only if she is (a) happy (b)

authentically. A fuller understanding of this theory requires clarifying what according to

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it happiness and authenticity involve as well the relation between them and well-being.

Sumner understands these ideas and their relationship in the following way.

a. Happiness

The AHT claims that a person is completely well off only if she is happy. But what is

meant by ‘happiness’? In Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, Sumner explains that

“happiness…can be equated with life satisfaction.” 19 Thus, whether Sumner believes

happiness is life satisfaction, he maintains that a person is happy just when she is satisfied

with her life or its conditions. Relative to this latter notion, Sumner explains that a person

is satisfied with her life or its conditions only if she experiences the conditions of her life

as fulfilling or rewarding, and sincerely and deliberately judges that it is going well for

her by her standards for it. Note then that the happiness condition of the AHT by itself

makes the theory endorsement subjective—a person’s life or any of its conditions can be

good for her only if she believes that it is.

However, the AHT denies that satisfaction with our life or its conditions suffices

for being completely well off. The completely well off person’s happiness must also be

authentic.

b. Authenticity

In order to be completely well off, a person’s happiness/life satisfaction must be

authentic, and this requires that it is informed and autonomous. Authenticity (or

inauthenticity) is thus a quality of the judgments and experiences of life satisfaction a

person makes or undergoes. A judgment or experience of life satisfaction is authentic just

when it is genuinely a person’s own, one she really makes or feels. 20

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Sumner includes an authenticity condition in the AHT because, though every

judgment or experience of ours is in this sense trivially one we make or undergo,

judgments or feelings formed in ignorance or as a consequence of coercion or other

compulsion lack the authority of those we make when not in those conditions. In order

for our judgments or experiences of life satisfaction to be authoritative, they must be truly

our own or authentic, and this according to Sumner requires that they are informed and

autonomous. But because Sumner believes that our being well off is endorsement

subjective, i.e. is a matter of our being satisfied with it, of our judging that it is going

well and finding it fulfilling, he therefore believes that our being completely well off

requires that our satisfaction has the authority of authenticity.

Given this understanding of the importance of authenticity for well-being, Sumner

understands the information and autonomy needed for authenticity as follows. First, a

person is autonomous in her assessments of life satisfaction or her standards for making

them only if (though perhaps not also if) they are not held merely as a result of

“mechanisms of social conditioning, such as indoctrination, programming, brainwashing,

role scripting, and the like,” or else her commitment to them has survived a process of

critical reflection itself free social conditioning. 21 If the real explanation why Jane is

unwilling to change her belief in the superiority of a self-abnegating morality is that she

has been home schooled for it and inadequately exposed to other social worlds, this gives

us reason to doubt that her allegiance to it is autonomous. Therefore, any judgments of

life satisfaction she makes premised on this belief do not clearly advance her well-being.

On the other hand, if she later gains access to other values causing her to critically reflect

on her commitment but it survives this reflection, she is autonomous in it. Thus, “the best
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strategy here is to treat subject’s reports of their level of life satisfaction as defeasible—

that is, authoritative unless there is evidence they are non-autonomous.” 22

Second, a person’s assessments of life satisfaction are inadequately informed and

require more factual information “whenever [that further information] would make a

difference to [her] affective response to her life, given her priorities.” 23 Sumner

elaborates this idea by considering an example of a woman who “for a while, lives in

ignorant bliss with a faithless partner.”

Her endorsement of her life lacks information about his character and intentions.

Is this information relevant? It is if her possessing it would undermine that

endorsement. There are, therefore, two possibilities, which open once she has

been undeceived. One is that she re-evaluates how well her life was going (not

how happy she was) during the period of deception: ‘I thought everything was

going so well, but now I can see that it was all a farce.’ In that case, the discount

rate she now imposes on her earlier assessment of her well-being determines how

relevant the information was. The other possibility is that she does not care: ‘C’est

la vie; at least he was charming and we had a lot of fun.’ Here the information

turns out to have zero relevance, since that is the status she confers on it. (Sumner,

Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, 1996, 161)

According to the AHT then, judgments of life satisfaction that are authentic and promote

well-being require not full information but adequate information. And a person’s own

priorities set the standard of adequacy for information—it is adequate so long as more

would not lead a person to change her judgments of life satisfaction, and inadequate

otherwise.
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This theory has many advantages over endorsement subjective hedonism and

desire theory. Unlike desire theory the AHT captures the importance for well-being of

happiness by directly making it a necessary condition for leading a completely good life.

On the other hand, unlike hedonism the AHT accounts for notions of life’s going well

without additivity but by reference to our relatively stable beliefs about the goodness for

us of our lives. If we authentically believe that it is going well for us, then it is going well

for us, and this judgment we may arrive at by adding up all the pleasures or enjoyments

we’ve experienced or we may not. Finally, the AHT has the added advantage over both

of requiring that a person’s happiness is authentic, i.e. to some minimum extent informed

and autonomous, in order for it directly to promote her well-being. Thus, it has the ability

to deny that people like Jane are completely well off insofar as the evaluative

commitments by which they judge their lives are held heteronomously or in ignorance of

relevant natural facts.

6.2. Problems for the AHT

Is this theory sound? Does it do justice to features of life’s going well in terms of

authentic happiness? This section gives several reasons for thinking that it does not.

But first, one red herring. One might suspect that the inclusion of authenticity

conditions will present problems for this view’s claim to endorsement subjectivity.

Mustn’t the rationale for their inclusion in some way appeal to the goodness for us of

these things, to how well they make our lives go independently of our attitudes toward

them? If so, the difficulty does not lie with the AHT’s autonomy condition. If it is

possible for some of our claims to happiness to be heteronomous, then such claims really
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are in some sense not our own. But then, our making them cannot make us well off since

this consists in our judging that we are happy. Sumner states it thus: “the demand that

self-evaluations be authentic flows from the logic of a subjective theory, which grounds

an individual’s well-being on her (positive or negative) attitudes” (emphasis Sumner’s). 24

So the autonomy condition’s rationale is not to guarantee that our lives are going in one

way well for us independently of our assessments of how it is going, but to guarantee

well-being’s endorsement subjectivity or dependence on our attitudes.

This red herring aside, there are serious problems relating to the AHT’s

authenticity conditions. The next several paragraphs take these up.

First, Sumner’s authenticity conditions are insufficient to handle certain problem

cases. Return to Jane. Suppose now that she has experienced the wider world and this has

led her to reflect further on her commitment to self-abnegating morality, but her

commitment to it survives this reflection. She thus continues to defer to others with the

aim of acting so as to please them, though her to do so choice is autonomous and made in

light of all the relevant natural facts. Now this is likely to be instrumentally bad for her

insofar as it is likely to lead her to frustration, disappointment, and regret over missed

opportunities. If so, her choice harms her life in a way accounted for by the AHT. But

even supposing that she lives quite happily this way her commitment is intrinsically bad

for her, too. Though she is autonomous in her affirmation of it, her life is not autonomous

but organized by pursuit of whatever makes other people happy. But organizing one’s life

this way is not worthwhile for its own sake. It at best adds some instrumental and moral

value to it (though that it adds much is doubtful), but this value is not intrinsic value for

her, even if she is happy this way. For if she gave up this goal, she could be happy and
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pursuing some intrinsically worthwhile goals that would make her still better off. But the

AHT denies that this is possible—nothing can increase a person’s well-being if she does

not endorse it. The difficulty then is that, though the rationale for autonomy in the AHT is

consistent, it does not fully appreciate the importance of autonomy for well-being.

Autonomy is valuable not just because it guarantees that our happiness is our own. It

guarantees that our lives are our own and this is a state of affairs that is intrinsically good

for a person, whatever she happens to think about autonomy.

This first objection may not be decisive. However, a second set of problems

related to the AHT’s information requirement are decisive. A first problem is that the

rationale Sumner musters in support of the adequate information condition is not clearly

consistent with his aim for the theory. This aim is to elaborate a fully adequate theory of

well-being that is thoroughgoingly endorsement subjective, one stating that what makes a

person’s life go well for her entirely depends upon her assessments of what makes it go

well. According to Sumner, such a theory must permit only happiness premised on

adequate information to count toward well-being, because “If a subject’s endorsement of

some particular (perceived) condition depends on a factual mistake, or results from

illusion or deception, then it is not an accurate reflection of her own underlying values.” 25

That is, uninformed life satisfaction does not count because it is not authentic, not really

my life satisfaction. This rationale is thus the same as that for the autonomy requirement,

and if it is acceptable it makes the requirement of adequate information consistent with

Sumner’s aspiration of building a fully endorsement subjective theory.

But in this case the rationale does not succeed. It is committed to the false

assertion that a person’s claims to life satisfaction reflect her underlying priorities only if
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she is not under some illusion or deception. Yet claims to life satisfaction in conditions of

illusion or deception do sometimes reflect a person’s underlying priorities—whenever

those priorities include programs of willful ignorance or self-deception. These then are

forms of deception and illusion not possibly controlled for by Sumner’s criterion of

adequate information, which, recall, is whatever amount “would make a difference to a

subject’s affective response to her life, given her priorities.” For the person who is

willfully self-deceived or ignorant, all the relevant information makes no difference, is

irrelevant.

A closer examination of Sumner’s adequate information condition therefore

reveals that it is not actually an information requirement at all, or at least does not

function like one normally. To function normally, information requirements must to some

extent limit the authority of a person’s own claims to well-being by setting a standard of

informational adequacy independent of the opinions grounding those claims. Since the

AHT leaves full authority with the values of individuals themselves, the theory succumbs

to garden-variety counterexamples plaguing hedonism and actual desire theory stemming

from the absence of appropriate information requirements within them. If I find complete

satisfaction floating in a happiness machine just because I can’t think of anything better

to do with my life, and not because of social conditioning or ignorance, then spending my

life there makes it go as well for me as it possibly could. 26 Or if because of some random

compulsion I find satisfaction counting blades of grass on golf course fairways, even

though I know the information is useless, no one else cares about it, have not been

socialized into it, know that I want it because of a compulsion, and so on, then according

to the AHT there is nothing that could make my life go better for me. 27 But this is not all.
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Suppose it is the case that I do not know why I find this activity satisfying, but

also that if I knew why, this information would horrify me enough that I would prefer not

to discover it. The AHT not only does but must tell us that this information is irrelevant

and my lacking it in no way impugns the authority of my judgments about what promotes

my own well-being. For if the theory admits that the information is relevant, it must do so

on grounds unrelated to my assessments of what promotes my happiness since these vie

against revealing it, and the theory would therefore admit in this case that something

other than my own endorsements are determinative of my well-being. Yet arguably the

information is relevant. Perhaps coming to terms with it would lead to a period of

turmoil. But if doing so would free me of the compulsion so that I can go on to pursue

more worthwhile and satisfying activities, this would make my life better for me. But the

AHT can give no reason to agree since according to it, all that matters is that I am

authentically satisfied.

Note that one way of responding to my argument fails. This is to claim that

judgments of life satisfaction premised on compulsions are not autonomous, thus do not

really make me well off. Apart from the fact that this view of autonomy does not reflect

Sumner’s own, it sets the bar for autonomy too high. Everyone has compulsions and

urges but their having them does not make them heteronomous, since this depends upon

the compulsion’s origins and whether endorsement of it survives our critical reflection. If

it does not have origins in social conditioning or endorsement of it survives reflection,

then a person is autonomous in following it.

In conclusion, either the AHT’s information requirement is too weak or it is

strengthened in a way that threatens to conflict with the endorsement subjectivity of the
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theory. In either case the theory does not do justice to some commonsense intuitions

about what makes life go well in terms of its ideal of doing well. It thus does not very

well support the endorsement thesis.

