2 Justicia y derecho

The place to start an examination of self-respect is with an intuitive thought: self-respect depends on being or striving to be the kind of person one wants to be. Self-respect requires congruence between one’s self-conception and one’s self-expression; it depends upon meeting standards one takes to be definitive of oneself. Self-respect requires that one act in ways at least consistent with and preferably supportive of one’s self-conception. In failing to act in these ways one fails to be as one had thought one was or hoped one could be.^^ This claim about self-respect is minimally controversial. It has no implications, for example, for the kinds of standards relevant to self-respect, the source of these standards, what counts as acting in conformity with these standards, or the phenomenology of self-respect.

Despite its appeal, the intuitive thought is inadequate as a conceptual resource either for Neutralists or for Perfectionists. The intuitive thought as it stands is too coarse grained to provide answers to difficult questions about self-respect and the social conditions which promote or impede its

David Miller expresses the intuitive thought about self-respect nicely in ‘Arguments For Equality’ {Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Vol. Ill: Social and Political Philosophy,

1982) when he states that:

I have on the one hand an image of myself, a view about the kind of person that I am, and on the other hand a view about my actual performance in a number of areas. When performance falls significantly short of self-image, I am liable to

development. To see this more clearly I will consider a puzzle about self- respect as characterised by the intuitive thought which suggests a way forward in finessing this conception. Despite the attractions of the intuitive thought a conception of self-respect characterised just by reference to this thought will be of little use to political philosophers. The variations on the intuitive thought which I develop put meat on its bones, and suggest an explanation of its importance which is available to both Neutralists and Perfectionists.

The puzzle I want to focus on can be illustrated by considering the following cases. First, take Eric Cantona, the ex-Manchester United striker. Let us assume that Eric’s self-expression conforms to his self-conception in so far as he performs well according to his standards for all those activities he values, and has no hidden failures or secret despair. According to the intuitive thought, then, Eric has self-respect.

Second, consider the Stepford Wives.^'^ Ignoring the fact that the Stepford Wives in the film were automata, let us stipulate that these are

This example is inspired by the made for TV film The Stepford Wives (PPI pictures), adapted from a novel by Ira Levin, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Nanette Newman and Katharine Ross. Briefly, the story follows a young wife and mother who moves with her husband to the town of Stepford. There she finds that wives like herself entirely devote themselves to satisfying the needs of their husbands and children and attending the occasional perfectly organised barbecue in floral chiffon dresses. The young wife investigates and finds that the husbands of Stepford are co-conspirators in a plot which involves kidnapping their wives and replacing them with physically identical robots

women who perform well at all the activities at the heart of their self- conceptions: they are maestros at washing up, masters of cake baking and geniuses at keeping their husbands fed, clothed and sexually satisfied. As one of the Stepford husbands in the film says of his Wife, ‘She cooks as good as she looks’.

Combining these descriptions with the intuitive thought, it should follow that Eric and the Stepford Wives respect themselves to more or less the same degree, for they all achieve congruence between their self-conceptions and their self-expressions; Eric is one of the best Premier League players, and no-one touches the Stepford Wives when it comes to house and husband keeping. But do we really want to make this unqualified claim? The intuitive thought on its own seems to demand it, and yet there is also something intuitively disturbing about treating the Stepford Wives as paradigm self-respecters. The puzzle I will examine is why we are reluctant to treat the Stepford Wives as exemplary self-respecters when, prima facie,

they meet the demands of the intuitive thought about self-respect. If our worries about the Stepford Wives are well grounded then there must be something true of Eric which is not true of the Stepford Wives which explains this unease. Pinpointing this something will pave the way for a more substantive and fine-grained understanding of the intuitive thought about self-respect.

who do all the cooking, cleaning, flattering and entertaining that their recalcitrant human wives would not.