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Real self-respect and its social bases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Christian Schemmel Open the ORCID record for Christian Schemmel [Opens in a new window]
Christian Schemmel*
Affiliation:
Manchester Centre for Political Theory, Department of Politics, University of Manchester, Mancheste, UK
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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.

Keywords

Self-respectself-esteemsocial justiceinjusticeequality, inequalityRawls
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 49 , Issue 5 , August 2019 , pp. 628 - 651
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2018

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Footnotes

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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