Self-esteem, social esteem, and pride

Forthcoming on Emotion Review. Please, refer to published version. Self-esteem, social esteem, and pride Abstract This paper explores self-esteem as an episodic self-conscious emotion. Episodic self-esteem is first distinguished from self-esteem in the sense of an enduring state related to the subject’s sense of selfworth. It is further compared with pride by claiming that the two attitudes differ in crucial respects. Importantly, episodic self-esteem—but not pride—is a function of social esteem: in episodic selfesteem, the subject evaluates herself in the same way in which others evaluate her. Furthermore, social esteem elicits episodic self-esteem if the values at the basis of the others’ evaluation are shared by the subject. Such sharing of values suggests that only the evaluations of those others that the subject frames as her in-group members are relevant to episodic self-esteem. Keywords: hetero-induced emotions, self-conscious emotions, self-esteem, pride, social esteem. 0. Introduction In many ways, our emotional life is crucially dependent on others. Not only do we love other individuals, but we may also fear them, admire or despise them, be resentful or forgiving towards them, etc. Also, other persons may impact how we emotionally feel about ourselves. This can happen in many different ways. For instance, sometimes we feel ashamed (and thus faulty, deficient or unworthy) because of shameful actions performed by others (Montes Sánchez & Salice 2017). Other times, we might feel pride (and thus empowered, self-assertive or self-confident) because of others’ commendable actions (Salice & Montes Sánchez 2016). Even the belongings of other persons may affect our sense of self by inducing in us that sense of inferiority or disempowerment, which is quintessential to envy (Salice & Montes Sánchez 2019). This paper is concerned with yet another dimension in which other individuals may impact the way we assess ourselves. It is claimed that certain self-evaluative emotions inherit, as it were, the evaluation held by others about the emoting subject. To put this differently, sometimes our self-esteem is based on the esteem others feel toward us. I will call this form of self-esteem “episodic self-esteem.” This paper aims to develop an account of this particular attitude in three steps. Section 1 distinguishes self-esteem as an enduring state from “episodic” self-esteem by claiming that they belong to two different kinds of attitudes. In particular, the latter will be described as an occurrent self-conscious emotion, which possesses hedonic valence and involves positive self-evaluation, thereby tracking the evaluative properties—the values1–of the emoting subject. Section 2 elaborates on episodic self-esteem by differentiating it from pride. Among other differences, episodic self-esteem—but not 1 Throughout the paper, I will employ an axiological terminology (evaluative properties, values, disvalues, etc.) to qualify “the formal object” of emotions (Kenny 2003: 134). However, nothing in the following arguments hinges on realism about values. Non-realists may consider those terms as placeholders for the notions they deem more apt in the context of this discussion. pride—is a form of self-evaluation, which is rational or fitting if the subject is esteemed by others: that is, a subject’s self-esteem is a function of the social esteem received from others. Section 3 aims at determining the relation between social esteem and episodic self-esteem. I contend that it is not social esteem per se that generates episodic self-esteem: if the subject believes that she has attracted esteem because of traits/features/achievements that she does not value, the received esteem may still be flattering, but won’t elicit episodic self-esteem. This indicates that the values appreciated by the esteemers must be shared by the esteemed in order for social esteem to generate self-esteem. The observation sustains the inference that, for episodic self-esteem to be triggered, the esteemer must be conceived of as an in-group member by the esteemed. Finally, the conclusion discusses the moralpsychological virtues and vices of self-esteem. 1. Self-esteem: Enduring State vs Episodic Emotion Within psychology and philosophy of mind, self-esteem is usually conceived of as an enduring state, which relates to a fundamental sense of self-worth permeating one’s life and which is able to impact our moods and decisions (Rosenberg 1965, Bandura 1997, Blackburn 2014). Psychological evidence suggests that self-esteem, thus understood, is an attitude central to human life and at the heart of human subjective well-being. Low self-esteem, for instance, is associated with proneness to anxiety (Tailor & Brown 1988), depression (Sowislo & Orth 2012), neuroticism (Mu et al. 2019), and to narcissistic personality disorder (APA 2013: 670). At the same time, it is also recognized that inflated levels of positive self-esteem are detrimental to subjects as they may foster aggressive behaviour and, by overestimating one’s abilities, be conducive to the neglect of prudential reasons, e.g., when deliberating about future actions (Baumeister et al 1989). Self-esteem, however, is not a unitary construct. For instance, global self-esteem should be distinguished from specific self-esteem given that one’s overall sense of worth might not reflect how one evaluates oneself in particular dimensions (Rosenberg et al. 1995). Based on another interesting conceptual distinction, self-esteem comes in two forms: trait or baseline self-esteem and acute, short- lived or (this label is somewhat misleading) “state” self-esteem (Heatherton & Polivy 1991). Whereas trait or baseline self-esteem corresponds to that enduring sense of self-worth mentioned at the beginning of this section, acute self-esteem captures the momentary changes which that sense of self-worth can be subject to. This latter distinction aims at modelling the idea that self-esteem is not an evaluation of the self, which remains stable and immutable through time, for it can and does change in the face of the vicissitudes in one’s life (in this vein, James compares self-esteem to a barometer, which “rises and falls from one day to another” 1983: 293). Describing self-esteem as an enduring state leaves open the question as to the precise nature of this attitude. Albeit this paper is not predominantly concerned with self-esteem as a lasting state, it may be important to canvass a few possible options. This shall help achieve the main goal of this section, which is to distinguish self-esteem in the sense just addressed from an attitude of an altogether different kind, i.e., from episodic self-esteem. When considering trait self-esteem, a first option could be to describe this attitude as cognitive disposition and, more precisely, as a doxastic state. On this understanding, self-esteem would be a standing state analogous to, if not perhaps identical with, beliefs: this being the belief (or any other doxastic analogue, for that matter) with the content that the subject is (un-)worthy. In fact, it may be suggested that self-esteem is retained during sleep or unconsciousness and that it impacts moods and behaviour without the subject being necessarily conscious of it. Similarly, a large number of a subject’s beliefs are not conscious, and it is plausible to assume that the subject retains those beliefs during episodes of sleep or unconsciousness. Also, beliefs are usually said to come in a dispositional or in an occurrent form: Chalmers (1996: 20), for example, endorses the idea of occurrent beliefs (although this idea is not uncontested—see Crane 2001). Against this background, one could think of acute or shortlived self-esteem as the occurrent form of trait self-esteem (this being the event of evaluating oneself). Chalmers also grants phenomenality to beliefs—albeit a “relatively faint” phenomenality (this, again, is not uncontroversial, see again Crane 2001). But then, what about the phenomenality of self-esteem? It seems difficult to contest that to have self-esteem feels like something, but even if one grants phenomenality to beliefs,2 it is a matter of controversy whether self-esteem’s what-it-is-likeness is of a cognitive rather than of an affective kind (Brown 1993). In fact, some authors have decidedly opted to include state self-esteem in the class of affective phenomena. Based on this idea, a second option could be to describe trait self-esteem as a self-directed sentiment, as C.D. Broad, for instance, has suggested. Albeit Broad didn’t use the term “self-esteem,” he appears to point to this attitude when he writes: “There are certain sentiments which practically every human being will inevitably acquire quite early in life. One is a sentiment about himself and his own powers, defects, achievements and failures” (1954: 213). “Sentiment,” in Broad’s technical terminology, is an affective state, which ought to be distinguished not only from doxastic states like beliefs, but also from episodic emotions (for an analogous distinction, see Frijda et al. 1991). Sentiments result from the constant association of certain emotions to a given object and, eventually, to its mere idea. On this view, “[…] dispositions corresponding to the emotions X, Y, etc., will have become associated with [the subject’s] dispositional idea of this object […] anything that excites the dispositional idea of the object […] will tend to excite all these emotional dispositions” (1954: 213). Accordingly, Broad’s view seems to be this: when we are concerned with the idea of our very self in thoughts or actions, the sentiment of self-esteem grounds certain self-evaluative emotions about the subject, her powers, her defects, etc. (which are presumably negative if one has low self-esteem and positive in the case of high self-esteem). This position converges with the previous in that it cashes trait self-esteem out as a dispositional state, but diverges from it in that the state at stake is of an affective nature. 