7. Conclusion

The last few sections have considered three different endorsement subjective theories of

well-being and argued that there are considerable problems for each. But there is a

general problem that is common to all. Because endorsement subjective theories each

favor either a doing well notion of well-being over a going well one (or vice versa), they

are monistic about well-being. But this way of theorizing well-being conceives the

favored way of being well off as constraining how features of the other improve the

quality of life. But this is a mistake. Being happy and successfully pursuing worthwhile

goals both contribute to well-being in their own way. Hence, the endorsement thesis is

false. Leading a life we can endorse does not determine what other goods directly

promote well-being but competes with them as an independent end worth pursuing for its

own sake.
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NOTES: CHAPTER 4
1
Philosophers accepting some variant of this view include Ronald Dworkin in “Foundations of Liberal
Equality,” Equal Freedom, Stephen L. Darwall, ed., (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995); Will
Kymlicka in Contemporary Political Philosophy, (Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 203-204; and L.W.
Sumner in Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, (Oxford University Press, 1996).
2
L.W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, p. 38.
3
See ibid, p. 160 (emphasis original).
4
I am going to use the somewhat awkward phrase ‘desire realization’ instead of the more common ‘desire
satisfaction’ or ‘desire fulfillment’ in order to avoid the misleading implication that desire theory explains
what’s good for us in terms of felt satisfaction with our life or its contents. According to the sort of desire
theory I mean to discuss, it is not any felt satisfaction or fulfillment derived from the realization of a desire
that makes something good for us, nor the abatement of any pain we experience when it remains unmet.
Rather, it’s just the bare fact that the thing meets or realizes our desire.
5
For other authors who seem to have noticed this fact, see James Griffin’s “Replies,” section 1 especially,
in Roger Crisp and Brad Hooker (eds.) Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honor of James Griffin,
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999); J. David Velleman in “Well-Being and Time,” Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 91 (Mar., 1991), 48-77; Shelley Kagan’s “The Limits of Well-Being,” in The Good Life
and the Human Good, Ellen Frankel Paul et al., eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and
T.M. Scanlon, ch. 3 of What We Owe to Each Other, (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1998). Most recently,
Simon Keller in “Welfare and the Achievement of Goals,” Philosophical Studies, 121 (2004), 27—41,
argues that well-being is “not a unitary concept…that can be accurately represented with a single value,” p.
35.
6
Sumner, “Two Theories of the Good,” in Ellen Frankel Paul et al. (eds.), The Good Life and the Human
Good, 11 –14. Sumner’s general introduction to the notion of welfare in Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, p.
1 makes essentially the same statement, describing well-being as both a condition of a person and of her
life in the same paragraph. It reads: “Our concern will be with welfare in the original meaning still
preserved in the term’s etymology: the condition of faring or doing well. It is in this sense that welfare
attaches pre-eminently to the lives of individuals…” (my emphasis). But lives neither fare nor do well.
People do that while lives go well or badly.
7
The claim here is just that how we are doing is primarily a matter of the condition of our minds. This does
not deny that there are clear contexts in which ‘doing well/badly’ refers to an extra-mental condition, for
example the medical context. A wife might inquire of a physician how her comatose husband is doing,
where what she really wants to know is whether he will survive and not whether he is feeling well or badly
or taking things well. Similarly, how things are going for us is only primarily a matter of the quality of our
life’s contents. In colloquial discourse, “Things are going great!” is a coherent response to the question,
“How are you doing?” However, this is partly because we assume it indicates that the speaker is also happy
with how things are going, i.e. he’s doing well by them. But this in fact might be mistaken–he could simply
be telling us what he thinks we want to hear, or avoiding his unhappiness, or trying not to be a burden, etc–
and how we are doing can be treated as another way in which things go well or badly for us. Part of the
case I am trying to make then is for greater clarity in philosophical discourse about life’s going well and
our doing well, given the different roles played by the condition of our minds versus the condition of our
lives in well-being.
8
An important question that might be pressed here, put to me by Dan Hausman, asks, “What is common to
doing well and life’s going well that makes them both ways of being well off?” A full treatment of well-
being should attempt an answer. But for the purposes of the current project what matters is that there are no
obvious decisive arguments for believing that only one or the other really matters.
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9
Other authors, including self-styled objectivists and subjectivists alike, have noticed this fact about
objective-list theories. For subjectivist notice, see Alan Sobel’s “On the Subjectivity of Welfare,” Ethics
107:3 (1997), 501-508; for an objectivist, see Richard Arneson’s “Human Flourishing Versus Desire-
Satisfaction,” in Ellen Frankel Paul et al. eds., Human Flourishing, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press), 140-2.
10
See J.S. Mill, The Six Great Humanistic Essays of John Stuart Mill, Albert William Levy, (ed.), (New
York: Washington Square Press, 1963), 249; Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation,
[1832] 1948, (New York: Hafner Press), 2.
11
See Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, (New York: Basic, 1973), 43. Relative to the latter
claim, James Griffin develops suggestions initially advanced by Henry Sidgwick. See Griffin’s Well-Being
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 8-11.
12
Velleman, “Well-Being and Time,” 48
13
Ibid, 50.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
This story inspired by a similar one in Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker’s Critical Thinking, 6th
ed., (New York: McGraw Hill, 2001), p. 345.
17
For a defense of desire theory taking this tack, see Sumner’s Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, 131.
18
This theory is articulated most fully in Sumner’s Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, 1996. But see also
‘Two Theories of the Good,’ in 1992 for a somewhat earlier expression.
19
For this quote and the explanation to follow see page 172 of Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics.
20
See ibid, 139.
21
Ibid, 171.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid, 160.
24
Ibid, 167.
25
Ibid, 174.
26
This is Robert Nozick’s famous counterexample to hedonism in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 42.
27
This is John Rawls’s much discussed example about actual desire theory first put forward in A Theory of
Justice, (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971), p. 432.
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CHAPTER 5

RESTRAINT IN THE POLITICS OF SELF-RESPECT

1. Introduction

The previous chapters argued that self-respect is a complex character trait worth

achieving for its own sake and not simply as a means to further ends. This chapter

considers some questions for the politics of self-respect this position prompts.

Understood on the model of self-respect as standards, self-respect is less a Rawlsian

primary good just governments might guarantee and more a worthwhile achievement

they might promote. But granting that self-respect makes people’s lives go better, ceteris

paribus, are there any reasons for restraint governments ought to observe in politically

enabling its achievement?

This chapter argues that there are reasons for restraint. As a matter of practice,

some means of promoting self-respect are self-defeating. But even if none were,

promoting it in some policy domains, e.g. the public schooling domain, establishes a

relationship between government and the governed that threatens to be illegitimate.

The argument of this chapter unfolds as follows. Since the differences might not

be apparent, section 2 details the controversial differences between guaranteeing (the

social bases of) self-esteem as a primary good and promoting self-respect (where this is

the virtue identified by the ideal of self-respect as standards). Section 3 then argues that

there are reasons for restraint in politically enabling the pursuit of self-respect and begins

with the more practical concerns before moving to those of moral-political principle.
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2. Promoting Self-Respect and Guaranteeing (the Social Bases of) Self-Esteem

Treating self-respect as a worthwhile achievement governments might promote is

different from a much more commonly endorsed political project. This second project

understands self-respect as self-esteem and identifies it (or its social bases), as a primary

good justice must guarantee. The first project is ‘perfectionist’ and proposes to use the

political process to inculcate adherence to a certain ideal of good human living.

These claims may not be entirely evident, so this section seeks to demonstrate

them. The demonstration presupposes familiarity with political liberalism and the

Rawlsian ideal of self-respect as self-esteem. The next two sub-sections take these up (in

that order) before returning to the difference between promoting self-respect and

guaranteeing the social bases of self-esteem.

2.1 Political Liberalism and Anti-Perfectionism

The project of guaranteeing the social bases of self-esteem is a familiar aspect of the ideal

of political liberalism, whereas the project of promoting self-respect is not. Why this is

requires some understanding of political liberalism. This section undertakes a detailed

review of this ideal.

Political liberalism is an ideal purporting to solve a specific political problem.

This is the problem of how principles of justice, and uses of political power more

generally, must be morally justified if they are to supply a stable basis for regulating

social cooperation for democratic societies of a certain kind. These societies are those

characterized by what Rawls calls ‘reasonable pluralism about comprehensive doctrines,’

i.e. intractable but reasonable disagreement about ideals of morality, religion, philosophy,
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1
aesthetics, or the good life. In a society characterized by reasonable pluralism, different

people endorse incompatible but reasonable ideals about what is worth pursuing and what

is not, what is beautiful and what is ugly, and different ideals on at least some matters of

right and wrong. Hence, people in such societies will often have to simply “agree to

disagree” on some fundamental practical questions, e.g. should one pray, or is praying a

waste of time? The task political liberalism sets itself is to explain how it is nevertheless

possible for there to arise in such circumstances a just and stable constitutional

democracy.

The explanation Rawls gives in developing his representative version of political

liberalism is enormously complex. 2 But a unifying theme of it is anti-perfectionism. In

this context, anti-perfectionism is the principle of public reasoning proscribing appeal to

controversial comprehensive doctrines in the evaluation or justification of political

proposals, especially those concerning “constitutional essentials” of matters of basic

justice. 3 According to this principle then, stability can legitimately be achieved only

when basic social institutions and official uses of political power are justified to all

reasonable persons on terms each can reasonably and rationally accept, and from within

the standpoint of their reasonable comprehensive doctrines. This principle Rawls calls the

liberal principle of legitimacy, and he states and elaborates it thus:

…our exercise of political power is proper and hence justifiable only when it is

exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens

may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals

acceptable to them as reasonable and rational. This is the liberal principle of

legitimacy. And since the exercise of political power itself must be legitimate, the
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ideal of citizenship imposes a moral, not a legal, duty—the duty of civility—to be

able to explain to one another on those fundamental questions how the principles

and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of

public reason. This duty also involves a willingness to listen to others and a

fairmindedness in deciding when accommodations to their view should

reasonably be made. (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 1993, 217)

The liberal principle of legitimacy is anti-perfectionist insofar as the duty of civility

proscribes appeal to controversial comprehensive doctrines in the justification of basic

institutions and exercises of political power. That it does so is expressed in the claim that

it requires citizens to explain to one another how the proposals they advance “can be

supported by the political values of public reason.” As Rawls explains these values, they

include not only the requirement that basic institutions “are to be justifiable to all

citizens,” but also that,

in making these justifications we are to appeal only to presently accepted general

beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense, and the methods of

science when these are not controversial….This means that in discussing

constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice we are not to appeal to

comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrines—to what we as individuals or

members of associations see as the whole truth…As far as possible, the

knowledge of ways of reasoning that ground our affirming the principles of

justice and their application to constitutional essentials and basic justice are to rest

on the plain truths now widely accepted, or available, to citizens generally.

(Rawls, Political Liberalism, 1993, 224-5) 4

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Thus, through the liberal principle of legitimacy and the duty of civility, political

liberalism is deeply anti-perfectionist. Political action is illegitimate when it proceeds

from reasoning about unshared comprehensive doctrines, especially at the level of

constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. But even above that level, political

action is illegitimate if it cannot be undertaken in accordance with constitutional

essentials and basics so justified.

Before moving on, it will be useful to say a few words about some of this view’s

details. These are Rawls’s use of the terms “reasonable” and “rational,” as applied to

persons, but also their role in establishing legitimacy.

First, by calling persons “rational,” Rawls means to say that they are normally,

though not exclusively, self-interested. 5 By ‘normally self-interested,’ Rawls does not

mean that people are egoistic, i.e. always act only to benefit themselves. Rather, they

simply normally desire to be well off, and in light of their sectarian conception of the

good, normally desire to secure the means needed for doing so. Note then that Rawls’s

understanding of rationality presupposes only a “thin” theory of the good. There is

nothing in particular a rational person must desire, other than the needed means for

pursuing his peculiar conception of the good.

Second, by saying that people are “reasonable,” Rawls means to say that they

have two main qualities. 6 First, reasonable persons are willing to make proposals to fix

the terms of social cooperation, which others might reasonably accept, and to live by

them provided others are prepared to do so. Second, they are prepared to entertain

significant doubts about the soundness of their own judgments about matters of

philosophy, religion, and so on (Rawls discusses this feature under the more complex
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heading of a willingness to observe “the burdens of judgment,” but the details aren’t

relevant here).

Finally, what do these things have to do with the liberal principle of legitimacy?

The relation between these is that this principle requires all proposals to be justified to all

reasonable and rational persons. The importance of this feature of the principle is this: it

expresses political liberalism’s demand to achieve a consensus not requiring reasonable

persons to forgo their reasonable comprehensive conceptions of the good. Rather, it

demands agreement based on what Rawls calls an “overlapping consensus” of reasonable

comprehensive doctrines. 7 On this view, legitimacy is achieved only when all reasonable

persons can endorse the same conception of justice from within the standpoint of their

reasonable comprehensive doctrines. When an overlapping consensus is achieved, giving

up one’s reasonable comprehensive beliefs is not the price of joining the consensus for

any reasonable person.

In light of these principles of political morality, how then do political liberals

carry out the actual business of justifying their preferred conceptions of justice? Rawls’s

own effort begins by isolating shared ideas found in the background culture of Western

constitutional democracy and elaborating them into specifically political ideas, i.e. ideas

that neither presuppose nor comment on the soundness of controversial (but reasonable)

comprehensive doctrines. The scope of these ideas is thus limited specifically to the

political domain of life, and they include (among others) the idea of society as a fair

system of social cooperation, the idea of citizens as free and equal persons, and the idea

of a well-ordered society as one regulated by a publicly known and acknowledged

conception of justice. 8 Elaborating these ideas provides Rawls with a target community
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characterized by reasonable pluralism, the terms for cooperation of which must be

regulated by a political conception of justice. That is, they must be regulated by a

conception not presupposing or commenting on the soundness of reasonable

comprehensive doctrines, and so capable of justification to all reasonable persons as the

liberal principle of legitimacy requires. Rawls argues that his preferred theory, justice as

fairness, best regulates the conditions of social cooperation for that society, and

furthermore, that it can be justified to all reasonable persons in accordance with the

liberal principle of legitimacy. Hence, justice as fairness should be selected for ordering

(well) the fair terms of social cooperation between free and equal citizens, all of whom

endorse reasonable but conflicting comprehensive doctrines. Justice as fairness thus

becomes the object of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines.

