Self-Respect

Abstract

In this chapter I shall give an account of self-respect as a justificatory value for the Constructivist approach sketched at the end of the last chapter. My claim there was that by placing more emphasis on selfrespect in the ideal of the person appearing at stage 2 of political justification, the problems of demandingness thrown up by the incommensurability and the burdens interpretations of acceptance of the permanence of pluralism can be avoided. In this chapter and the next I develop an account of self-respect and its role in practical reasoning about problems of justice, and I offer an account of the social conditions in which self-respect is normally developed which draws on ideas in Rawls. These accounts fill the motivational gap in the many flowers view laid out at the end of the last chapter: they show why people who believe that pluralism is permanent because of the diverse ways in which self-respect can be developed could not reject reasons to practice toleration and engage in public reason.