Volume 30, Issue 3

In Part III of The Theory of Moral Sentiments , Adam Smith declares that people desire to be both esteemed and to be esteem-worthy, but that the latter desire both does and ought to take priority. The main object of this paper is to challenge that priority claim—mainly in its descriptive aspect. If that claim were true, then: agents would be at pains to eliminate any distortions in their self-evaluations; and the effects of the size (especially of total secrecy) and the character of audience on behaviour would be second-order. Empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Moreover the normative claim seems to overlook some advantages of inflated self-evaluation; and to allow no independent room for norms of modesty/humility.

According to the recovery model, mental healthcare should be aimed towards a conception of recovery articulated by a patient or service user in accord with his or her own specific values. The model thus presupposes and emphasises the agency of the patient and opposes paternalism. Recent philosophical work on the relations between respect, self-respect, self-esteem, shame, and agency suggests, however, two ways in which mental illness itself can undermine self-respect, promote shame and undermine agency, suggesting a tension within the recovery model. I argue, however, that this is a tension rather than a fatal flaw by distinguishing between paternalist and non-paternalist clinical responses to this failure of agency.

Our paper consists of four parts. In the first part, we describe the challenge of the pervasive and permanent philosophical disagreement over philosophers’ epistemic self-esteem. In the second part, we investigate the attitude of philosophers who have high epistemic self-esteem even in the face of philosophical disagreement and who believe they have well-grounded philosophical knowledge. In the third section, we focus on the attitude of philosophers who maintain a moderate level of epistemic self-esteem because they do not attribute substantive philosophical knowledge to themselves but still believe that they have epistemic right to defend substantive philosophical beliefs. In the fourth section, we analyse the attitude of philosophers who have a low level of epistemic self-esteem in relation to substantive philosophical beliefs and make no attempt to defend those beliefs. We argue that when faced with philosophical disagreement philosophers either have to deny that the dissenting philosophers are their epistemic peers or have to admit that doing philosophy is less meaningful than it seemed before. In this second case, philosophical activity and performance should not contribute to the philosophers’ overall epistemic self-esteem to any significant extent.

The paper focuses on the rediscovery of Misch’s A History of Autobiography and its relevance to the problem of self-knowledge and self-esteem. Misch’s work is used to reconstruct a new aspect of self-esteem and to demonstrate that self-esteem can be interpreted as an early historical form of self-knowledge. In particular, self-esteem is characterized as a kind of self-knowledge in the category of the Other, that is, self-esteem appears to be self-knowledge derived from the social perspective regarding the individual.

Although Max Weber does not specifically analyze the topic of esteem, his investigation of the Protestant ethic offers interesting insights into it. The change in mentality it engendered essentially contributed to enhancing the meaning and importance of esteem in modern society. In his analysis, Weber ascertains that esteem was fundamental to being accepted and integrated into the social life of congregations. Nevertheless, he also highlights that esteem was supported by a form of self-esteem which was not simply derived from a good social reputation, but also achieved through a deep and continual self-analysis as well as a strict discipline in the ethical conduct of life. The present analysis reconstructs the different aspects of the relationship between social and self-esteem and analyzes the consequences of that relationship by focusing on the exemplary case of the politician’s personality and ethic.

Criticism and self-criticism have far reaching impacts on wellbeing and emotional balance. In order to create better interventions for criticism and self-criticism, more in-depth knowledge about these two constructs is required. The goal of our study was to examine three associations for criticism and self-criticism. The data were collected from a sample of 151 psychology students: 114 women and 37 men (Mean age 22.2; SD 4.4). We were interested in the associations participants would produce in relation to criticism and self-criticism, whether participants conceptualized these two concepts in the same categories and whether the categories were equally important for each concept. The data were analyzed using Consensual Qualitative research (CQR). The team consisted of four core members and one auditor. Separately all four members analyzed the data multiple times and then discussed it until all the researchers including the auditor reached a consensus. We identified four domains common to both criticism and self-criticism. These were – Emotional Aspects, Cognitive Aspects, Behavioral Aspects, and Preconditions. For both stimulus words, the most saturated domain was Behavioral Aspects. These findings suggest that both concepts – criticism and self-criticism – are multidimensional constructs consisting of Behavioral Aspects, Cognitive aspects, Emotional Aspects, and Preconditions. Further research on this topic would be beneficial.

The aim of our research is to explore how Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are represented in the Slovak media. Data consisted of text documents from the Newton media database. Search criteria included TV, radio, print and web sources that mentioned the words “Alzheimer” and “dementia” between 2015 and 2018. A thematic discourse analysis was applied in order to identify the themes and their mutual semantic relations. The analysis was focused primarily on the headlines ( n = 227). The results show that the biomedical perspective currently dominates at the expense of a socio-psychological one. Persons with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are represented as tragic cases and victims of a cruel disease. Responsibility for care and prevention is individualized. Our findings suggest that a new perspective is needed. Such an approach should recognize the dignity and humanity of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia despite their cognitive deficits and respect their socio-psychological needs.

The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between posttraumatic growth, ruminations, and core beliefs in grieving individuals after the loss of a loved one. The participants were 140 bereaved individuals (122 women, 18 men; M = 38.40; SD = 13.96). The results showed that posttraumatic growth was positively related to intrusive and deliberate ruminations; however, it was positively predicted only by deliberate ruminations. Core beliefs disruption was also positively related to deliberate and intrusive ruminations, but only deliberate ruminations positively predicted core beliefs. Moreover, posttraumatic growth is positively related to grief after the loss but unrelated to the time elapsed since loss. Higher posttraumatic growth was found in individuals who had experienced a sudden loss and loss of a close family member. Overall, the study shows that deliberate ruminations, for example about the meaning of the loss and its consequences, can stimulate posttraumatic growth in bereaved individuals.

Poverty is a complex phenomenon which has been the subject of research across the social sciences. There have been varying approaches to defining and measuring poverty, especially with regard to research focus. In economic and sociological research, the concept of subjective poverty, which is particularly interesting in terms of psychological research into poverty, represents an alternative to the predominant objective measures of poverty. This article reviews the approaches to poverty used in economic and sociological research, paying special regard to representative approaches to subjective poverty, including subjective poverty lines and outlines the aspects relevant to psychological research into poverty.

The aim of the paper is twofold: first, to enrich the factual historical record of the phenomenological movement in the second half of the 20th century in a Central European context by presenting two representatives of this movement who are now relatively unknown in the Czechoslovak philosophical milieu (Marie Bayerová and Josef Cibulka). The genealogy of this stream of phenomenology has been shaped by the difficult conditions under which philosophy was conducted. The second aim is to use the genealogy to describe the type of phenomenology that developed in this milieu. The article considers minor figures in the phenomenological movement, by exploring philosophy, both “ in margine ” and from the centre. It also consider the concept of “state of emergency”. Taking these pointers of philosophical analysis (elaborated by Jan Patočka and Milan Šimečka in their time) we reveal the anthropological conditions of philosophizing and the type of phenomenology.

This paper provides an analysis of Martin Buber’s not very well-known essay “Distance and Relation”, which is his most relevant contribution to philosophical anthropology. In the essay, which was published almost thirty years after the publication of his most famous book, I and Thou , