Sustainable Action and Motivation by Roland Mees;

Author:Roland Mees;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780429576430
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2020-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

One’s relationship to oneself, in particular one’s competencies of self-trust, self-respect, and self-esteem, is thus influenced and even constituted by one’s intersubjectivist relationships to other human beings. This means that one’s efficacy in pursuing plans and projects relies heavily on one’s recognition of other agents and on one’s being recognised by other agents. Below, I will elaborate the conceptions of self-trust, self-respect, and self-esteem as psychological resources to the extent needed to apply them to the case material.

Self-trust “has to do with the affectively mediated capacities by which what is subjectively felt becomes material for deliberation in the first place” (Anderson and Honneth 2005, 133). Without self-trust we do not have access to our feelings, yearnings, fears, regrets, and so on. A lack of self-trust diminishes one’s possibilities to live according to one’s ideal of a good life, because one can no longer rely on unconsciously originated feelings as a source of one’s most authentically held beliefs. Self-trust can be intersubjectively influenced positively or negatively: it can be impaired by rape and violence; it can be strengthened by intimate loving relationships, especially in early childhood. Self-trust, as the capacity to use and accept the unconscious resources of one’s inner life, is formed in the early years of our lives in the way we are intersubjectively treated by parents, teachers, and others who influence this constituting part of our autonomy. If this capacity stays underdeveloped, or even handicapped, one will face difficulties in pursuing what one considers a worthwhile life.

Self-respect can be seen “as the affectively laden self-conception that underwrites a view of oneself as the legitimate source of reasons for acting” (Anderson and Honneth 2005, 132). It is a necessary condition for autonomy that we conceive of ourselves as capable of generating reasons for action, since without such a resource we would not be able to take ourselves seriously in our practical reasoning about what to do. Self-respect makes agents believe in their competencies as (professional) agents. Through self-respect agents become the co-creators of initiatives in social cooperation with other agents. As self-respect is to be viewed as being formed intersubjectively, it seems obvious that this psychological resource is vulnerable to subordination, marginalisation, and exclusion. Exercising the competency of self-respect depends largely on the respect of other agents. Our autonomy is hampered when we are faced with subtle or even radical changes in how other agents respect us, for example in our role as employee in an organisation. Although in constitutional democracies individuals are protected from certain basic forms of disrespect by a just legal framework, there remain numerous possibilities for changes in the relational patterns of respect between agents resulting in subordination, marginalisation, and exclusion of agents.

Someone who has sufficient self-trust and self-respect at her disposal can still be hampered in her autonomy if her acts (including speech acts) are misunderstood by her social environment. Indeed, acts of denigration and humiliation by other members in one’s network of agency can be the reason for such a lack of understanding and consequent lack of opportunities to pursue one’s ideal of a good life.

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