Though much more could be said by way of introducing political liberalism, this

review suffices for present purposes. Before proceeding to Rawlsian self-esteem and its

place in political liberalism, it will be useful to consider some merits and potential

drawbacks of political liberalism already discernable. The merits of political liberalism

include both plausible factual claims as well as principles of political morality it

incorporates. A claim central to both is the factual claim Rawls calls the fact of

reasonable pluralism. 9 So I begin with it.

The fact of reasonable pluralism “is the fact of profound and irreconcilable

differences in citizens’ reasonable comprehensive religious and philosophical

conceptions of the world, and in their views of the moral and aesthetic values to be

sought in human life.” 10 According to Rawls, in free democratic societies there will

always be reasonable disagreement among reasonable persons on many basic practical

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and theoretical questions. For objectivists about morality and well-being, entertaining the

existence of a “fact’ of reasonable pluralism may seem to be anathema. However, the

plausibility of Rawls’s claim lies partly in the fact that even if morality and the content of

well-being are objective, and even if many of their truths come to be discovered and

shared, this would not mark the end of significant reasonable disagreement about them.

Take well-being, for example. I argued in the previous chapter that well-being is

objective in that what makes life go well for a person does not entirely depend on her

beliefs or feelings about what makes it go well for him. Instead, there are some basic

values any person’s life must realize in order for it to be completely good for him. These

include success in the pursuit of some truly worthwhile ends (e.g. some loving

attachments to others, living autonomously), but also finding ones he can endorse or with

which he can be happy. Suppose everyone were to agree to this basic list of values. This

would not guarantee agreement about many critical aspects of leading a completely good

life, since this account of well-being is compatible with a range of different opinions on a

number of other aspects of leading a good life. For example, it is compatible with

reasonable disagreement about the precise ordering or importance of happiness versus

success in particular cases, or on which particular pursuits are altogether worth pursuing

for their own sake, or on whether a person having proclivities for q, r, and s is better off

pursuing project t and dropping another u, or vice versa, and so on. And these problems

will not be resolved if the list of prudential values is elaborated and sharpened. For one

thing, the list can be sharpened only so much before the values on it cease to have the

generality required of an account of well-being. But even if it is sharpened, because of

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differences of proclivities across persons, there will always be room for disagreement

about how particular people might best realize the values on it.

But these points actually understate the fact of reasonable pluralism. In my

opinion, prayer, for example, does not belong on the list of goods needed for leading a

completely good life, instrumentally or intrinsically. But whether I am right about that

depends on highly controversial religious and philosophical claims, claims about which

there is ample room for reasoned disagreement and which will most likely never be

resolved decisively. This is true even for people reasoning correctly and having all the

best available facts.

These insights naturally point to the significant evaluative merits of Rawls’s

political liberalism. In light of the fact of reasonable pluralism, it is very plausible that a

stable consensus on social justice (basic justice, especially) can arise only if citizens set

aside many of their sectarian differences and seek to justify their claims on the basis of

shared and reasonable conceptions of the good, and only if they self-consciously limit

exercises of coercive power when such justification is not forthcoming. Political

liberalism, of course, says something stronger than this. It requires setting aside all

unshared doctrines and forbids using power in the absence of reasoned agreement. But

that it entails these weaker claims is a substantial merit, as can be seen partly by

considering an alternative sort of consensus that Rawls calls a modus vivendi. In a modus

vivendi, contingent circumstances conspire so that an agreement to cooperate on certain

terms is in the best self-interest of parties to the agreement. But a modus vivendi is a

highly unstable basis for social cooperation between citizens of reasonably pluralistic

societies. When the terms of the agreement cease to be in the best self-interest of some
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party to it, say because they have acquired some power advantage over other parties,

there is nothing further to bind that party to it.

Unfortunately, there are serious difficulties for political liberalism as so far

outlined. I am going to discuss just one. This difficulty is political liberalism’s overly

strong anti-perfectionism as embodied in the liberal principle of legitimacy. The precise

strength of this principle is that it gives priority to legitimacy over justice, in matters of at

least basic justice and constitutional essentials. Though it thus may permit political actors

to advance non-basic political ends free of the restraints of public reason, this

understanding of the urgency of legitimacy is dubious for the following reasons.

First, such absolute rankings of values are commonly subject to counterexamples

or hard cases. Some have argued that Rawls’s own raking is subject to counterexample.

Eamonn Callan, for instance, argues that the educational requirements of ensuring that

citizens in politically liberal regimes will be motivated to observe the values of public

reason run foul of the liberal principle of legitimacy. 11 But, he argues, justice

nevertheless recommends the policies needed to achieve this aim, since in their absence

people are vulnerable to oppression and stability is unachievable. I criticize this argument

at length below, but register for now that it is a powerful argument against the priority of

legitimacy to justice.

Second, and more generally, Rawls’s conception of the importance of legitimacy

regards the resolution of constitutional essentials as most urgently needing the values of

public reason. But this seems in a way wrong. It is true that constitutional essentials, as

those forming the most fundamental terms for social cooperation, should be settled in a

legitimacy-conferring manner if any should. But there is nevertheless something

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inherently odd about treating this particular domain of debate as especially needing to

proceed in observation of restraints of public reason. The oddity is that if constitutional

essentials and basic justice are so important as they are, it is imperative that any selected

by an overlapping consensus are sound and not merely legitimate. Furthermore, the

soundness of any principles selected at this level seems to be almost self-legitimating,

again because of the urgency and importance of their being sound. To elaborate this last

remark, if legitimacy is what is achieved when governments have the consent of the

governed (as the Rawlsian principle of liberal legitimacy seems to have it), the refusal of

any who dissent to be governed by sound principles of basic justice has little if any moral

weight. But if some comprehensive doctrines are unsound and recommend unjust

constitutions, and if political liberalism regards them as nonetheless reasonable, the

restraints of legitimacy and public reason prevent reasonable agreement to sound

principles of justice. And a look at Rawls’s conditions for reasonable comprehensive

doctrines (something not yet undertaken for reasons of expedient exposition) confirms

this worry. 12 These conditions place no substantive requirements on comprehensive

doctrines, so that they may include morally offensive ones, e.g. homophobia, racism, and

the like. It is, of course, necessary for political liberalism to understand “reasonable” as

applied to comprehensive doctrines in this way—if it did not, political liberalism would

stack the deck in favor of various sectarian conceptions of the good against others, and its

rejection of perfectionism would be in bad faith. But since it does not, it seems that

political liberalism permits repugnant conceptions of justice to be the object of an

overlapping consensus. This may not mean political liberalism, or something closely
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approximating it, should be rejected in favor of wholesale perfectionism. But it is very

troubling.

It might be replied that political liberalism cannot fail to produce consensus on

only sound conceptions of justice. Other aspects of the ideal of political liberalism ensure

that the process will not be held hostage to the views of homophobes and racists. The

political ideas of society as a fair system of social cooperation, citizens as free and equal,

reasonable persons and reasonable pluralism and so on are set up to guarantee it. But if

so, this leaves political liberalism again vulnerable to the charge of rejecting

perfectionism in bad faith. Recall that the conditions for reasonableness as applied to

persons include a willingness to propose fair terms for social cooperation others might

reasonably accept and to abide by them if others do so, as well as a willingness to

entertain considerable doubt about the soundness of one’s own judgments. 13 These

conditions show that some reasonable comprehensive doctrines are not capable of

endorsement by reasonable persons. Reasonable comprehensive doctrines include, for

example, highly self-assured, virulently anti-homosexual religious views. But arguably

no one seriously observing the burdens of judgment would seriously consider such a

view. Hence, the ideal of reasonableness for persons within political liberalism appears to

be a sectarian ideal that subverts its aim of justifying a conception of justice on the basis

of an overlapping consensus. Rather, it requires after all that some “reasonable”

comprehensive doctrines must be given up, namely those that reject the ideal of

reasonableness for persons. 14

Political liberalism thus does not clearly accomplish its goal. In order to ensure

that any conception of justice capable of being the object of overlapping consensus is
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sound, it needs a controversial ideal of reasonableness for persons. Political liberalism

does not therefore show that appeal to the soundness of comprehensive doctrines in

politics is illegitimate. Nevertheless, as a response to the fact of reasonable pluralism,

political liberalism has enormous appeal.

2.2. Rawlsian Self-Esteem

Section 2 is gradually demonstrating that there are important differences between the

project of politically promoting self-respect and guaranteeing (the social bases of) self-

esteem as a primary good. Rawls’s ideal of justice as fairness includes a paradigm

account of the latter project. This section begins to introduce that account by reviewing

the Rawlsian ideal of “self-respect.”

In Chapter 1, I argued that Rawls’s ideal of “self-respect” is really an ideal of self-

esteem. Hence, I will refer to his ideal as Rawlsian self-esteem or just self-confidence,

with the caveat that Rawls apparently did not himself consider his view an account of

self-esteem. To review this ideal, Rawls maintains that “self-respect” is the sense of self-

worth deriving from confidence in the value of one’s plans or in one’s ability to pursue

them successfully. In the language of the virtue view then, Rawls’s ideal is not an ideal of

self-respect at all, but an ideal of self-esteem. This is because of the singular importance

of confident pursuit of valued plans to the Rawlsian ideal. To be confident of the value of

one’s plans or in one’s ability to pursue them successfully is to make favorable judgments

or experience good feelings about oneself, i.e. to esteem oneself. Such confidence says,

“Because my plans are good, I’m a good person,” or, “I can succeed, therefore, I’m

good.”
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Rawlsian self-esteem is a good and valuable thing, but it is different from self-

respect. Self-respecting persons may or may not believe their plans are good or their

talents up to them. Since they do exercise some autonomy and personal integrity, they

will likely strive to pursue plans that are good and valuable to them. And in being

appropriately self-accepting, they will avoid berating themselves overmuch for many of

their ordinary shortcomings. But they also avoid self-deception and will acknowledge

times when their plans lack value or their abilities are not up to them. This might

diminish their self-esteem or self-confidence, but their self-respect will be diminished

only if this leads them to criticize themselves overmuch, abdicate their autonomy and

defer excessively to others, break with their principles of personal integrity, assume a

posture of arrogant superiority toward others, and so on. These things might happen, but

they might not. It is odd, therefore, that despite having (famously) conflated self-respect

and self-esteem in A Theory of Justice, Rawls settles on “self-respect” in his later work.

The usage is at least misleading, and Rawls should have used “self-esteem,” or more

narrowly still, “self-confidence.”

There are, therefore, important differences between Rawlsian self-esteem and the

virtue of self-respect. There is nothing in Rawlsian self-esteem itself proscribing servility,

self-deception, or arrogance, and nothing per se recommending autonomy, personal

integrity, or taking pride in one’s pursuits (where this means undertaking them with care).

A person who has self-esteem may or may not be particularly self-respecting. There are

some self-esteeming servile persons, some self-confident single-minded pleasure seekers,

and some self-esteeming arrogant persons. Conversely, there are some autonomous,

integrated, appropriately humble self-doubters.

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2.3 The Politics of Self-Respect

Given the differences between self-respect and Rawlsian self-esteem, there is reason to

expect that the politics of promoting the first and guaranteeing the social bases of the

second will be very different. But what are these differences exactly? This section details

some important ones from the standpoint of both perfectionism and political liberalism.

First, and as just reviewed, having self-respect implies having many traits other

than self-confidence and even implies susceptibility to at least occasional self-doubt. So

the target of the projects is different. Promoting self-respect necessarily involves an effort

to enable more than self-confidence.

But there is also an important difference in procedural aspects of each. Promoting

a thing and guaranteeing it (or its social bases) are not the same project, at least in theory.

The first involves doing something to actively encourage people to take up the thing or

intending and attempting to inculcate desires for it in them. The second only implies

making available the means and opportunity to pursue the thing for any person desiring to

pursue it. To borrow some language introduced by Harry Brighouse, this difference is the

difference between promoting a thing and facilitating it. 15 Using this language, the

Rawlsian project of guaranteeing the social bases of self-esteem merely facilitates its

acquisition. It is thus by definition a different undertaking from promoting self-respect,

and its merits as a political program might by that alone be different from the merits of

self-respect promotion. Promoting a thing necessarily involves political actors in seeking

to advance sectarian values through the political process, an aim they need not have when

merely facilitating it. From the standpoint of perfectionism, there is no problem with this,

so long as the result of promoting the thing in question is that people lead better lives. But
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from the standpoint of (classical or political) liberalism, seeking to politically promote

sectarian values is always controversial in a way that facilitating them might not be.

What posture then do political liberalism and perfectionism take toward the

various policy alternatives of self-respect and self-confidence promotion versus

facilitation? The remainder of this section addresses this question. But first, note that

given the language of facilitation versus promotion, two other policy options not yet

mentioned emerge. These are self-respect facilitation and self-confidence promotion. The

second option I will not discuss since no one endorses it. But the first option I will

discuss at length below, since it constitutes a promising compromise between promoting

self-respect and facilitating self-confidence.

By the standards of political liberalism, self-respect promotion is odious, whereas

facilitating self-confidence is required. On the other hand, political liberalism permits

facilitating self-respect. I begin with self-respect promotion.

Promoting self-respect is odious to political liberalism because self-respect

embodies a reasonable, but controversial comprehensive conception of the good, which

some reasonable person might reject. As Rawls understands reasonable comprehensive

doctrines, there may be some that are incompatible with exercising some of the virtues of

self-respect, for example, autonomy, personal integrity, and taking pride in one’s

pursuits. And though it is not (in my view) generally rational not to desire self-respect

(since it normally promotes well-being), some reasonable persons could endorse self-

disrespecting ways of life. Single-minded wealth accumulators, self-abnegating altruists,

and un-self-critical dope-smoking Playstation addicts all lead lives substantially

incompatible with self-respect. 16 Wealth accumulators are lacking in personal integrity

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and think themselves worthy of a greater share of the social pie than they are; self-

abnegating altruists think they are worthy of much less than their fair share and serve

others overmuch; the dope-smoking Playstation addict undertakes nothing very

worthwhile for its own sake and with care or pride. 17 But there is little reason to believe

none of them could dutifully observe the values of public reason in political action. If so,

political liberals must oppose promoting self-respect at the level of constitutional

essentials. Consider, for example, the reasonable Playstation addict. The principle of

liberal legitimacy requires any constitutional proposal to be justified to him on terms he

can accept as reasonable and rational. But in being rational (in the “thin” Rawlsian

sense—I am not denying that he is irrational in my “thick” sense), he would reject any

terms that included promoting ways of life endangering his own preferred, reasonable

way. So, political liberalism rejects a policy of promoting self-respect.

On the other hand, as Rawls elaborates it, (politically liberal) justice as fairness

requires facilitating self-confidence. This is not finally because leading a life of self-

doubt is bad for persons and diminishes the value of their lives (though this seems to be

the view Rawls takes in A Theory of Justice 18 ). Rather, Rawls claims that facilitating self-

confidence is mandatory because justice requires providing all citizens with the means

and social conditions they need to function as fully cooperating members of a politically

liberal regime, and people require self-confidence in order so to function. In other words,

political liberalism permits facilitating self-confidence as a primary good. 19

This position needs elaborating. In political liberalism, fully cooperating citizens

are conceived as free and equal persons engaged in (fair) social cooperation over a

complete life and endowed with two “moral powers.” These powers are the capacity to
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develop and exercise a sense of justice and a conception of the good. Elaborating these,

Rawls explains that the capacity for a sense of justice is the capacity “to understand, to

apply, and to act from (and not merely in accordance with) the principles of political

justice.” On the other hand, the capacity for a conception of the good is the capacity “to

have, to revise, and rationally pursue a…conception of what is of value in human life, or

alternatively, of what is regarded as a fully worthwhile life.” 20 Citizens conceived as

having the ability to develop and exercise these two powers are furthermore said to be

free and equal. They are said to be equal in all having the requisite minimum abilities

enabling them to fully participate in social life. And they are also said to be free in seeing

themselves as self-authenticating sources of valid political claims and as having full

citizenship status independently of their commitment to any particular conception of the

good (i.e. their legal rights do not change as they revise their conception of the good).

Rawls’s argument for facilitating self-confidence is that it is normally needed for

the free and equal development and exercise of the capacities for a sense of justice and a

conception of the good. Hence, it is normally needed for people to function as free and

equal fully cooperating members of society. So (the social basis of) self-esteem is a

primary good and the demand that justice secure it for all does not depend on defending

the importance of self-esteem to leading a good life.

Rawls’s view is generally plausible. Recall that a person has self-esteem only if

he has a secure sense of self-worth deriving from confidence in the worthiness of his

plans and ability to pursue them successfully. It is probably a mistake to say that secure

confidence in one’s plans or abilities is an indispensably necessary condition of seeing

the self as a self-authenticating source of valid political claims. So it is probably a

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mistake to see it is as an indispensably necessary condition of exercising a sense of

justice. But it is an unfortunate fact that people lacking this confidence tend to see

themselves as worthy of injustice. Hence, a sense of self-worth generally is important to

exercising a sense of justice. On the other hand, confidence in the worthiness of one’s

plans and abilities are clearly important for exercising a capacity to form, revise, and

pursue a conception of the good. Hence, in politically liberal justice as fairness, self-

esteem has the status of a primary good (the social bases of which) justice must

guarantee.

Finally, what posture does political liberalism assume toward a policy of self-

respect facilitation? Political liberalism permits this policy. It permits it because some

aspects of self-respect are primary goods (or technically, their social bases are primary

goods). On the other hand, an overlapping consensus of reasonable conceptions of the

good must permit facilitating other aspects of self-respect, those the bases of which do

not count as primary goods.

Political liberalism permits facilitating some aspects of self-respect as primary

goods, i.e. as goods normally needed for developing and exercising the two moral

powers. These include non-servility, moral integrity, non-arrogance, and self-acceptance.

Servile persons who misunderstand their rights, for instance, do not clearly see

themselves as self-authenticating sources of certain valid legal claims, and their sense of

justice is thus underdeveloped. Similarly, moral integrity is a matter of giving to others

their due, and it is crucial to exercising a fully developed sense of justice. Furthermore,

since arrogance is a trait incompatible with seeing others as equals, it may lead to moral

disintegration. On other hand, autonomy is important to forming and revising a

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conception of the good, while an overly self-critical person (one lacking self-acceptance)

might be paralyzed in attempting to pursue it. Hence, politically liberal justice as fairness

permits facilitating these aspects of self-respect as primary goods.

On the other hand, some aspects of self-respect are not clearly needed for

developing and exercising either the sense of justice or the capacity for a conception of

the good. These include personal integrity, self-knowledge, pride-taking and self-

development, or minimum sexual prudence. But political liberalism does nevertheless

permit facilitating these aspects of self-respect. Recall that facilitating a thing is simply to

make available the resources and opportunities its pursuit requires. Then, if political

liberalism does not permit making available the opportunity and resources needed for

pursuing these aspects of self-respect, it (trivially) forbids making them available. But it

may not forbid making them available, since political liberalism requires that legitimate

conceptions of justice are capable of affirmation by all reasonable and rational persons.

Since any conception of justice forbidding facilitation of these other dimensions of self-

respect could not be affirmed by reasonable and rational persons whose conception of the

good calls for their exercise, political liberalism permits facilitating even those aspects of

self-respect not needed for the development or exercise of the two moral powers.

Political liberalism’s position on promoting and facilitating self-respect versus

facilitating self-confidence should be contrasted with a perfectionist position. There are

three general points of contrast to consider. First, though perfectionists may agree with

political liberals that governments ought to facilitate self-confidence by guaranteeing its

social bases, they must differ in their reasons for this position and consequently on the

importance of enacting it. For them, facilitating self-confidence is important only so far
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as this helps people lead good lives, i.e. lives that accord with sound ideals of good

human living.

Second, insofar as perfectionists do agree that self-confidence helps people lead

good lives, it is open to them to favor promoting it rather than merely facilitating it, so

long as promotion would better achieve the aim of getting them to lead good lives. From

the standpoint of perfectionism, the choice between facilitation and promotion is

fundamentally technical in nature. This is true even for liberal perfectionists such as

Joseph Raz, for whom principles of liberal restraint enter governance as the best devices

for enabling autonomous living. 21

Third, perfectionists agreeing that a completely good life requires self-respect,

and not mere self-confidence, will have no qualms about facilitating or promoting it in

addition to self-confidence. This is especially the case if either policy has no further

negative consequences for how well people lead their lives. And as before, the choice

between promotion and facilitation is, other things equal, a technical choice. It simply

depends on which approach best gets people to lead good lives.

* * *

Section 2 has demonstrated that politically promoting self-respect and guaranteeing the

social bases of Rawlsian self-esteem or self-confidence, i.e. facilitating it, are very

different projects. This is partly for the trivial reason that the target of each project is

different. But it is also the case partly because promoting a thing uses the political

process to advance sectarian values whereas the latter need not. While political

perfectionism permits both the first and second project on condition that these help
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people lead good lives, political liberalism forbids the first. On the other hand, political

liberalism permits a policy of facilitating self-respect.

So far, I have not argued for any of these policies. However, I have argued two

claims relevant to choosing between them. First, I have argued (in the previous two

chapters) that self-respect is a constituent part of a completely good life. Other things

equal, people are better off acquiring and exercising self-respect than not. Second, I have

argued (in section 2.1 above) that, though the values of legitimacy and public reason are

very important, political liberalism gives them too much weight. At the level of basic

justice, it is imperative to ensure that the principles chosen are sound and not just

legitimate.

Taken together, these claims strongly suggest which of the policies canvassed

above is best (though they do not conclusively decide this). They suggest that either a

policy of facilitating or promoting self-respect is best. In addition to the considerations

above, these policies have one further feature to recommend them. Though self-respect

and self-esteem are not the same, in being self-accepting, self-respecting persons are

normally prepared to esteem themselves. Facilitating self-esteem is thus one aspect of

facilitating or promoting self-respect.

But a policy of facilitating or promoting self-respect is not one policy but two. Is

one of these preferable to the other? As argued above, because promoting a thing

necessarily involves actively encouraging pursuit of it, promoting it is necessarily a

stronger, more controversial policy than merely facilitating it. Are there genuinely good

reasons for favoring the more restrained policy of facilitating self-respect to the less

restrained one of promoting it? The next section argues that, despite the shortcomings of
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Rawls’s political liberalism, there are reasons for favoring the first policy over the

second. Furthermore, though some of these reasons are pragmatic and are available to

both perfectionists and political liberals, some reasons for restraint derive from a liberal

principle of legitimacy similar to Rawls’s. They are thus available only to the politically

liberal minded.

3. In Favor of Facilitating Self-Respect

This section argues that governments ought generally to confine themselves to facilitating

self-respect and avoid promoting it. That is, governments should seek to supply

significant opportunities for people to develop and exercise self-respect. But they should

stop short of ensuring that people do in fact respect themselves and explicitly

encouraging them to do so where they do not. One reason favoring this view is pragmatic

and applies to political perfectionists as much as political liberals. But one draws on a

liberal principle of legitimacy and so is not available to perfectionists.

This section proceeds by first outlining the pragmatic reason for restraint before

moving to those deriving from the value of legitimacy.

3.1 A Pragmatic Reason for Restraint

This section outlines a pragmatic reason why governments, liberal or otherwise, ought to

prefer facilitating self-respect to promoting it. This is that many ways of promoting self-

respect are self-defeating.

It is internal to the idea of having self-respect that self-respecting persons do not

simply act in ways appropriate to themselves. They also act in those ways for the rights
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reasons. A self-respecting person must also act from self-respect, and this means acting

from a recognition or sense of what is appropriate to him. Thus, an artist of apparent

integrity is not acting from self-respect if he refuses to sell-out today because more

wealth and fame will be forthcoming if he waits till tomorrow. Or, an appropriately self-

confident school teacher is not acting from self-respect if she firmly quells student

insubordinations just because she “can’t take it anymore!” An appropriately self-

accepting person is not gentle with himself just because other people have told him this is

OK, but because he understands that all people make a range of ordinary mistakes and

that his mistakes are ordinary.

Given that having self-respect requires acting for the right reasons, it is clear that

some ways of encouraging people to respect themselves would be self-defeating, for

example, using the criminal law or supplying financial incentives. These might motivate

people to conduct themselves as self-respect requires, including some who would not do

so otherwise. But it would not thereby have turned them into self-respecting persons,

since they will be acting for the wrong reasons.

Interestingly, there is one somewhat paradoxical complication here concerning the

use of the criminal law. Were this used, people who complied with it in order to avoid

sanctions might thereby be acting from self-respect. This is because protecting one’s

basic interests is arguably a requirement of self-respect. On the other hand, if self-respect

required persons living under such a policy to protest it, the policy might also thereby be

effective in getting people to respect themselves. Hence, it seems to follow that using the

criminal law to enforce self-respect maximizes it. But it is nevertheless absurd to use the
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criminal law. The value of people conforming to norms of self-respect in these ways,

even if properly motivated, is not worth taking it upon ourselves to oppress them.

Criminal sanctions or financial incentives are not the only self-defeating ways of

trying to promote self-respect. Drawing on some remarks of Rawls’s in A Theory of

Justice, some advocates of a politics of multiculturalism, identity, difference, or

recognition have argued that affirmation of the worth of all cultures is necessary for the

self-respect for all persons. James Tully, for example, argues that

The social basis of…self respect [sic] is that others recognize the value of one’s

activities and goals; that there is an association in which individuals can acquire a

level of confidence in the worth of what they say and do. Since what a person

says and does and the plans he or she formulates and revises are partly

characterized by his or her cultural identity, the condition of self respect is met

only in a society in which the cultures of all the members are recognized and

affirmed by others, both by those who do and those who do not share those

cultures….

Consequently, a constitutional association whose members view the

disappearance of the cultures of other members with moral approval or moral

indifference, and who treat other cultures with condescension and contempt,

destroys the self respect of those members. In so doing, the ability of those

citizens to exercise their individual freedom and autonomy in constitutional

negotiations, civic participation and private life is undermined…

If a liberal constitution is to provide the basis for its most important value

of freedom and autonomy, it thus must protect the cultures of its members and
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engender the public attitude of mutual respect for cultural diversity that individual

self respect requires. To put this differently, the primary good of self respect

requires that popular sovereignty is conceived as an intercultural dialogue. The

various cultures of the society need to be recognized in public institutions,

histories, and symbols in order to nourish cultural awareness and respect. Far

from being a threat to liberal values, the recognition and protection of cultural

diversity is a necessary condition of the primary good of self respect, and so of the

individual freedom and autonomy that it underpins… (Tully, Strange Multiplicity,

1995, 190-1; emphasis added) 22

Because of its Rawlsian starting point, Tully’s proposal has the appeal of the familiar. 23

But there are numerous problems for it, including that any effort to carry it out is self-

defeating. The proposal calls on public institutions to positively affirm the value of any

cultures or ways of life citizens happen to affirm, not merely, for example, to refrain from

commenting on their value at all. According to Tully, such silence would be injurious to

self-respect, and through this, to freedom and autonomy. But since the very idea of a

diversity of cultures means different cultures affirm incompatible ideals, the point of

public affirmation is thoroughly undermined. If culture A affirms way of life q, and

culture B affirms way of life not-q, our affirming the value of each is useless to members

of either. To make this more vivid, imagine that culture A is the community of African

Americans and culture B is the community of Klu Klux Klansmen. Whatever public

institutions do to affirm both cultures, members of each could sensibly complain that the

institution’s behavior merely prompts the question, “So which culture is it that has value?

Mine, or theirs? Who are you saying has worth, us, or them?”
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The case I have given is an extreme one. The cultures in it are devoted to

destroying one another, and Tully (or advocates of views like his) might want to object

that the argument does not apply to cases of cultures unlike this. Thus, they might

maintain, public esteem should be accorded only to egalitarian or tolerant cultures, those

not devoted to publicly condemning those of others.

This policy is certainly better than the original. But it is not truly available to

Tully given his conception of the importance and social bases of self-respect. These

assert that a person can achieve self-respect only by being esteemed socially, but also that

because freedom and autonomy are unattainable without self-respect, everybody must be

provided with social esteem. But this view is absurd. It implies, for instance, that Klu

Klux Klansmen can attain freedom and autonomy only if we esteem them socially. But

we should not esteem Klan culture even if some Klansmen deserve freedom and

autonomy.

To elaborate. It most certainly is the case that Klu Klux Klansmen do not deserve

social esteem. Klansmen deserve to hear from all quarters that Klan culture is immoral

and that they ought to be thoroughly ashamed of participating in it. In my view, such

shame would in fact show that they were developing some self-respect. But if we take

seriously Tully’s claim that shaming them would deprive all Klansmen of self-respect,

and that this in turn would deprive them all of the ability to attain freedom and autonomy,

then it follows that, for any Klansmen deserving of his freedom and autonomy, we must

esteem Klan culture in order to support the self-respect his freedom and autonomy

require. Now I have nothing but scorn for racism. But it is not the case that every racist is

undeserving of freedom and autonomy. For even the most self-conscious anti-racist is
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occasionally guilty of some racist prejudice. But even some very loathsome, unrepentant

racists may be guilty of nothing that would justify our depriving them of freedom and

autonomy. Yet even if some particular racist is not so immoral that he should be deprived

of freedom and autonomy, this supplies us with absolutely no reason whatsoever to heap

anything but scorn on his racist way of life. Since Tully’s argument maintains that we can

ensure the freedom and autonomy of racists (who deserve them) only by esteeming their

way of life, however, something has gone seriously wrong for this view.

What has gone wrong for views like Tully’s is this. First, these views conflate

self-respect and trait self-esteem, i.e. the condition of making positive judgments or

experiencing good feelings about the self. Second, they equate the project of socially

supporting self-respect with the project of engendering “the public attitude of mutual

respect for cultural diversity.” And because of the first mistake, this second project they

in turn equate with not “judging” anyone. None of these equivalences holds up. First of

all, and setting aside the confusion between self-respect and self-esteem, these

equivalences conveniently paper over the fact that, in order to engender a culture of

diversity, it is necessary to offend the twisted moral sensibility of the opponents of

diversity. Furthermore, they must paper over this fact because, as expressed in the final

step of the equivalence chain, they assume that self-respect is deeply “other-dependent.”

That is, they assume that any person’s capacity to respect himself is thoroughly dependent

upon his being esteemed by others, such that the least neglect or criticism others might

make of him or his way of life necessarily harms his self-respect. On the assumption that

this other-dependence thesis is true, it would follow that we could not engender a culture
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of respect for diversity without depriving its opponents of self-respect, since engendering

this culture requires condemning opposition to diversity.

But self-respect is not other-dependent and such neglect/criticism does not

necessarily or even ordinarily harm it. Ordinarily, people care deeply only about the

opinions that other similar and mutually esteemed persons have of them. This is the

plausible Rawlsian claim with which Tully begins. But the flip side of this claim,

completely overlooked by Tully, is that the same people could ordinarily give a hoot

about what people outside their circle of esteemed peers have to say about them. And this

is not just a fortunate accident of human psychology allowing people to endure insults.

Experiencing the criticism of others outside one’s esteem group can indeed be very

hurtful. But these hurts do not ordinarily ramify into loss of self-respect (and certainly do

not ramify into loss of freedom and autonomy). They do not do this because we

ordinarily know they should not, that they are not worth it. That is, we normally and

appropriately understand that the judgments causing such hurt lack rational authority, are

not to be given serious consideration. 24 People who make such hurtful comments, “don’t

really know me,” hence, they “don’t know what they’re talking about.” Or, “they are just

a bunch of ignorant, backward bigots,” so “why should I care about their racist

attitudes?” Or, “they are no friends of mine,” hence, “I have no reason to take their

opinions seriously.” In short, it is normally appropriate to give little or no weight to

hurtful judgments in our own deliberations about our worth because these judgments

usually lack credibility. If so, recognition of this fact powerfully and appropriately

prevents hurts from ramifying into loss of self-respect. 25

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These considerations explain why Rawls states in A Theory of Justice, “It

normally suffices [for self-respect] that for each person there is some association (one or)

more to which he belongs and within which the activities that are rational for him are

publicly affirmed by others.” 26 In making his case, Tully begins with the same

observation (“The social basis of self respect is that…there is an association…”). But this

gets confused for the far stronger other-dependence thesis, which, if true, would support

Tully’s call for affirmation of cultural difference as a needed support for self-respect. But

this thesis is false and social support for self-respect does not require that all associations

esteem all others. All that matters is that there is an association in which each person can

be esteemed by mutually esteemed others.

So, many ways of promoting self-respect are clearly self-defeating and should be

avoided. This is one very good reason for favoring a policy of facilitation over

promotion. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that this reason is somewhat narrow in

scope. To the extent that other ways of actively encouraging self-respect are not self-

defeating, liberal governments are offered no reason for omitting these policies. And

surely there are some ways of promoting self-respect that are not subject to this problem.

Integrating advocacy of self-respect into the methods of civic education, for example, is

not self-defeating even if it were objectionable in some other way. In that context, people

are motivated to learn norms of self-respect, not simply to conform to them.

I will argue in the next section that even in the educational domain governments

should nevertheless exercise restraint and prefer a policy of facilitation. But even if the

point of this sub-section is narrow in scope, its pragmatic nature makes it sweepingly

inclusive. If the criminal law, financial incentives, or universal social esteem are self-
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defeating ways of promoting self-respect, political liberals, perfectionists, or theorists of

any other stripe have decisive reason to avoid these policies.

3.2 Restraint on Principle

It may be that some ways of promoting self-respect are not self-defeating. The

educational domain, for example, is a natural avenue for non-self-defeating promotion of

self-respect. In that context, the approach is specifically to inculcate the motives

belonging to self-respecting persons, so that norms of self-respect are learned and not just

conformed to. This section argues in favor of a policy of self-respect facilitation in

publicly funded schools at the primary and secondary level.

Before proceeding to this argument, some discussion of the scope of this section’s

conclusion is in order. Schooling is only one part of education and most education

probably happens outside schools. Thus, even if the arguments to follow are convincing,

it might be that effectively educating citizens for self-respect on balance favors a policy

of promotion over facilitation. But I do not think so. Though in the absence of good

empirical data (or even in their presence) any argument about this is necessarily

speculative, effectively educating citizens for self-respect outside schools seems most

likely to occur through techniques of facilitation rather than promotion. The next few

pages argue the point.

Consider, for instance, the ways in which people might effectively learn outside

the school setting to avoid servility, for instance. Courthouses might be deliberately

bedecked with the symbols of liberty, televised public service announcements might

espouse autonomy’s virtues, the equality of cultures might be publicly affirmed, TV

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programs could be censured for relevant content, and so on. By any reasonable standard,

these measures count as efforts to actively promote non-servility. But they also seem

likely to be relatively ineffective. As I argued above, public affirmation of the equality of

cultures, for instance, is a self-defeating support for self-respect.

So take these all away and consider a different technique. In this one, it is simply

widely known that every person has a basic legal right to self-determination and legal

authorities effectively ensure the observation of that right for all citizens. A person in this

circumstance is likely to learn to avoid servility and live autonomously simply as a

natural side-effect of experiencing the effective legal enforcement of a right to live this

way, or as a consequence of seeing others do it, or as a consequence of both. But by any

reasonable standard, the effective legal enforcement of a right to avoid servility does not

count as an effort to actively promote self-respect. At best it merely facilitates the

autonomy aspect of it so that any person desiring not to defer to others (on basic life

choices especially) is free to do so. Furthermore, governments are (presumably) obligated

as a matter of basic justice to secure the right of all persons to choose their own path,

whether or not this does much to enable other aspects of self-respect (e.g. integrity).

Hence, any government making good on this duty cannot thereby be seriously charged

with undertaking to promote self-respect. Neither the best justification for the policy nor

the details of its institutional implementation supports such a charge.

If this result is common to the task of educating citizens for aspects of self-respect

other than non-servility/autonomy, then a policy of educating for self-respect via

techniques of facilitation is preferable to one deploying techniques of promotion. And

this is arguably the case.

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Consider, for example, that aspect concerning a disposition to undertake some

worthwhile activity for its own sake and with care or pride. A policy of promoting this

virtue in the public culture could be carried out through similar techniques as those

described above (i.e. ad campaigns and so on). On the other hand it could be facilitated

by an arrangement of social institutions in which a person can naturally acquire the desire

for it. If these arrangements need not be remarkably controversial, they may be called for

by independent requirements of good governance. Relative to pride-taking, egalitarian

liberals will be quick to rightly argue that in the normal case, people will effectively

develop the disposition for it only under two conditions. 27 First, they must be presented

with an array of options an ordinarily rational person would want to pursue. If none of the

options from which a person must choose really are worth taking much pride in, we can

expect only truly exceptional persons to take much pride in any on which he settles. 28

Second, they must ordinarily have a fair chance to actually succeed in pursuing at least

one such option. This arrangement of institutions is thus likely to effectively enable self-

respect. But egalitarian liberals might reasonably argue that even if they did not,

governments are nevertheless obligated to create them in order to give all a fair

opportunity to lead a decent life. 29

On the other hand, social conservatives are likely to point out, also rightly, that

taking up a pursuit with pride is necessarily a matter of oneself taking the initiative to do

so. Furthermore, they might reasonably add, people are most likely to acquire this

disposition only if there is a known and practiced system whereby esteem or other

rewards are granted for good performances and withheld for poor ones. The system of

rewards thus incentives pride-taking in pursuits. And though this circumstance might at
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first improperly motivate pride-taking behavior as a mere means to the rewards, people

may in any case be effectively forced to conceal their desire for the rewards by simply

adopting the appropriate motive. This is because overt reward- and esteem-seeking

behavior is widely seen as disestimable, so that those known to conduct themselves in

this way are prevented from receiving esteem. But a very excellent way of concealing

that one is motivated by a desire for esteem is to effectively act from other motives. 30

Finally, social conservatives could reasonably argue that markets and protections for

freedom of conscience, speech, and association, which just governments should in any

case permit for reasons of efficiency and justice, already establish such a system of

rewards.

