What is Low Self-Esteem? (by guest blogger Brad Cokelet)

We commonly explain habitual patterns of action by appeal to people’s degree self-esteem. For example if your friend, call her Jane, keeps dating people who treat her poorly and someone asks you why, you might say she has low self-esteem. But what does it mean to say that someone has a low level of esteem for his or her self?

Taken literally, self-esteem seems to suggest believing that one's character and/or achievements are praiseworthy – that one has done well and, perhaps, can take credit for having done so. But Jane might be very successful in a number of departments of her life – she is doing well at her career, has many friends, material security, etc. If asked, she might say that all of these things are accomplishments that she can take credit for. But she can believe that and still suffer from “low self-esteem” and date people who are bad for her.

So what is self-esteem if it is not belief that one has done things that deserve praise?

One possibility is that esteem is like love – you can believe you have reason to love someone, but not actually feel it, and you can believe you have reason to esteem yourself, but not feel it. But even if self-esteem does involve feeling in addition to belief, I doubt that this solves our problem, because counterexamples cases seem to exist. For example: Jane believes she has reason to think well of herself, and feels positive when she thinks of herself and her accomplishments, but she still engages in the imprudent behavior – entering into relationships that are bad for her.

A second possibility is that the term ‘self-esteem’ is misleading; it is respect, not esteem, she is missing. To make this suggestion work we need an explanation of what self-respect – respect for one’s self – amounts to. Although it is initially appealing, I have doubts about this too. It is plausible to assume that a failure to respect X to be a failure to have the attitude towards X that one is obligated to have and that talk of obligation implies that the person in question is able to adopt do what they are obligated to do at will (by choice); and these assumptions imply that Jane could choose to respect herself (at will). But this casts doubt on the claim that her imprudence is explained by a failure of self-respect: part of the tragic thing about people like Jane, to whom we attribute low self-esteem, is that they often cannot solve their problem simply by choosing to (i.e. at will).

A final, third possibility, is that what we have in mind is Jane’s lack of self-concern. On this view, Jane would likely refrain from acting so imprudently if she cared more about her own well-being. If so we should stop talking about low self-esteem and talk about a lack of self-concern instead.

I am myself tempted to take that final approach and to stop talking of low self-esteem. Is this right? And do I need to fatten my diet of examples before drawing this general conclusion; are there other cases that allow us to make better sense of talk of low self-esteem?