2 The majority view in this debate appears to be that there is something it is like to consciously think or believe that p (see Bayne and Montague 2011, Overgaard & Salice 2019). What is debated though is whether the phenomenology of occurrent beliefs is proper to beliefs as such, as opposed to the phenomenology pertaining to the sensory activities (subvocal speech, imagery, etc.) that accompany beliefs. The affective nature of trait self-esteem is also core to a third account, which describes it as an “existential feeling.” This phrase, recently coined by Matthew Ratcliffe (2008), points to background bodily feelings that are “pre-intentional” because they do not have a determined intentional object, but they rather determine “what kinds of intentional state it is possible to have” (Ratcliffe 2010: 604). For instance, anxiety can be considered as an existential feeling in Ratcliffe’s sense: it is a bodily anchored feeling which is not about anything specific, but impacts which thoughts or emotions a subject will have. Recently, the idea of existential feeling has been employed to account for self-esteem: Anna Bortolan, for instance, has argued that “self-esteem appears to share its fundamental features with the background affects discussed by […] Ratcliffe. […] self-esteem […] is a global form of self-experience which is devoid of [intentional, A.S.] directionality. Self-esteem […] determines the possible ways in which we can think and feel about ourselves, and the range of possibilities of action and interaction that the world appears to harbour” (Bortolan, forthcoming). Accordingly, Bortolan concludes, self-esteem ought to be classified as one particular kind of existential feelings. Regardless of how, precisely, trait self-esteem should be described, it is important to come back to the psychological observation mentioned previously, which indicates that the evaluation at its very core is subject to variations. The emotional mechanisms underlying recalibration of trait self-esteem do not concern us (partly also because their clarification will presuppose settling on the kind of attitude trait self-esteem actually is). Neither is it of interest to this paper identifying all factors that can prompt changes in that evaluation and, in all probability, a multitude of such factors may come into consideration. Potentially, newly acquired beliefs may impact trait self-esteem. For instance, if one comes to believe that one owns talents or attributes valued by others and to a larger extent than others, then one’s selfesteem may increase (as suggested, e.g., by Nozick 1974). Perhaps, intentions, too, can impact the way a subject evaluates herself. Imagine you decide to apply for a position in a very prestigious university— you might know that your chances are very narrow, but the fact that you have decided to apply nevertheless may heighten the way you assess yourself, at least momentarily (and if you never succeed in realizing your ambitious intentions, the strategy will probably backfire by weakening your trait selfesteem). Finally, and more plausibly, emotions may nurture or erode trait self-esteem.3 To illustrate, if you have achieved excellence in pursuing your goals and you feel proud because of that, then this emotion of pride may consolidate, strengthen or elevate your trait self-esteem. By contrast, if one of your flaws becomes exposed to others and this elicits from you an emotion of shame, this emotion may then enfeeble or weaken your trait self-esteem. The rough idea here is that negative emotions (like shame, embarrassment, humiliation or guilt) have the power to reduce one’s self-esteem, whereas positive emotions (like pride or self-trust) enhance it.4 I submit that, among the emotions able to impact state self-esteem, one should also list what I will call “episodic self-esteem.” But what is episodic selfesteem? The following example may provide an initial intuition. Imagine that, on a busy day at the office, you receive an email from an unknown sender. This one is not spam, though: You open the message and you read that, fully unexpectedly, you have been invited to a prestigious conference. You don’t know the organisers, but the list of speakers is impressive. This fact, one may suppose further, triggers a pleasurable emotion in you. I will come back to the reasons supporting this terminological stipulation, but for the moment I propose to call that emotion “episodic 3 In fact, psychological literature generally identifies short-lived self-esteem with “the quality of a person’s self-feelings in a particular situation at a particular time” (Leary & Downs 1995: 125). 4 Note that this is not to deny that the converse can be the case, too. On the one hand, trait self-esteem may—and arguably does—influence doxastic, conative, and affective attitudes. High state self-esteem, e.g., can be seen as enabling or facilitating positive self-beliefs, difficult decisions, and positive selfemotions. On the other hand, low self-esteem may be said to have an hampering effect in the recognition of one’s successes, to the effect that a subject with low trait self-esteem is likely to be less inclined to, e.g., feel proud of her achievements. This, in turn, will limit the possibilities to enhance trait self-esteem through pride. Moreover, low self-esteem can also influence how one responds to pride: e.g., if one has a strong sense of oneself as unworthy, one may think that one’s feelings of pride are unwarranted (which might even cause a meta-emotion of guilt about them). self-esteem” or henceforth: “self-esteem” tout court. (From now on, self-esteem as an enduring state will always be explicitly qualified as such.) In this example, the expression “self-esteem” points to an emotion, which has a positive hedonic valence: its experience is pleasurable to you. Also, this emotion is occurrent: it only lasts for a given amount of time. Finally, and as hinted before, this emotion can impact self-esteem understood as an enduring state—e.g., it is plausible to conjecture that your global self-esteem will be enhanced by this emotional episode, even if only for a short period of time. Arguably, the fact that the features of these two attitudes are different mandates that those attitudes be treated separately, while urging a more precise description of episodic self-esteem. However, since these two attitudes bear very similar names, a preliminary justification of the label “episodic self-esteem” is in order to avoid possible misunderstandings. The reason for choosing that expression is that the emotion at stake in the example is a form of esteem proper, i.e., it is a form of appraisal. To quote Darwall, esteem is “an assessment of someone’s conduct or character or of something that somehow involve these” (Darwall 2006: 122). In self-esteem, the “someone” at stake is the very self of the emoting subject and the “something” involving one’s conduct, character or even capabilities (see Branden 1994) is, as it will be argued below, the esteem that the subject has received by others. Sometimes, the expression “feeling honoured” (or, depending on the precise circumstances, “feeling humbled”) could be used as equivalent to “self-esteem,” but only sometimes: as I will argue in section 3, it is possible for one to feel honoured without this feeling being accompanied by self-esteem. 5 This is why the label “(episodic) self-esteem” appears adequate to 5 Episodic self-esteem resembles the passion called “amour propre” in the French moral-psychological language of the seventeenth and eighteenth century (see Abbadie 2003, La Rochefoucauld 2007, Vauvenargues 2008). In particular, Rousseau’s technical usage of that term largely overlaps with what is intended here by “episodic self-esteem” (on Rousseau’s theory of amour propre, see Neuhouser 2008). Yet, this paper’s terminology does not align with Rousseau’s for two main reasons. First, the English translation of that expression as “self-love” is problematic because it is not able to render the conceptual difference Rousseau establishes between amour propre and amour de soi (the latter attitude describe the emotion depicted in the example above. Thus, the adjective “episodic” in “episodic selfesteem” only emphasises the occurrent nature of this emotion, but it is not used to suggest that episodic self-esteem is the occurrent form of trait self-esteem (assuming this is a cognitive or affective disposition): these two affective phenomena are different in kind, or so I argue. Interestingly, self-esteem has a negative counterpart characterised by negative hedonic valence: let us call it ‘self-disesteem’. For instance, suppose that a recent philosophy newsletter informs you that your peers have organised a prestigious conference on the topic of your research and that they have invited your competitor—a colleague who argues for claims that are diametrically opposed to yours. That very fact may trigger many different emotions, including anger, surprise, humiliation, but it can also trigger self-disesteem in you. Self-disesteem is analogous to self-esteem insofar as, in both, one is putting oneself under a specific self-evaluation: whereas in self-esteem one feels that one is worthy—worthy because one is recognised and thus “exists in the eyes of the organisers” (in a sense to be specified below)—in the second one feels as a loser or, perhaps better, one feels as somebody who, because one “lacks standing in the eyes of the others,” therefore “is, in some meaningful sense, a ‘nobody’” being a form of non-socially permeated concern for one’s life, survival, and flourishing). Second, and more importantly, that expression suggests that amour propre is a specific form of love proper, which is an idea this paper intends to remain neutral about (on self-love being a genuine form of love, see Mulligan 2009). (Neuhouser 2008: 73).6 This last remark signals that self-esteem and self-disesteem are emotions of self-assessment and, therefore, that they are “self-conscious emotions.”7 Self-conscious emotions belong to a peculiar class of affective phenomena insofar as their intentional object coincides with the subject that feels them (Kristjánsson, 2010: 77–85; Zahavi, 2012). Paradigmatic cases of self-conscious emotions are shame and pride: if I am ashamed or proud, I am ashamed or proud of myself. The intentional structure of self-esteem is analogous: in self-esteem, the intentional target of the emotion is the self of the emoter. Shame and pride are sometimes also called “emotions of self-assessment,” because they imply a self-evaluation by the emoting subject: whereas, in shame, I assess myself negatively, in pride, I assess myself positively (Taylor, 1985; Tangney, 2005; Deonna et al., 2011). This, again, is a trait that can be recognised in self-esteem, given that an evaluation of the self, as highlighted above, is inherent in this emotion. Two general observations should further clarify the notion of a self-conscious emotion at stake in this paper. First, to describe an emotion as “self-conscious” does not imply that this emotion is the product of selfreflection, understood as a process of solitary evaluation of oneself. Most instances of self-conscious emotions are highly situational and they take the subject by surprise. In fact, some appraisal theorists argue that appraisal processes can often be automatic (see Anderson, 1992; Moors, 2010; Moors et al., 2013: 122), which suggests that the situation giving rise to self-conscious emotions urges the focus of the experience and the evaluation to turn onto the subject. Accordingly, they differ from other emotions, 6 It has been noted that lack of social esteem does not necessarily imply disesteem (Brennan & Pettit 2004: 18). To assess the fittingness of self-disesteem in this particular example, one should therefore investigate whether the organisers did not issue the invite because they have simply not taken your person into consideration or because they evaluate your person negatively. I come back to the issue of fittingness in the next sections. 7 The following description of self-conscious emotions closely follows the characterization already offered in Salice & Montes Sánchez 2016. like fear, whose focus and evaluation are in the world (if I’m afraid of a barking dog, my emotion focuses on the dog and evaluates it as threatening). Second, to describe a class of emotions as “self-conscious” does not imply that only self-conscious emotions are self-involving precisely because all emotions can be claimed to be self-involving in some sense. This view is articulated by appraisal theories of emotions, but is also central to many philosophical accounts (e.g., Helm 2001; Roberts 2003, among others). Roughly, the view is that all emotions involve the concerns of the emoting subject: they arise because the subject appraises the situation as having a significant impact on something she cares about, in the sense that the situation affects her. For instance, fear does involve a concern for oneself, but it doesn’t involve a self-evaluation. In fear, a situation is appraised as threatening to me (or someone or something I care about), whereas pride and shame involve evaluations of the self insofar as the situation is experienced as revealing that I am, respectively, superior or inferior, outstanding or degraded. Aligning episodic self-esteem and self-disesteem with other self-conscious emotions like shame and pride suggests that there must be substantial similarities between these kinds of emotions. As a matter of fact, this similarity is particularly striking in the case of self-esteem and pride:8 just as self-esteem, pride, too, is an episodic emotion that puts the subject under a positive self-evaluation. But then couldn’t one simply classify self-esteem as a specific form of pride? The next section presents arguments in favour of a negative answer to this question. 8 By contrast, it is more difficult to draw a parallel between shame and self-disesteem. There are characteristic ways in which self-disesteem is experienced that do not apply to shame. For instance, self-disesteem may be accompanied by a sense of being simply ignored and, more generally, by the sense of being evaluated to a lower degree than others. In shame, by contrast, the self-appraisal is not comparative and the subject feels as if trapped in the gaze of the others. Accordingly, self-disesteem seems to lie in the territory of humiliation, rather than in that of shame. 2. Self-esteem vs Pride Recall the following scene from the movie “Cast Away”: Tom Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a FedEx employee who, after an airplane crash, is left stranded on a desert island for years. In order to survive there, one of the first things he does is try to light a fire. It takes him countless attempts before he succeeds. When it finally happens, in one of the most iconic scenes from the movie, Chuck stands in front a pile of burning wood, repeatedly screaming: “Fire! Fire! I have made fire, I have made fire!” It is natural to describe the emotion depicted in those images as one of pride. In fact, Chuck’s behaviour in this scene entirely corresponds to how pride is usually expressed in humans and other primates. This is a manifest and visible expression: in pride, the subject adopts an expanded posture, with outstretched arms and head tilted back—usually directed towards an audience (Tracy & Matsumoto 2008). True, there is nobody on the deserted island to observe Chuck (expect perhaps for Wilson the volleyball), but it has been argued that the mere imagination of potential spectators is sufficient for triggering selfconscious emotions (notably shame [Sartre 1969], but similar ideas can be applied to pride, too, see Salice & Montes Sánchez 2016). And, in fact, the movie portrays Chuck who, while boasting, gestures at some imaginative others. To compare this example with the one described in the previous section, I first offer some descriptive observations about the psychology of pride and self-esteem and I then move to normative considerations. Although the aim of these psychological observations is to confer some initial force to the idea that selfesteem and pride belong to different kinds of emotions, they are not conclusive for at least two reasons. First, they refer to aspects or phenomena that aggregate around emotions of one or the other kind only in a loose way. To put this differently, they describe how these emotions unfold usually, typically, more often than not, which is why these descriptions provide only defeasible evidence: they are not invulnerable to counterexamples. Secondly, these considerations are not relevant to the conditions that make these emotions warranted or unwarranted, which is what most prominently contributes to the definition of emotional kinds. Bearing these caveats in mind, the descriptive observations are: A. The events that trigger pride and self-esteem