In practice, some combination of social structures suggested by the egalitarian and

conservative probably best educate citizens to the virtue of pride-taking. But both

embody a technique of facilitating rather than promoting it and are already mandated by

considerations besides those of self-respect. Hence, the techniques of facilitation seem to

be generally superior to those of promotion for educating citizens for self-respect outside

schools.

I have not considered the social circumstances likely to educate citizens for all the

virtues of self-respect outside the domain of schooling. So my conclusion must be

appropriately qualified. But the argument just outlined establishes a prime facie case that

outside the domain of schooling, the techniques of facilitation will most effectively

educate citizens for self-respect. Therefore, if the arguments of the next section show that

the techniques of facilitation are preferable inside schooling, this section altogether will
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have established a strong case in favor of a general policy of facilitating self-respect over

promoting it.

3.3 The Legitimacy Argument

This section argues in favor of a general policy of facilitating self-respect in publicly

funded primary and secondary schools. In doing so, it draws on and defends an argument

advanced by Harry Brighouse, which he calls the legitimacy argument. 31 This argument

favors an approach to civic education generally aiming to impart to children the

knowledge and skills needed for exercising civic virtues (or the traits of good citizens),

including self-respect, and so to facilitate their exercise rather than promote it in that

setting. This policy contrasts with an approach aiming to inculcate the dispositions of

good citizens in children by instilling the beliefs, desires, sympathies, or motives

constituting their exercise.

Before stating the legitimacy argument, it is necessary to address a complication

introduced by a feature of it already revealed. This feature is its concern for specifically

civic education. The reader might want to ask, “If Brighouse’s argument opposes

inculcating/promoting specifically civic virtue, what exactly does this have to do with

educating children for self-respect? Does the argument really apply to this case?”

Brighouse’s argument does apply to the case of education for self-respect. First,

as will be seen in light of a full statement of the argument, it has very wide application

and opposes actively encouraging civic virtue only if it opposes actively encouraging

character as a general policy. But second, even if the argument lacked this wide

application, it would still comment on education for self-respect. This is because many
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aspects of self-respect, including non-servility, moral integrity, and non-arrogance, are

plausibly regarded as traits of good citizens. To borrow Rawls’s political conception,

fully cooperating citizens are regarded as free and equal persons having fundamental

interests in developing and exercising a capacity for a sense of justice and to have, revise,

and pursue a conception of the good. But a servile person, for instance, may consent to be

treated as inferior and cannot exercise a sense of justice, while one who defers to others

in making major life decisions declines to exercise his capacity for a conception of the

good. Hence, if Brighouse’s argument succeeds in recommending restraint in educating

children for citizenship, this argument applies to education for self-respect.

What then is the legitimacy argument? The argument has a positive and a

negative part. The negative part critiques the promotion of civic virtue in public schools

as a threat to state legitimacy. The positive part favors a policy of facilitating autonomy

in schools as a partial solution to this problem, together with what I will call (and

elaborate further below) a critical civic education. I begin with the negative part.

Brighouse argues that promoting civic virtue in publicly funded schools threatens

the legitimacy of governments sponsoring it. To see why this is so, recall first that the

project of promoting civic virtue is an effort to inculcate in children the traits proper to

good citizens through active encouragement. Now there are many different conceptions

of good citizenship, some more plausible than others. And the more plausible the

conception, the less worrisome and controversial inculcating it in children may be.

Brighouse, for instance, plausibly argues that citizenship education may be permitted on

condition that it includes “elements to direct the critical scrutiny of children to the very

values they are taught.” 32 But satisfying this directive does not by itself suffice to make
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inculcating an ideal of good citizenship legitimate, since the force of Brighouse’s

argument is independent of the content of any specific ideals to be inculcated. The

legitimacy problem for inculcating civic virtue derives instead from a conflict internal to

this project and the demands of legitimacy, as these are widely understood. 33

As widely understood, legitimacy, or a political authority’s right to claim a

monopoly on coercive power (within a territory), requires that a few conditions obtain.

First, it requires that the authority’s policies are susceptible of hypothetical consent, i.e.

“it must be true that citizens would give their consent if they were reasonable, informed,

and not overly self-interested.” 34 Second, legitimacy requires that a majority of citizens

actually consent. Finally, since consent is invalid if it is coerced or manipulated (even if it

is well-informed and reasonable), legitimacy also requires that consent be freely and

authentically given. Note that this last condition of legitimacy, then, importantly

constrains how a legitimate political authority may permissibly behave. In order to

maintain legitimacy, it may not permissibly undertake to simply cause citizens to consent

to its claim to wield political power through mechanisms unrelated to the appropriateness

of its claim. To recite some of Brighouse’s examples, it may not permissibly cause

consent by placing a “loyalty drug” in the water supply or by carrying out programs of

indoctrination. 35

The internal conflict between the demands of legitimacy and the inculcation of

good citizenship in publicly funded schools is now easy to state. The demands of

citizenship involved in any arrangement of political institutions are just another aspect of

those arrangements in need of legitimating consent. So if publicly funded schools

inculcate in children a desire to meet these very demands as adults, the consent to meet
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them that they give as adults is not free and authentic, but to some significant degree

conditioned or manipulated. Their consent to meet them does not, therefore, confer

legitimacy on the laws generating those demands.

This then is the negative part of the legitimacy argument promoting good

citizenship in schools. Before moving to the positive part, it is worthwhile considering

the merits of the consent theory of legitimacy. Why is this view plausible and what is so

important about authentic consent?

There are three uncontroversial claims supporting the consent theory of

legitimacy, which claims also point to what is so important about legitimacy as

understood by it. The first claim is that government is a human invention that can and

should be molded to serve the interests and needs of humans. Governments exist to serve

humans, not the other way around. Second, legitimacy is what a political authority

possesses just when its claim to maintain a monopoly on the use of coercion (within a

territory) is morally justified. In other words, legitimacy is what it has just when it has the

right to maintain such a monopoly. Third, and crucially, no human being or set of human

beings has a special claim or right to exercise political authority. Rather, in being all

fundamentally equal from the moral point of view, every competent human being has as

much a right to rule as any other.

How do these claims support the consent theory of legitimacy? The main virtue of

this theory is that in making legitimacy a function of authentically given consent, it

guarantees that legitimacy is democratically determined. But in light of the foregoing

claims, legitimacy ought to be democratically determined. This is because political

authority is a very great and special power, which no person (or set of persons) has a
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special claim to wield, and which rather exists to serve the interests of all people. So

understood, legitimacy is indeed a very important value. Its observance ensures that

political authorities, people having no moral privilege to rule others, maintain a proper

relationship between themselves and the governed, which for once is the relationship of

servant to master. A lack of legitimacy, therefore, signals not just any ordinary

shortcoming or injustice, but a failure of governance at a fundamental level. Where

legitimacy is absent, some people are using political power in a way that subjugates

others.

So the demands of legitimacy are very, very weighty. And the negative part of the

legitimacy argument shows that there is an internal conflict between these demands and

efforts to inculcate virtues of good citizenship in public schools. But as Brighouse argues

(moving now into the positive part of the argument), certain responses to this difficulty

are not plausible. First, though it may mitigate the problem of state-conditioned consent,

wholesale state abstention from any civic education will not resolve the problem. As

Brighouse points out, some weak conditioning of consent is “a predictable consequence

of many proper activities of the liberal state.” 36 What matters relative to state

involvement in civic education, then, is that any policy can be expected to produce

consent that is overall legitimating rather than delegitimating.

A second response to the legitimacy argument maintains that legitimacy is a

weaker political value than justice and that justice requires inculcating virtues of good

citizenship in all future citizens. But, Brighouse argues, this view gives implausibly little

weight to legitimacy as a political value. 37 For the reasons just given concerning the

importance of consent-based legitimacy, I agree. There may be situations in which the

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ends of justice are achievable only illegitimately, and which we ought therefore to abstain

from achieving. Arguably, efforts to inculcate loyalty or patriotism in children are

examples.

Note that my agreement with Brighouse here does not contravene my earlier

rejection of Rawls’s view on the importance of legitimacy. There the complaint was just

that in giving priority to legitimacy, Rawls’s view gives it too much weight, whereas the

present position is objectionable in giving it too little. So the position Brighouse and I are

endorsing sees justice and legitimacy as important competing values that may sometimes

conflict and need to be weighed against one another. This is an unconformable position

insofar as no way of resolving conflicts between them has been given. But in the present

case, this need not worry us. Rejecting these alternatives, Brighouse instead proposes a

policy on which the demands of justice and legitimacy converge.

This policy requires two directives to be taken together. The first, autonomy-

facilitating education, mandates curricula teaching the knowledge and skills needed for

autonomy. The second, critical civic education, mandates a curriculum of civic education

directing the critical scrutiny of students toward the civic values they are taught. Taken

together, these curricular directives satisfy the demands of both legitimacy and justice for

the following reasons.

First, the requirement of autonomy-facilitating curricula satisfies the demands of

justice by ensuring that children have a meaningful opportunity to become autonomous

adults. Supplying this opportunity is part of meeting the requirement of justice that all

persons should have an opportunity to live a life that is good for them according to their

own lights. And as Brighouse plausibly explains it, this is not necessarily because non-
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autonomous lives are worthless, but because the skills of autonomy are the best-known

means by which a person can discover what sort of life he can live well. 38 But second, the

requirement of autonomy-facilitating education also satisfies the demands of legitimacy.

It does this by recommending a pedagogy that favors the teaching of knowledge and

skills needed for the development and exercise of autonomy to the inculcation of a desire

to become autonomous. As Brighouse explains it,

The education does not try to ensure that students employ autonomy in their lives,

any more than Latin classes are aimed at ensuring that students employ Latin in

their lives. Rather it aims to enable them to live autonomously should they wish

to, rather as we aim to enable them to criticize poetry, do algebra, and so on

without trying to ensure that they do so. The argument suggests that, other things

being equal, people’s lives go better when they deploy the skills of associated

with autonomy, but does not yield any obligation to persuade them to deploy

them: autonomy must be facilitated, not necessarily promoted. (Brighouse, “Civic

Education and Liberal Legitimacy,” 1997, 734)

Turning now to the second directive, this directive together with autonomy-

facilitating education satisfies the demands of legitimacy for civic education. This

directive calls for civic education to include elements directing the critical scrutiny of

children to the values of good citizenship. For it is precisely those citizens who have

critically and autonomously reflected on the political institutions they inhabit that can

give legitimating consent to inhabit them. But autonomy-facilitation ensures that many

students as adults will have the ability to critically reflect on their political environment,

while critical civic education ensures that at some point they will have done so and will
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know in the future how to do so (or at least, will have been given opportunity to know

how to do this).

Hence, autonomy-facilitating and critical civic education together satisfy the

demands of both justice and legitimacy. But what does all this have to say about

education for self-respect?

Since self-respect is an element of civic virtue, the legitimacy argument favors an

education for self-respect aiming to facilitate it to one aiming to promote it. It does this

by aiming to teach teaching knowledge and skills relevant to its exercise rather than

aiming directly to inculcate the desires and motives of characteristically self-respecting

persons. Hence, if the legitimacy argument is successful, there is reason to favor restraint

in enabling the achievement of self-respect in schools, even if it is possible to do so non-

self-defeatingly.

Before concluding, the next section considers two recent objections to the

legitimacy argument and argues that both fail.

3.4 Objections to the Legitimacy Argument

This section argues that two objections to the legitimacy argument fail.

a. Clayton’s Objection

A first objection, due to Matthew Clayton, maintains that the legitimacy argument fails

because legitimacy does not require the actual consent of any portion of the governed. 39

A central problem for the consent theory of legitimacy, according to Clayton, is that we

are bound by a natural duty of justice to obey the laws of just political arrangements,
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whether we consent to obey them or not. Furthermore, where arrangements of institutions

are not fully just, we are obligated to do our share to bring about just social arrangements.

Does this mean, however, that we are not obligated to obey political authorities

when their laws are not fully just, but only nearly so? According to Clayton, the answer is

“No.” Justice demands that we obey the laws of nearly just authorities, and they are thus

legitimate, whenever they are the “democratic outcome of citizens bringing their sense of

justice to bear on issues of social cooperation.” 40 Note, however, the immediate

educational implications of this conception of legitimacy. Law’s legitimacy requires not

simply that citizens participate in its creation, but that in doing so they are motivated by a

sense of justice. Legitimacy thus does not forbid, but in fact requires the inculcation of

certain civic virtues in all citizens. Among these Clayton includes observation of the

values of deliberation, Rawlsian public reason, compliance with just laws, and civic

participation. 41

To summarize Clayton’s objection. Because we are duty bound to obey just laws

(and bring about justice), we can be legitimately coerced or manipulated to obey the law

so long as it is (nearly) just, whether we consent to or not. So, it allegedly follows that it

is unobjectionable if civic education manipulates our consent to meet just demands of

citizenship.

One possible reply to Clayton’s objection defends the requirement of actual

consent for legitimacy. I will not pursue this route. Clayton’s basic point is well taken,

but the force of the legitimacy argument is ultimately independent of the requirement of

actual consent. Rather, it depends simply on the fundamental wrongness of secretive

government manipulation of character.

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Consider that though we can be legitimately coerced or manipulated to act justly,

it does not follow from this that it is always legitimate to coerce or manipulate people to

act justly. For any given case, whether it is legitimate to use coercion/manipulation

depends on the magnitude of the expected (in)justice and the nature, and particularly the

publicity, of the manipulation or coercion used. Clayton’s argument assumes that in the

case of manipulative civic education, the gains in justice warrant the manipulation. But

this is not obvious.

To see the gap in Clayton’s argument, consider first some examples of when

people may be legitimately manipulated or coerced. Imagine, for example, that we have

good reason to suspect that Jones plans to murder Smith. In this case, we would arguably

be justified in deploying some manipulation or coercion to prevent Jones from carrying

out his plan. What we would prevent would be a very great injustice. Even here,

however, there are significant limits. Though we ought to remonstrate with Jones, we

cannot, for example, detain him just because he has told us that he wishes Smith were

dead. To justify detaining Jones, our reasons have to be better and we need to have good

reason to suspect that Jones is in fact carrying out his plan in some way. Furthermore, our

methods of interfering should generally be transparent or publicly visible. Perhaps we

would be justified in temporarily interfering in a way that is invisible to Jones or others,

e.g. by secretly hypnotizing him. But as a general policy, secretly interfering shows

disrespect for those interfered with while removing external checks on our own conduct.

To take another example, imagine that we have good reason for believing that in

the upcoming election, many people will vote their self-interest rather than bring their

sense of justice to bear. Imagine, moreover, that we could prevent this by placing a
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“sense of justice drug” in the water supply. It is very far from obvious that we would be

justified in doing this. It may be that this would produce some gain in justice. But this

cannot be determined without specifying a particular case—sometimes gains in justice

are great when people do vote their self-interest. But even if gains in justice could be

expected, this action is not clearly legitimate, simply because it involves covertly

manipulating people in order to achieve a quantity of justice. Though I do not have an

argument for this claim, it is overwhelmingly plausible. A possible explanation of this is

that, in order to be fully efficacious, the manipulation would have to lack the

transparency of publicity. Otherwise, people who knew of the manipulation could avoid it

by, e.g., drinking bottled water. But it is a very important political value not only that

policies are just, but also that they are seen to be just. This seems to be because where

publicity is absent, democratic control is threatened. Hence, this second case is one in

which expected gains in justice do not clearly justify coercion or manipulation.

Returning now to the case of civic education, it is similarly unobvious that

expected gains in justice justify manipulation. Assume that schools inculcate in children

your favored set of civic virtues, which virtues are needed to meet just demands of

citizenship. What could be objectionable about this? As I mentioned earlier in support of

the consent theory, no persons have a special claim to wield political authority and this

authority exists to serve the interests of all persons. (These observations are not special to

the consent theory of legitimacy and in repeating them I am not defending it.) The point

is that there is a certain proper relationship between political authorities and the governed

that ought to be maintained. Political authorities ought to answer to the interests of the

governed, not vice versa. But then, one objectionable thing about inculcating civic
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participation and so on in children is that it threatens to reverse this relationship at a very

deep level. It does this by making it so that the interests children will claim to have as

adults coincide with those the state intends to serve. Instead then of government evolving

so as to serve the interests of citizens, citizens are made to claim to have the interests

serving the ends of government. This is nothing any political authority has a right to do.

So it is illegitimate, even if it could be expected to promote some justice.

Furthermore, in order to be fully efficacious, manipulative civic education must

significantly lack transparency. This also weakens its legitimacy. Imagine that we

actively encourage children to believe that the life of civic participation is good. So, for

example, we include elements in the curriculum portraying historical politicians in an

especially favorable light, create classroom governance structures for them to participate

in, and so on. But at the same time our program is critical and directs children’s scrutiny

toward the value of civic participation. Because the program is critical, it may succeed in

producing citizens whose consent to participate is authentic and which is therefore

legitimating. But for the same reason, we no longer have reason to expect that it will

instill a stable desire for civic participation. In order to be fully effective, promoting civic

virtue must lack transparency and this means it cannot be very critical. But this detracts

again from legitimacy.

It may be replied that though these points should be conceded, they are not

particularly worrisome insofar as the demands of citizenship imposed by the regime are

just, which we are assuming. For if they are just, inculcating the relevant motivations of

good citizens cannot conflict in any troubling way with other interests citizens have and

critical civic education can be forgone. Therefore, the policy is nevertheless permissible.
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But it is not clear that inculcating motivation to meet even just demands of

citizenship cannot conflict with the interests some citizens have. Suppose with Clayton,

for example, that a desire to actively participate in civic life is among the motivations we

instill. There may nonetheless be some children who as adults find that, despite desiring

to actively participate in civic life, they are not particularly well suited to it and find it

deeply unsatisfying or burdensome. But having had the desire to participate inculcated in

them, they persist in believing they must participate. Now participating civically is

worthwhile for its own sake. People who pursue this end are to that extent well off. But

as argued in the previous chapter, being well off also requires finding a way of life one

can wholeheartedly endorse. Hence, for those who cannot find satisfaction in civic

participation, instilling in them a desire for participation harms their life. And this harm is

unjust. It is unjust because justice requires that all persons should be equally provided

with a significant opportunity to live a life that is good for them. If promoting civic virtue

in schools leads some to pursue options they would be better off avoiding, it conflicts

with this requirement by favoring the good of some over the good of others. Hence,

inculcating motivation to meet even just demands of citizenship can conflict with

important interests of some citizens.

It may finally be objected that, nevertheless, whenever everyone participates and

exercises civic virtue, everyone is made better off. Therefore, even if civic education

hinders some more than others in the pursuit of well-being, all are nonetheless obligated

to do their share. Thus, all are justly manipulated into doing it.

But the premise of this response is false. There are circumstances in which greater

participation will do nothing to improve the outcome of the political process. Imagine, for
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example, a circumstance in which everyone who does participate exercises virtues of

reasonableness, self-respect, autonomy, and so on, and in doing so considers the interests

of all. Adding another reasonable, self-respecting, autonomous person will not, therefore,

change the outcome of the process. And though reasonable, self-respecting, autonomous

persons might all disagree about any number of things, in all being reasonable they would

converge on the policy that respected all reasonable differences. Hence, inculcating in all

a desire for civic participation is not clearly required to secure just political outcomes. At

best, what is required is that those who choose to participate exercise virtues of

reasonableness, self-respect, autonomy, and so on. But this is achievable by autonomy-

facilitating and critical civic education. For these ensure that children developing a desire

for civic participation will have had an opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills of

good citizenship.

I conclude that Clayton’s objection to the legitimacy argument is not successful.

Though Clayton is right that people can be legitimately coerced or manipulated to do

their duty, it is not always permitted to coerce or manipulate them into serving justice. In

the case of civic education, the manipulation establishes an improper relationship

between government and the governed which also lacks transparency. Both features make

the policy illegitimate in a way not obviously outweighed by the gains in justice it might

be expected to produce.

b. Callan’s Objection

A second objection to the legitimacy argument, due to Eamonn Callan, does not reject the

consent theory of legitimacy. 42 Callan argues instead that the positive part of Brighouse’s

legitimacy argument fails. This is allegedly because autonomy-facilitating and critical

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civic education inadequately prepare children to give legitimating consent as adults.

According to Callan, the demands of legitimacy do not forbid, but in fact require the

promotion in schools of certain civic virtues. Importantly, Callan’s argument turns on the

importance to civic virtue of certain elements of self-respect, especially non-

servility/autonomy, moral integrity, and non-arrogance/humility. If correct, it would thus

constitute a case in favor of promoting these dimensions of self-respect.

This sub-section proceeds by elaborating Callan’s case in some detail, then raises

some difficulties for it.

To recall, legitimating consent must be free and authentic, but must also coincide

with that which would be given in the hypothetical circumstance wherein people are

reasonable, well informed, and not overly self-interested. Focusing on the requirement of

autonomy-facilitation, Callan argues that a major problem for the positive part of the

legitimacy argument is that autonomy-facilitation is insufficient to guarantee either

condition of legitimacy. That is, autonomy-facilitation is insufficient to guarantee that

children receiving it will be able to give authentic consent as adults. And it is insufficient

to guarantee that any policies to which they consent will match those that they would

consent to if they were fully reasonable, informed, and not overly self-interested.

To take these in turn. First Callan argues that autonomy-facilitating education is

insufficient to guarantee that children who receive it can give authentic consent as adults.

This allegedly is because outside schools, children can be, and often are, indoctrinated to

value and prefer heteronomy or servile deference to others, as well as to maintain a

closed mindedness to any new knowledge or skill that would challenge this value.

Elaborating, Callan states

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Nonautonomous belief and preference formation often, perhaps characteristically,

works not merely by blocking the acquisition of knowledge and skill. Instead,

affect and desire are shaped so that even if the knowledge and skill is later

acquired, these will not be used to correct the results of the original process. The

child who is taught to believe “I must be a housewife when I grow up” and adjusts

her ambitions accordingly might easily revise her belief and preference if all that

sustained them were a deficit of information and skill. But if emotional inhibitions

are effectively cultivated to protect the amalgam of belief and desire from future

critical assessment, then knowledge of alternative careers and the skills to pursue

them acquired later will do nothing to shake her sense of domestic destiny.

Someone who has been taught to believe closemindedly that she must become a

housewife or who has learned to care overwhelmingly for other family members

with no concern for herself has thereby been manipulated to resist any reasons

that challenge belief in the propriety of that role for her. Furthermore, she is also

primed to resist the thought that political structures that foist that role on her and

other women might not deserve their consent. Teaching character neutral skills of

autonomy to those who are already thoroughly closeminded or predisposed to

disregard their own interests does nothing to undo the process of belief and

preference formation that resulted in their vulnerability to abuse. (Callan, “Liberal

Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education,” 2000, 146-7)

But then,

if authentic consent to authority depends on a readiness to use the skills of

autonomy to undo the effects of nonautonomous belief and preference formation,

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it must require the accession of autonomous character. Therefore, an education for

legitimacy will require autonomy promotion instead of mere autonomy

facilitation. (Callan, “Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education,” 2000,

147)

So, an education that would adequately prepare children to give legitimating consent

must supposedly do more than impart the knowledge and skills of autonomy. It must also

seek to instill in them a robust desire to exercise the autonomy and independent-

mindedness belonging to non-servile, self-respecting persons.

Second, Callan argues that inculcating autonomous, non-servile character in

children, though necessary, is still insufficient to ensure that their consent as adults will

be legitimating. This is because authentic consent is legitimating only if it coincides with

that which would be given by reasonable, well informed, and not overly self-interested

persons. And while consent given by persons of autonomous character will be authentic,

it need not be especially reasonable and may even be overly self-interested. Thus, “A

once servile person who learns to understand and assert her own rights as the equal of

others might also be indifferent to the rights that others could claim as her equal.” 43 So,

civic education adequately preparing children to give legitimating consent must also seek

to instill reasonableness and basic altruism, not just non-servility and independent-

mindedness. These traits Callan collects together under the heading of “the virtue of

egalitarian justice,” or “a character trait that enables and inclines [a person] to claim what

is due to the self and others on the understanding that the self and others are persons of

equal intrinsic worth.” 44

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Callan’s argument thus favors promoting self-respect in some of its core aspects

to merely teaching the knowledge and skills needed for its exercise. These include non-

servility, but also moral integrity and non-arrogance since these are needed for exercising

the virtue of egalitarian justice. Arrogance is a trait incompatible with seeing the self as

of equal intrinsic worth to others, while a person who could not give others their due as

equals would thereby lack moral integrity.

Does Callan’s objection to the legitimacy argument show that governments ought

to favor a general policy of promoting self-respect in publicly funded schools? Focusing

on Callan’s claim in favor of autonomy-promoting education, I argue in the rest of this

section that it does not.

First, even if Callan’s argument is accepted in all its details, his position supports

promoting only some virtues of self-respect, not self-respect in its entirety. This is a

consequence of the overall approach of Callan’s argument, which is to show the necessity

of promoting non-servility and the like for the capacity to give legitimating consent. On

this approach support is not provided for promoting dimensions of self-respect not

required for legitimating consent. And some aspects of it, including personal integrity,

pride-taking, self-knowledge, and perhaps rational self-control and self-acceptance, are

not obviously needed.

Second, one premise of Callan’s argument is either overly strong, or else it lends

equal support to the legitimacy argument as to Callan’s own. This is the premise stating

that, “Nonautonomous belief and preference formation often, perhaps characteristically,

works not merely by blocking the acquisition of knowledge and skill,” but in such a way

that, “affect and desire are shaped so that even if the knowledge and skill is later
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acquired, these will not be used to correct the results of the original process.” This may

be. But if so, then since autonomy-promoting education is a process of nonautonomous

belief and preference formation, it too shapes affect and desire so that knowledge and

skill cannot be used in a certain way by the recipients of such education. In this case,

knowledge and skill cannot be effectively used to reflectively criticize the value of

autonomy. To see this, consider that inculcating a stable desire for autonomy is not the

same thing as ensuring the effective exercise of autonomy itself. A person can desire

autonomy and regularly attempt to exercise it, but he may not be especially good at it.

Furthermore, if a desire for autonomy has been inculcated, it is that much less likely that

a person will effectively use the skills of autonomy to criticize the value of autonomy

itself. If that is so, it is after all a mistake to say that the consent of those who have

received an autonomy-promoting education can be legitimating. Their consent to live

under autonomy supporting social institutions is as manipulated as that given by servile

recipients of an education for servility. Hence, while Callan is correct that only

autonomous persons can give legitimating consent to autonomy supporting social

institutions, he is wrong to say that those who have received an autonomy-promoting

education can give this consent. Rather, only autonomous persons who have not received

it can.

It may be objected that this response overstates the power of autonomy-promoting

education to determine character and prevent reflective criticism of autonomy itself. No

education is this powerful. And since autonomy-promoting education teaches the skills of

critical reflection, it imparts to students the capacity to criticize the value of autonomy
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itself. Hence, the capacity to give legitimating consent again requires autonomy-

promoting education.

These points do not help Callan’s argument. Though it must be true that no

education can decisively determine character (there are numerous other factors like

individual aptitude to consider), this point confutes the premise Callan himself advances

and which he advances for good reason. If autonomy-promoting education substantially

lacks the power to determine character, its raison d’etre in Callan’s argument is

undermined. This was to solve the supposed inadequacy of autonomy-facilitating

education as preparation for giving legitimating consent. Autonomy-promoting education

is claimed to be superior precisely because it is supposed to be capable of dislodging

dispositions to servility and narrow mindedness and replacing them with an enduring

desire for autonomy. On the other hand, merely teaching the knowledge and skills of

autonomy, i.e. facilitating it, is supposedly not capable of this. Hence, denying that

autonomy-promoting education has this power undercuts this putative advantage it has

over autonomy-facilitating education, and so does not further Callan’s argument.

Furthermore, though it is true that autonomy-promotion teaches the skills of

critical reflection, this point does not favor it to autonomy-facilitation. Both teach the

skills of critical reflection and the only difference between them is that autonomy-

promotion deliberately seeks to inculcate a stable desire to exercise autonomy. But as just

argued, this difference between them in fact shows that autonomy-promoting education is

worse preparation for giving legitimating consent to social structures supporting

autonomy. This is because it necessarily encourages children to value autonomy, not to

use autonomy to criticize autonomy’s value.

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Hence, autonomy-promoting education is either as effective in undoing

antecedent desires for servility as Callan claims, or it is not. If it is, it thereby becomes

subject to the legitimacy argument. On the other hand, if its superiority to autonomy-

facilitation is denied, the argument supplies no reason for favoring autonomy-promotion.

A final problem for Callan’s response to the legitimacy argument is that it is silent

on that aspect of the argument calling for a critical civic education (i.e. one including

elements directing children’s critical scrutiny to the values they are taught). Does Callan

endorse or reject this aspect of the legitimacy argument? It would seem that Callan

should endorse this aspect of the view, since doing so would help ensure that autonomy-

promoting education will not be illegitimate. It would help ensure this because directing

children’s scrutiny toward the values they are taught helps ensures that any consent they

give as adults, including that given to autonomy supporting institutions, is to some extent

authentic rather than simply manipulated. However, this endorsement is in theory

difficult to square with the position that autonomy skills should be actively encouraged

and not just integrated into the curriculum. And as argued relative to Clayton’s position

above, directing children’s scrutiny toward the value of autonomy while actively

encouraging them to exercise it is a confused way of trying to promote it. Doing both

simultaneously might be an especially good way of ensuring that children who come to

value autonomy do so authentically. But it is not an especially effective way of ensuring

that children develop a stable desire for autonomy. It is as likely to simply confuse them

about autonomy’s value as do this. Critical civic education helps ensure that such

education is legitimate, but at the same time, it washes out the intended effects of virtue

promotion.
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I conclude that Callan’s response to the legitimacy argument does not succeed in

favoring a general policy of promoting self-respect. Even if it succeeds in supporting the

promotion of autonomy and the virtue of egalitarian justice, this would be a limited

success, since self-respect is of broader concern than these virtues. But it does not

obviously succeed in supporting the promotion of these virtues, since success in

promoting them, even autonomy, itself runs foul of the demands of legitimacy.

* * *

Section 3 has argued in favor of a general policy of facilitating self-respect in the domain

of education both inside and outside schools. Outside schools, I argued that making

available the resources and opportunities needed for the achievement of self-respect is

more likely to enable citizens to achieve it than actively encouraging them to pursue it.

Furthermore, for reasons besides the value of self-respect, just governments are already

obligated to provide many of the resources and opportunities achieving self-respect

requires.

Inside schools, on the other hand, actively encouraging children to exercise self-

respect threatens to be illegitimate. As Clayton contends, it is true that we may

legitimately be coerced or manipulated to do our duty. But education for citizenship

involves governments in improperly shaping citizen’s interests to suit its ends and must

lack an appropriate degree of transparency.

Finally, actively encouraging children to exercise autonomy runs squarely into the

legitimacy argument. But conjoining this approach to a critical civic education makes no

sense and undercuts the supposedly superior power of autonomy-promotion as

preparation for giving legitimating consent.

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4. Conclusion

This chapter has argued that governments should exercise restraint in politically enabling

the achievement of self-respect. Politically enabling its achievement is different from and

much more controversial than securing the social bases of self-esteem. The first project is

perfectionist and involves governments in seeking to promote adherence to a certain ideal

of good human living. But though self-respect really does generally advance well-being,

many ways of actively encouraging its achievement politically are self-defeating. Using

the criminal law or financial incentives, for example, might engender conformity to

norms of self-respect, but having self-respect also requires that a person act for the right

reasons. This is not the case in the school setting where self-respect is learned rather than

just conformed to. But promoting self-respect in publicly funded schools illegitimately

conditions consent to live under social structures requiring its exercise.

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NOTES: CHAPTER 5
1
See Rawls, Political Liberalism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), Introduction, xvii, and p.
36.
2
Rawls’s version of political liberalism is expounded in both Political Liberalism, but also in some detail
in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, (Harvard University Press, 2001). For different efforts to develop
political liberalism, see Charles Larmore’s “Political Liberalism,” Political Theory, 18 (1990), 339-60; and
Stephen Macedo’s Liberal Virtues, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
3
For Rawls’s comments on what is included in “constitutional essentials,” see Political Liberalism, (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 227. For a similar understanding of anti-perfectionism, see
Steven Wall’s Liberalism, perfectionism, and restraint, (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.1-3.
4
For evidence Rawls did not change his mind about this in later work, see also Justice as Fairness, pp.27.
5
See Political Liberalism, p. 50-1.
6
See ibid, pp. 48-58.
7
See ibid, pp. 14-15.
8
For these ideals, see Political Liberalism, Lecture I; and Justice as Fairness, Part I.
9
See Rawls, Justice as Fairness, p. 3.
10
Ibid.
11
See Eamonn Callan’s Creating Citizens, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), chapters 2 and 3.
12
For the conditions of reasonable as applied to comprehensive doctrines, see Rawls, Political Liberalism,
p. 59.
13
Ibid, Lecture II, section 1, pp. 48-58.
14
For a similar argument, see Eamonn Callan’s “Political Liberalism and Political Education,” Review of
Politics, 58 (1996), pp. 5-33.
15
See Brighouse, School Choice and Social Justice, (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 80-82; and “Civic
Education and Liberal Legitimacy” Ethics 108 (1998), 719-745.
16
Though she puts the example to entirely different use, I borrow the “Playstation example” from
Catrionna MacKinnon’s “Basic Income, Self-Respect, and Reciprocity,” Journal of Applied Philosophy
20:2 (2003), 143-58.
17
Some might object here that my position on the un-self-critical dope-smoking Playstation addict is elitist.
Many Playstation video games are very sophisticated and require numerous virtues, including reasoning,
agility in controlling the game, the patience to figure out what one’s next move must be or to try again. But
my argument does not depend on denying these facts. The force of my argument depends on two things, the
intentions and the manner in which my particular Playstation addict approaches the activity, namely high
and for amusement, and the relative worthlessness of spending life that way. His case is thus one of a lack
of personal integrity, where the particular lack is in any will to undertake with care an activity worthwhile
for its own sake.
 216

18
See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 440.
19
See Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 57-61 for discussion of the primary goods.
20
See ibid, pp. 19-20.
21
See Raz, The Morality of Freedom, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), chapter 14.
22
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
23
For remarks similar to Tully’s in the identity politics literature, see Avishai Margalit’s The Decent
Society, (Harvard University Press, 1996), especially chapters 8 and 10; Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism
and “The Politics of Recognition,” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), section V; and Iris
Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p.
174.
24
For discussion of these points in the psychological literature, see Brenda Major, Shannon K. McCoy,
Cheryl Kaiser, and Wendy J. Quinton, “Prejudice and Self-Esteem: A Transactional Model,” in W.
Stropebe and M. Hewstone, eds., European Review of Social Psychology, 13 (2003), pp. 77-104.
25
My view here should be compared to Avishai Margalit’s in The Decent Society, chapter 7, pp. 119-126
especially. Margalit argues that self-respect is not only causally other-dependent, it is also conceptually
other-dependent in that people ultimately deserve their own respect only because other people accord it to
them. On this view, that other people disesteem one is a good reason to give credence to their disesteem in
one’s own deliberations about one’s worth. Margalit reaches this absurd point in belief that other
explanations of why humans deserve respect cannot be successfully carried through, for example, that they
all have some special natural property warranting it. But this is not obvious, and Margalit’s alternative is
simply unacceptable—it is committed to the general claim that people deserve respect only because they
are respected, which is ridiculous.
26
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 441; emphasis added.
27
The conditions to follow reflect those initially suggested by Rawls, but are better elaborated by Rawlsian
thinkers like Howard McGary. See, for example, his “The African-American Underclass and the Question
of Values,” reprinted in his Race and Social Justice, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc, 1999). See
also Catrionna MacKinnon’s “Basic Income, Self-Respect, and Reciprocity.”
28
For a similar point about the institutional requirements of exercising autonomy, see Joseph Raz’s The
Morality of Freedom, chapter 14, section 1.2.
29
For an example of this sort of argument, see Harry Brighouse’s School Choice and Social Justice, pp.68-
70.
30
For further discussion of these points, see Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit’s The Economy of Esteem,
(Oxford University Press, 2004), chapter 2, section 2 especially.
31
Brighouse, “Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy”; and School Choice and Social Justice, ch. 4.
32
Brighouse, “Civic Education and Liberal Legitimacy,” 790.
33
Brighouse outlines these conditions at ibid, 720-1.
34
Ibid, 720.
 217

35
Ibid, 721.
36
Ibid, 727.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid, 729.
39
See Matthew Clayton, Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing, (Oxford University Press, 2006), ch. 4,
133-4.
40
Ibid, 139; emphasis original.
41
See ibid, section 4.3.
42
Callan, “Liberal Legitimacy, Justice, and Civic Education,” Ethics 111 (2000), 141-155.
43
Ibid, 148.
44
Ibid.
 218
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