Real self-respect and its social bases

Abstract

Many theories of social justice maintain that concern for the social bases of self-respect grounds demanding requirements of political and economic equality, as self-respect is supposed to be dependent on continuous just recognition by others. This paper argues that such views miss an important feature of self-respect, which accounts for much of its value: self-respect is a capacity for self-orientation that is robust under adversity. This does not mean that there are no social bases of self-respect that such theories ought to incorporate. It means that they are different: they consist of the motivational and epistemic resources needed to develop and maintain such robustness.

Would Nonconsensual Criminal Neurorehabilitation Express a more Degrading Attitude Towards Offenders than Consensual Criminal Neurorehabilitation?

“…Besides being criminogenic, such difficulties are, as proposed, also likely to undermine the self-respect of the people suffering from them (see also e.g. [46][47][48]). And others apparently also often treat persons suffering from such difficulties as inferior, deficient beings to be fixed.…”

The ballot and the wallet: Self‐respect and the fair value of political liberties

“…A plausible objection, raised by Christian Schemmel (2018), is that disparities in political influence need not undermine self-respect if those whose influence is scant can resort to alternative means to secure it through the associations they are active in.…”

“…A plausible objection, raised by Christian Schemmel (2018), is that disparities in political influence need not undermine self‐respect if those whose influence is scant can resort to alternative means to secure it through the associations they are active in. Schemmel holds that a political system in which the wealthy hold disproportionate political influence may no doubt be disrespectful and insulting toward nonaffluent citizens whose influence is limited.…”

“…Note, however, that, for all the importance this insight may have to grasp how empirical self‐respect works, normative accounts of self‐respect, like the one we here employ, focus on the moral reasons people may have for a secure conviction of their own worth, and on how compelling such reasons may be. Normative self‐respect refers, Schemmel (2018, p. 7) notes, “to the moral correctness of individuals' convictions of their own worth, not to their status in the own eyes.” This is particularly clear when it comes to Rawls' account of self‐respect, which conveys not individuals' de facto psychology but the moral psychology that grounds his conception of justice. Rawls' account is anchored in his political conception of persons as free and equal citizens with two moral powers (Rawls, 1996, pp.…”

“…We first distinguish the personal and the political conditions of self-respect, the latter of which entails two specific duties of mutual respect-a duty to respect others' conception of the good and a duty to offer reasons to justify one's political stance to them. We then look into how the allocation of political liberties and their value bears on these specific duties by inspecting its expressive effects and the power relations it entails, and discuss competing recent views by Krishnamurthy (2013), Schemmel (2018), andWall (2006). Finally, we elaborate on the argument by considering two objections in section 5.…”