Final Blog Post: Respect

Self-Respect

Section 5

I believe that one day in the future we will all know the true meaning of self-respect. Yes, we're all aware of how to be respectful to our elders, to our superiors, to our peers, and our parents. However, I am a big believer in cutting ties with toxic, negative individuals and bad habits. I find hard to respect others if we can't respect ourselves first.

For a long time, I have allowed people to walk over me. I've let them talk to me like I am nothing. I would believe their lies and not question it one bit. I got so used to being treated poorly that I saw no way out of it. Unfortunately, for a short time, my feelings became extremely overwhelming. I felt like I had no one to turn to. It took me until I reached adulthood to finally see others for the way that they are and for me to see myself for who I truly am. I may be a young woman in the 21st century, but I am still a person who is learning and growing every single day. I have never held myself above another person and most likely I never will. 

I don't want to sit here and speak on myself, though. I want this to be encouraging and inspiring! We all have bad days (or months... or years...) and question our self-worth a little. But for those who do it consistently, just know you are not alone in this. We are in control of our minds, our bodies, and our actions. It's okay to say "no." It's okay to express how you feel. It's okay to stand up for what you believe in. And it's okay to want to better yourself, especially if that means no longer speaking to someone or doing things that you feel are holding you back. 

Self-respect is related to moral reasoning. Watch this video from Philosophy Tube that explains this in a way that is easy to understand! 

"In The Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Kant argues for specific duties to oneself generated by the general duty to respect humanity in our persons, including duties to not engage in suicide, misuse of our sexual powers, drunkenness and other unrestrained indulgence of inclination, lying, self-deception, avarice, and servility. Kant also maintains that the duty of self-respect is the most important moral duty, for unless there were duties to respect oneself, there could be no moral duties at all. Moreover, fulfilling our duty to respect ourselves is a necessary condition of fulfilling our duties to respect other persons. Kant maintains that we are always aware of our dignity as persons and so of our moral obligation to respect ourselves, and he identifies this awareness as a feeling of reverential respect for ourselves. This is one of the natural capacities of feeling which we could have no duty to acquire but that make it possible for us to be motivated by the thought of duty. Reverence for self is, along with “moral feeling,” conscience, and love of others, a subjective source of morality, and it is the motivational ground of the duty of self-respect."

“So act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your person in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as means.”

- Immanuel Kant

John Rawls is another philosopher who identifies self-respect as “a person's sense of his own value, his secure conviction that his conception of the good, his plan of life, is worth carrying out,” and it implies “a confidence in one's ability, so far as it is within one's power, to fulfill one's intentions.”

"He argues that individuals' access to self-respect is to a large degree a function of how the basic institutional structure of a society defines and distributes the social bases of self-respect, which include the messages about the relative worth of citizens that are conveyed in the structure and functioning of institutions, the distribution of fundamental political rights and civil liberties, access to the resources individuals need to pursue their plans of life, the availability of diverse associations and communities within which individuals can seek affirmation of their worth and their plans of life from others, and the norms governing public interaction among citizens. Since self-respect is vital to individual well-being, Rawls argues that justice requires that social institutions and policies be designed to support and not undermine self-respect. Rawls argues that the principles of justice as fairness are superior to utilitarian principles insofar as they better affirm and promote self-respect for all citizens."

If you are interested in learning more about the concept of respect click here to read the entry that is on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Lastly, please find a few moments to watch the below video by Dr. Jordan Peterson.

"Treat yourself as if you're someone responsible for helping."

Check out final blog posts from Monica Lopez and Matt Rigney.


Total run participation: 9 runs after Spring break.
I am not sure what my total was beforehand.