are of different kind. - Self-esteem is triggered by the esteem others have expressed to us: e.g., the unexpected invitation to the conference is an attestation that somebody holds you in high esteem, that you have been recognized by them, and therefore that you are worthy in their eyes. Precisely this fact is what elicits positive self-esteem in you. - Pride is triggered by the fact that the subject has achieved his or her goal in an excellent way: e.g. Chuck’s lighting the fire attests to Chuck that he is worthy. This achievement generates pride in him. (Can’t pride be triggered by social esteem? I will come back to this possibility below, but in short: yes, it can, but in that case the emotion is unwarranted.) B. Pride and self-esteem are expressed differently. - Typically, the bodily expressions of self-esteem have negligible visibility. Perhaps, you will be happy to share the news of your invitation with your colleagues, but chances are you will not extensively linger on it. Why? I submit two explanations. First, self-esteem manifests to its very subject (rather than to others) that she is worthy and that is why the expression of self-esteem remains largely silent and invisible to others. Secondly, expressing self-esteem can be considered an indication of a vain character,9 which is socially reprimanded: you ought not to show your selfesteem. 9 It exceeds the purposes of this paper to offer a definition of the disvalue of vanity or of the negative value property of being vain. The following characterization may, however, be apt to illustrate the meaning with which the term “vanity,” or the corresponding property, is employed in this paper: “He is guilty of vanity who desires praise for qualities which are either not praise-worthy in any degree, or not in that degree in which he expects to be praised for them; who sets his character upon the frivolous - As the example above illustrates, pride is usually expressed in a public display. Why? The suggestion is that, in pride, one manifests to (actual or imagined) others that one is worthy and one usually does so by pointing to the excellence one has achieved. These gestures appear to have a communicative function: in the movie, Chuck ostensibly points at the fire he lit while addressing an imaginary audience. Similarly, successful sportsmen and sportswomen exult and often point to the spectators (or their rivals) after their triumphs. Does the expression of pride attract social reprimand? Not necessarily. I conjecture that nobody would reprimand Chuck for his evident and unconcealed expression of pride (in fact, the scene is supposed to elicit sympathy in the audience). This may indicate that reprimand is assigned to the subject not when they express pride tout court, but when they express hubristic pride: you are allowed to show (the right form of) pride. C. The evaluation of others plays different roles in pride and self-esteem. - In self-esteem, the positive evaluation crucially derives, in a sense to be explained below, from the positive evaluation that others accord to the subject (and that is mirrored in their esteem). Because of that, the two assessments (the subject’s self-evaluation and the others’ evaluation of the subject) cannot diverge in self-esteem. ornaments of dress and equipage, or upon the equally frivolous accomplishments of ordinary behaviour. He is guilty of vanity who desires praise for what indeed very well deserves it, but what he perfectly knows does not belong to him. […] He too is said to be guilty of vanity who is not contented with the silent sentiments of esteem and approbation, who seems to be fonder of their noisy expressions and acclamations than of the sentiments themselves, who is never satisfied but when his own praises are ringing in his ears, and who solicits with the most anxious importunity all external marks of respect, is fond of titles, of compliments, of being visited, of being attended, of being taken notice of in public places with the appearance of deference and attention.” (Smith 2002: 365) - By contrast, pride can occur even when others have a negative opinion on the proud subject, which does not reflect the subject’s (positive) self-evaluation. In fact, pride rapidly gains intensity in competitive contexts, including those in which the others have a negative opinion on the subject. To prove others wrong is one of the factors that make the emotion of pride sublime, as it were. I turn now to differences in the normativity of the two emotions. These differences relate to their conditions of fit. In an influential article, D’Arms and Jacobsen (2000) have argued that, just as beliefs can be described as ‘fitting’ if they track existing states of affairs, so emotions are fitting when they track evaluative properties. It is against this background that pride’s and self-esteem’s conditions of fit are scrutinised in what follows. Since this discussion will reveal that there are at least two ways in which one can conceptualise pride’s conditions of fit (depending on whether one conceives of pride as a comparative or as a non-comparative attitude),10 the discussion will proceed in two steps: self-esteem is first compared with non-comparative pride and then with comparative pride. The paper remains noncommittal as to which is the correct conception of pride. 1. Opinions of others figure in the conditions of satisfaction of self-esteem, but not of pride. a. When is self-esteem fitting? The emotion, I contend, is fitting if the subject is recipient of social esteem. (Note, however, that this is a preliminary description of self-esteem’s condition of fit, which will be refined in section 3 by adding the requirement that the subject must share the values at stake in social esteem). Accordingly, the pleasurable emotion you feel when reading the invitation is warranted because it tracks social esteem and, thus, that dimension of self-worth that is revealed to you by social esteem. As a consequence, others necessarily figure in the condition of fit of this emotion: for self-esteem to be fitting, others must feel esteem towards you. This also 10 I will not discuss here the fittingness of identity pride (“I am proud of us,” see Neu 1998) or of hetero- induced pride (“I am proud of you,” see Salice & Montes Sánchez 2016). implies that it is part and parcel of the emotion’s condition of fit that you evaluate yourself in the same way that others evaluate you. b. When is pride fitting? One possible way to answer the question is this: the emotion is fitting if the subject, by contributing to the required extent, has reached excellence, thereby becoming worthy and commendable, period (the “period” marks the specific, i.e., non-comparative understanding of pride at stake here, as 2.b. below clarifies further). Accordingly, Chuck’s emotion of pride is warranted because it tracks an excellent achievement and, thus, that dimension of self-worth that is revealed to him by that achievement. On this understanding of pride, others do not figure in its conditions of fit. What matters to the normativity of pride is whether the subject evaluates his or her achievements as excellent and whether this evaluation is, indeed, accurate. Of course, if a given fact has value for you, you will think that this value deserves recognition by everybody (to the effect that pride’s communicative intentions can also be understood as a demand that others, too, recognise excellence). However, and at least in principle, how others evaluate your achievement does not matter for your evaluation (and its accurateness).11 If this thesis is on the right track, it paves the way for the identification of a second difference between pride and self-esteem: 2. Self-esteem, but not pride, is comparative. 11 This is not to suggest that, on this understanding of pride, others are entirely irrelevant to the evaluation. As de Sousa’s notion of “paradigm scenario” suggests, subjects will need to be properly socialized to know what counts as an achievement, what is the adequate emotional reaction towards different kinds of achievements, etc. (de Sousa 1987). Precisely these social factors will help distinguish a legitimately proud individual from a “deluded crank” (Williams 1993: 99) a. Self-esteem is intrinsically comparative in the sense that the emotion is fitting if the social esteem that the subject receives is comparatively higher than the esteem her peers receive. (The justification for this claim is developed in section 3, but to anticipate: self-esteem is comparative because social esteem is comparative.) The comparative nature of self-esteem is particularly visible in cases of self-disesteem. Going back to the example in section 1, the reason why you feel selfdisesteem when reading that your competitor has been invited to a conference is precisely because the other has been invited, but not you: he, not you, has been recognised by the others. To put this differently, the invitation is an element that you factor in in the comparison between yourself and your competitor, which triggers self-disesteem insofar as it shows that your peer is more esteemed than you. Conversely, you feel self-esteem at the news that you have been invited to the conference precisely because you have been invited and not your competitor. If the two of you had been invited to the same event, the odds are that neither self-esteem nor self-disesteem would have been elicited. The conclusion to draw from these considerations is that the evaluation that inheres in self-esteem relies on comparison and, more precisely, on a comparison of how your peers score in terms of the esteem they receive (in relation to you). b. How does pride stand vis-à-vis comparison? Two cases need here to be set apart here: (i.) cases of pride responding to achievements that presuppose comparison and (ii.) cases of pride responding to achievements that (allegedly) do not presuppose comparison. i. Most of our episodes of pride rely on achievements that are defined in comparative terms, especially when pride occurs in competitive contexts. Imagine you win a marathon: this is an excellent achievement, which is attained by competing against others. Trivially, you can’t win the marathon, unless you have been faster than everybody else. Suppose now that you take pride in that victory, how should one assess the fittingness of your emotion in the light of the conditions specified in a.2.? To answer the question, one should disentangle two scenarios, which ought to be assessed differently with respect to fittingness. First, you could be proud of your achievement in a non-comparative sense based on the fact that your training and hard work enabled you to reach that particular achievement (or, say, based on the fact that this particular time you set a new personal best record). Second, you could feel pride in a comparative sense because you outperformed everybody else. Here, your achievement is emotionally appreciated merely in virtue of its superior standing with respect to the achievement of others (whereas this is not the case in the first form of pride). If one endorses the view spelled out in a.2., then your emotion should be assessed as fitting precisely when it is not comparative, i.e., when the value of one’s achievement is appreciated in its own right and not in relation to the value (of the achievements or failures) of others. Why? One possible way to answer that question is the following: as it has been argued in a recent article by Morgan Knapp (2018), “[w]hat distinguishes the absolute value of what one has done from the fact that one’s achievement is relatively superior is that others have failed in their attempts to realize the value to the degree that you have” (2018: 12f). However, not only this distinguishing fact—the other’s failure— “cannot itself be of value” (2018: 13) and, therefore, does not warrant pride. The subject is also not responsible for the failure of others (if one excludes malicious actions, which morally do not deserve pride anyway). Consequently, only non-comparative forms of pride are fitting: the difference with selfesteem, whose condition of fit are intrinsically comparative, is preserved. ii. To some ears, the explanation of pride’s fittingness in cases of type (i.) might sound implausible, however. In particular, one could claim that this explanation flies in the face of deep-seated intuitions because it illegitimately restricts the number of cases in which one can be said to feel warranted pride. For instance, we do have an intuition that beating others in a marathon indeed is something one could legitimately take pride in, contrary to what has been stated under (i.). For the purposes of this paper, we take these intuitions at face value and grant the point: pride can be warranted when it responds to achievements defined in comparative terms, as does self-esteem. The question to be asked is whether this dissolves the proposed difference between the two kinds of emotions. Here, the following line of defence may be offered: even if one can appropriately elicits pride for achievements defined in comparative terms, pride can also be warranted with respect to achievements, which are not defined in comparative terms. Think again of Chuck stranded on his island. The emotion of pride he feels when he lit the fire for the first time does not appear to be comparative in any sense. In fact, the excellence he was striving for is not defined in comparative terms. If that is correct, pride’s conditions of fit can, but do not necessarily include comparison with what others have achieved (sometimes they do as in the revised understanding of cases depicted in (i.), sometimes they don’t, as in the example with Chuck). By contrast, self-esteem’s conditions of fit do necessarily include comparison with the esteem others have received. Therefore, the distinction between the two kinds of emotions, it seems, is salvaged. But is it? One could try to dismiss this conclusion based on the following argument: Pride could be conceptualized as being always comparative because the fact that “only very few can achieve something, and hence the fact that many fail, will fail, or would fail if they tried, must be part of the idea of why something is understood to be an achievement.”12 Accordingly, it can be predicted that a subject’s pride would dramatically diminish if the success she takes pride in was shown to be something easily achievable. Based on this view, one could re-describe Chuck’s case (and, mutatis mutandis, all achievements of type (ii.), which prima facie appear to be non-comparative) in these terms: Chuck’s pride is warranted (partly also) because he succeeded in a difficult task, which many of us would have failed to carry out. And if Chuck’s task had been a simpler one, Chuck would not have elicited pride (or maybe only unwarranted pride). If that is on the right track, then one could further maintain that “the notion of achievement plants an essential reference to others in the very heart of pride.” Because the objection declares the class of cases described in (ii.) to be empty, the characterization of pride sketched in 2.b. as a non-comparative attitude would have to go. And this automatically puts pressure 12 This and the following quote are taken from an anonymous referee report. on a.1. and on how pride’s conditions of fit should be modelled. Specifically, the objection recommends to drop the “period,” which marked the formulation of pride conditions of fit in a.1. In the remainder of this section, the strategy is to concede the point about pride being always comparative and to develop a new argument to safeguard the idea of a distinction in kind between pride and self-esteem. Start by retaining one notion from previous discussions, which is not affected by the adduced objections and on which we can rely in what follows: essential to pride is the representation of the subject as an agent, which makes the attitude fitting if the subject, by contributing to the required extent, has reached excellence (see Morgan Knapp 2018). We do accept that excellent achievements can be conceived of as intrinsically comparative, but we now question whether social esteem itself is an achievement, which one can legitimately take pride in. If that were possible, the distinction between pride and self-esteem would collapse. However, we will claim that securing social esteem just isn’t the kind of achievement that demands pride as its warranted response. We support the claim by discussing two possible ways in which an agent can pursue the goal of securing social esteem.13 α. Let us introduce the first way in which one could aim at securing social esteem by drawing an analogy with an example previously made. You pursue the goal of winning the marathon by consistently training for the entire season. When you win the marathon, you fulfil your goal and thereby exemplify excellence because you have outperformed your competitors. Therefore, it is warranted for you to feel pride. The question now is whether obtaining esteem can be a goal whose fulfilment warrants pride in precisely the same sense in which winning the marathon can be a goal whose fulfilment does warrant pride. The scenario we are pondering thus includes a subject who is acting towards the goal of winning the esteem competition, so to speak. And the hypothesis to test is whether, once that goal is realised, this makes the subject exemplify a form of excellence, in which she can legitimately take pride. 13 The notion of a ‘goal’ is used here to refer to a state of affairs that an agent is committed to bringing about in virtue of an intention of her (Bratman 1999, Gilbert 2014). Begin with the idea that to proactively seek social esteem may easily embroil the subject in a form of “teleological paradox.”14 The paradox occurs when one’s intention to instil esteem of oneself in others becomes evident to them. In this case, the intention results in the opposite: the subject is perceived as a vain, self-indulgent, if not narcissistic person, thereby attracting social disesteem, rather than esteem. Of course, the teleological paradox is not a necessary consequence of seeking social esteem, given that it is generated only if the subject is not sufficiently skilful to hide her intention. This possibility, however, shows what we take to be an important truth about this first scenario: the subject must be aware that, to seek the esteem of others (for the sake of that esteem) just is a vain, self-indulgent, if not narcissistic, endeavour. That is precisely why she consciously hides her intention: the game of esteem requires sophisticated social skills to be played successfully (and each of us know people with largely different abilities to sell their strengths or skills and, therefore, to gain reputation or enhance their social standing). Yet, if that is on the right track, it unveils a further, important aspect of the scenario: in the case where the goal is achieved and thus social esteem secured, not only does the subject exemplify certain social disvalues (vanity at the lowest end of the spectrum, narcissism at the highest). Also, the subject should be aware of exemplifying those social disvalues. Thus, one can conclude that pride cannot be the warranted emotional response towards the achieved goal: one cannot take pride in the fact that one exemplifies disvalues. (The subject could take warranted pride in the Machiavellian skills that lead him or her to achieve the goals, but this is beside the point.) β. This leaves us with the need of considering the second way in which seeking esteem can be set as the goal of one’s activity. This is the case where the subject’s proximate goal is to achieve any other form of excellence (but not esteem), while promoting the distal goal of achieving social esteem as a consequence of the proximate goal. To put this differently, the subject has the proximate goal of achieving excellence and, in doing so, she promotes the realization of her 14 On a discussion of this paradox with respect to esteem, see Brennan & Pettit 2004: 35ff. distal goal, which is to secure esteem. Going back to our initial example, it is fair to argue that you really did work hard in your field: publishing papers on top rated journals or giving talks at several conferences, etc., are all actions that have been steered and guided by the intention of establishing excellence. It is also fair to argue that the invitation to the conference is a natural and (in a sense to be soon qualified) intended consequence of your efforts. Obviously, the moment the proximate goal is achieved, the subject has a legitimate reason to feel pride. The question, however, concerns the achievement of the distal goal: the acquisition of esteem. What would the appropriate emotional response be towards that? Now, recall that, the proud subject essentially represents oneself as an agent to the effect that pride is warranted if the subject indeed is the agent, who has realized excellence. Based on this, it can be contended that, if the action of securing esteem is framed by the subject as intentional in the sense of being steered, monitored, and guided by her intentions, then she will end up in the very same impasse described above: it would become evident to her that she is a vain person. Regardless of whether the goal is in a proximate or distal position, she would understand her actions as means to achieve esteem. And this is an indication of vanity, which cannot justify pride. However, not all our intentional actions are intentional in the specific sense of being controlled by intentions. In an important article, Michael Bratman (see his 1984) convincingly relaxes the condition that, for an action to be intentional, it has to be intended. He argues for the idea that: “If S intentionally B’s in the course of executing his intention to B, and S believes that his B-ing will result in X, and his B-ing does result in X […], then S intentionally brings about X” (1984: 401). Suppose that you intend to win the marathon and suppose further that you believe that winning the marathon will result in the receipt of esteem; suppose also that you do indeed end up winning the marathon and receiving esteem; given the circumstances, it can be said that you have intentionally secured esteem, without you having the intention to do so. Here, vanity is out of the picture: you did not form the intention (and thus the goal) to attract esteem, although securing esteem was an expected, foreseen, and welcome consequence of your actions. An interesting consequence can be drawn from these considerations: since you didn’t have the intention to achieve esteem, you did not represent yourself as a fully-fledged agent in the process that led you to receive esteem (whereas you did represent yourself as a fully-fledged agent when you ran the marathon). Since you did not represent yourself as a fully-fledged agent in that process and since that representation is core to pride’s conditions of fit, the following inference seems justified: if you have elicited an emotion of pride when receiving esteem, then that emotion would qualify as unwarranted. This invites the question as to what emotion would then be warranted in that case. The answer appears to be—selfesteem. This last consideration is conducive to a phenomenological aspect of self-esteem: for social esteem to give rise to self-esteem, the subject must have the sense that social esteem, while ultimately grounded in her achievements, is nevertheless accorded to her in a spontaneous, unprompted or unsolicited way. This is another way to formulate the idea that, in self-esteem, the subject does not represent herself as a fully-fledged agent. If the subject (rationally or not) believes to have acted in such a way to prompt, cause or induce esteem of herself in others, she by the same token has represented herself as an agent. The result of her efforts (the secured esteem) are therefore likely to generate an emotion of pride, rather than one of self-esteem. But if that emotion is generated, it would be unwarranted vis-à-vis esteem because of the disvalues that it discloses. At this juncture, one should, however, emphasise that this last conclusion is conditional. It is conditional because no argument has been presented to underpin the idea that being an agent is a binary property that does not admit of degree (in the same sense in which, e.g., “being even” refers to a binary property: a number either is even or not). The conclusion, that is, holds only if a subject either is or is not an agent. Pride is warranted when, among other conditions, the subject represents herself as an agent—and behaves as such—in the process that brought about excellence. Otherwise, pride is not warranted. Self- esteem is warranted when, among other conditions, the subject does not represent herself as an agent in the process that attracted esteem. Otherwise, self-esteem is not warranted.15 By contrast, if the property of being an agent is not binary and thus does admit of degrees, to the effect that a subject can be more or less of an agent (as the expression “fully-fledged” agent does, for instance, suggest), then the distinction between pride and self-esteem is not one of kinds, but one of degrees. Accordingly, we would call “pride” those emotional episodes in which the subject most clearly exemplifies the property of being an agent, by reserving the term “self-esteem” to those episodes in which the subject most clearly does not exemplify said property. On this view, pride (in the narrow sense) and self-esteem would be two different forms of one and the same kind of emotion (or two extremes of one emotional spectrum): pride (in the broad sense). Now, what would be the consequences of this view for the purposes of the present paper? On the one hand, this outcome would force one to abandon the claim that pride and self-esteem are different in kind. On the other, however, one could still contend that this section retains its significance insofar as it identifies and describes a specific form of pride, which—because of its distinctive characteristics— is assigned a particular position in the emotional spectrum of pride.16 15 The conditions that make self-esteem unwarranted have not been addressed in this section, but one can reproduce the same reasons adduced for unwarranted pride: if the subject represents herself as an agent in her pursuit of esteem, then this would disclose the fact of being a vain person to her. This should make her subject to negative evaluation (and not to the positive one intrinsic to self-esteem). 16 If pride and self-esteem are different (either in kind or degree), then one could predict that individuals may have a propensity to feel one emotion rather than the other. Some findings in autism research are relevant in this context: in a series of studies, Hobson et al. (2006: 94-112) have found out that children with autism do report to feel what the authors call “non-social pride” (what I have called pride tout court in this paper) over their own achievements, but appeared indifferent when praised for their achievements by others (they did not elicit self-esteem, in the sense at stake here). This finding can be Let us take stock. In this section, I have argued that pride and self-esteem are two emotive attitudes that differ in kind. The claim is conditional and, if dismissed, it should be replaced with the idea that selfesteem just is a quite specific form of pride. In any case, these two options support the interim conclusion that the kind of self-conscious attitude we are describing under the label of “episodic selfesteem” is one where the subject’s self-evaluation is significantly impacted by others. In the sense of self-esteem at stake here, others’ opinions about the subject influence the subject’s assessment of her self-worth (although remember that episodic self-esteem is only one factor among others that has an impact on trait self-esteem). But what are, precisely, these opinions, i.e., what is social esteem? And how is it that those opinions have the power to influence one’s self-assessment? It is to these questions that I turn in the next section. 3. Self-esteem and Social Esteem. Suppose you hold a large research grant and intend to organise an important conference on the topic of your research. You go through possible names of invitees and make a list of them. Many considerations may steer the selection process—one of them, I maintain, is how much you esteem the potential invitees. Brennan and Pettit describe this particular attitude as evaluative, comparative, and directive (2004: 16ff) and it may be important to briefly clarify what is meant by that as these traits promise to shed additional light on self-esteem. Social esteem is evaluative in the straightforward sense that it involves the appraisal of a person based on their positive or negative values (whereby the values at stake may relate to very different aspects of a person: her achievements, character, dispositions, etc.). In this sense, esteem is different from love: assuming that some version of the “no-reasons view of love” (Kolodny 2003) is correct, then the lover interpreted as preliminary evidence for the ideas that there is a distinction between pride and self-esteem, that individuals’ propensity for these emotions varies, and that social esteem is intrinsically social. is not able to indicate what motivates or justifies her attitude. The esteemer can: if you invite somebody to the conference because you esteem her, you also know why you esteem this person. Social esteem is comparative: in fact, if you count the experts you esteem in your field, what you end up with is not a flat list, but a ranking that distributes your colleagues among the top of the ranking and its lower end. This reveals three interrelated features of esteem. The first is that esteem occurs always against the background of a reference group. That is, the esteemer—either explicitly or implicitly— takes the esteemed to be a “member of some explicitly mentioned or contextually salient constituency: as a member of this or that profession or organisation, as a person of a certain religion or ethnicity, as a citizen of the local country or perhaps just as a human beings” (Brennan & Pettit 2004: 19). Second, the recipient of social esteem is compared against the other members of that constituency to ascertain how they score with respect to the normal or average performance in that group. Third, based on its comparative nature, esteem is reserved a specific place in the family of recognition attitudes like love and respect (Honneth 1996). We have already seen why esteem is different from love. The reason why esteem differs from respect recognition is that the latter attitude, in contrast to the former, is universal: it ought to be accorded to every human being, whereas this is not the case for esteem. It merits attention that classifying esteem as a form of recognition has an important consequence for disesteem. In particular, it should be highlighted that ignoring somebody can correspond to either a simple lack of recognition or to a form of disesteem. And this is why it is easy to mistake one for the other, as we have pointed above. So, if your competitor (but not you) is invited to the conference, the fact that you have been ignored could mean different things: the organisers esteem you less than your competitor (which still is a positive appraisal), they disesteem you (a negative appraisal), or simply they don’t know you (which just coincides with lack of any form of appraisal). Finally, social esteem is directive. Esteem “doesn’t just communicate the message: this is good or this is bad. It communicates the message that the sort of performance esteemed or disesteemed is one to be emulated or avoided in the agent’s circumstances” (Brennan & Pettit 2004: 21f). A comparison with another attitude of appraisal recognition—admiration—may help illustrate the point. Although admiration positively appraises the other, it does not entail the disposition to emulate the admired other. Why? Because one can admire another person for features or elements that he is not responsible for. This illuminates a further aspect of social esteem: the features one esteems in another person are only those the person can be responsible for. (Of course, which features the person is responsible for and therefore when social esteem is fitting are altogether different—and controversial—issues: for instance, it is difficult to determine whether and in which sense individuals are responsible for their virtues or vices. Also, different cultures will have different views on the matter.) It can now be shown that self-esteem has all the above-mentioned features of social esteem: this attitude is evaluative, comparative and directive. I have already elaborated on the evaluative component of selfesteem when claiming that it is a self-conscious emotion. It is comparative because self-esteem is triggered based on a comparison between the esteem one receives and the esteem received by the subject’s peers—the other individuals, that is, that are members of the same constituency. And, finally, self-esteem is directive in a sense already alluded in the previous section: self-esteem offers a “confirmation” to oneself that one is worthy. This confirmation grounds the tendency to “emulate oneself” in the sense of continuing to act the way one has so far acted.17 Given the close links between social esteem and self-esteem, what then are the conditions under which social esteem is able to trigger self-esteem? The question is legitimate insofar as social esteem not always generates self-esteem. Consider this example: The movie American History X narrates the story of Derek—a young man whose affiliation with a white supremacist group ends after spending three 17 Roughly similar considerations applies to self-disesteem. Self-disesteem is evaluative and comparative, as it evaluates the self on the basis of a comparison between the esteem the subject receives and the esteem others receive. It also is directive, but in the sense that the self, after receiving negative feedback from others, will not continue to act the way she has so far acted (with respect to the dimension of herself at stake in the negative feedback). years in prison for killing an African American boy (the sentence being voluntary manslaughter). After his release from prison, Derek—now deradicalized and repentant—encounters two members of his former skinhead group during a concert, who want to “pay him their respect” by unambiguously showing their esteem for what he has done in the past. The scene shows that Derek not only remains unimpressed by the testimony, but also leaves the two boys as soon as possible (openly manifesting his disinterest, if not disinclination, in hearing them). This is a case where social esteem does not induce self-esteem. This example is admittedly extreme insofar as the values that ground social esteem on one party are consciously rejected by the other party. Of course, there can be less extreme scenarios, too: depending on the circumstances, the subject may also feel honoured to receive social esteem, but without this feeling turning into self-esteem. This may happen, for instance, in cases in which esteem is accorded to the subject by (honourable) individuals, who the subject believes do not fully or entirely appreciate the value of his or her achievements. Also, if the subject is convinced that he does not possess the values for which he is esteemed, social esteem may be flattering (but can also be embarrassing), but would not generate self-esteem. All these examples support a significant point: not any evaluation and not any evaluator has the force to impact self-evaluation. First, the subject must think that she possesses the values at stake in social esteem. Second, the subject must also “share” the values that prompt social esteem in the first place, where “sharing values” more precisely means sharing the concern about certain values. However, as it has been pointed out by Salmela (2012, relying on work of Tuomela 2007), there are many forms of sharing concerns: a concern for a given set of values can be shared among several individuals in different ways and with different degrees of intensity. Individual concerns can, for instance, be shared in the sense that they merely overlap (e.g., the private concern of each academic to promote epistemic values, which overlaps with a similar concern of every other academic). Or they can be moderately collective: these are concerns which the individual does not have towards herself, but towards her group (e.g., the private concern of each faculty members about the good reputation of their department). Finally, concerns can be collective in the robust sense if they are identified not as mine or yours, but as ours (e.g., the concern that our research group has for realizing epistemic values). It is important to highlight that the first form of sharing is not collective, although it can easily become collective especially if those overlapping concerns become common knowledge among the parties involved.18 Furthermore, as soon as sharing concerns with values acquire a collective form (whether weak or robust), the subjects involved start to conceive of each other as in-group members. If you have an individual concern as a faculty member for the reputation of your department, then you—at least indirectly or implicitly—understand yourself and your colleagues as members of the same department. The same happens in the case in which the concern is not simply yours or mine, but is ours: here the identification with the group is direct and more intense (on group identification and its different forms, see Salice & Montes Sánchez 2019 and Salice & Miyazono 2019). Now, even when the esteemers are not conceived of as in-group members by the esteemed at time t, when they manifest their esteem at time t’, they signal the values they endorse. And if the esteemed indeed share those concerns, this will increase the likelihood that they frame the esteemers as in-group 18 It exceeds the purposes of this paper to present a clear argument for this claim, but roughly the idea is this: to have a concern with a value means to promote a certain ethos, which has not merely individual, but also social significance. Suppose you decide to, say, join the French resistance against the Nazi invasion rather than taking care of your sick mother at home (or vice versa): your decision will be sustained by (among other things) a concern for certain values. Importantly, this concern can be said to have wide-reaching consequences insofar as it promotes an ethos—and promotes it for all human beings (Sartre 2007). So, if it becomes common knowledge that my concerns for certain values overlap with the concerns of others, it also becomes common knowledge that each of us is embarked in the same project: we are contributing to the promotion of the same ethos (see Salice 2020). Potentially, the same may happen even without common knowledge: if I come to know that my decision is similar to yours (but you ignore that), I may still frame you as my partner in the endeavour of promoting the ethos. members, which in turn will raise the likelihood that social esteem induces self-esteem. Accordingly, it could be said that you felt self-esteem when you received the invitation to the conference because you took the organisers to be members of the very same academic or scientific group committed to epistemic excellence to which you also feel to belong. By contrast, had you received that invitation from a network you deem not serious or even suspect, you would not have emotionally responded in the same way (up to the point in which you could also reject the invitation). This consideration enables an important prediction: the more intense the sense of us, i.e., the more robust the form of collectivity at stake in sharing values, the easier will be for social esteem to induce self-esteem. The prediction is obviously defeasible and hence should be treated with due caution, but in the light of the previous discussion it should convey more than a mere grain of truth. To conclude this section, an argument from analogy should provide further plausibility to the claim that self-esteem requires an (however thin and minimal) sense of us. Self-esteem, it has been argued, aligns with other self-conscious emotions like shame and pride. In previous work, Alba Montes Sánchez and I have argued that shame and pride can assume a “hetero-induced” form: shameful or commendable actions of others, e.g., can have an impact on how the subject evaluates herself thereby feeling shame or pride because of these actions. Furthermore, it has been argued that, for these emotional responses to occur, the others at stake must be conceived of by the subject as in-group members (Salice & Montes Sánchez 2016, Montes Sánchez & Salice 2017, Salice & Montes Sánchez 2018). Analogously, the same mechanism can be described for self-esteem: the esteemer is to be framed by the esteemed as in-group member for social esteem to generate self-esteem. If this is correct, there are reasons for labelling selfesteem a “hetero-induced self-conscious emotion.” 4. Conclusion. The considerations developed in this paper point to the idea that episodic self-esteem is a quintessentially social emotion. Like all social emotions (and indeed like all emotions), self-esteem can assume vicious and virtuous forms. Moral psychologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have already described the pernicious consequences of inflated self-esteem. Although this is not the place to rehearse their arguments (see Neuhouser 2008 for, especially, Rousseau’s diagnosis), highlighting one particularly significant vice of inflated self-esteem can contribute to a better understanding of this attitude. Recall that, for self-esteem to be provoked, others must hold you in esteem because of some achievements of yours which you, too, value. It is possible, however, for self-esteem to acquire an illformed intentional structure, as it were. The subject, that is, may become oblivious of the reasons why she is esteemed in the first place. To put this differently, she may emotionally react to social esteem (by eliciting self-esteem) without any longer considering whether social esteem relies on genuine achievements and whether these achievements are equally valued by the esteemers and by the subject herself. If this happens, the subject has made herself susceptible to a “heteronomic” form of assessment—the self-evaluation entirely depends on values that are not her own. This has a morally corrosive impact on the action tendencies appended to self-esteem. For instance, the subject will feel subjugated or even enslaved by the others, which will lead her to conform behaviour to (what is thought to be) the general opinion, rather than fostering autonomous thinking and acting. Or (and the disjunction is not exclusive) the subject will accord value only to social esteem itself and will pursue esteem as a goal in itself by neglecting or even dispensing with genuine efforts to achieve personal excellence. These are (some of) the vices of episodic self-esteem, but one should not overlook its virtues. If the link between trait self-esteem and well-being drawn in section 1 is correct and if, indeed, trait self-esteem is impacted by, among other factors, emotional episodes like episodic self-esteem, then it follows that humans are well in partly also when they experience the right amount of episodic self-esteem (which would require that they receive the right amount of esteem by relevant others). In this vein, one e.g. may claim that a healthy and sane development would have children’ trait self-esteem be sustained and nurtured not only by the love and affection, but also by the esteem of their caregivers. In addition, episodic self-esteem will contain and, in relevant cases, correct the subject’s inadequate self- evaluations: episodic self-esteem may adjust unjustified low level of trait self-esteem and, conversely, it may also adjust an unjustified high level of trait self-esteem. 5. Acknowledgments My gratitude goes to Danny Forde, Jason Dockstader, Jamie Murphy, Mikko Salmela, Thomas Szanto, and, especially, to Anna Bortolan and Alba Montes Sánchez, who read, commented, and discussed with me previous versions of this article. I have presented this paper on too many occasions to be listed here and I am very grateful for the significant feedback I received during all these events. Work on this paper has been facilitated by a Network Grant of the Suntory Foundation (2018), to which I express my gratitude. Finally, I would also like to thank two referees for their important comments that substantially helped me improve my paper. 6. Literature Abbadie, J. 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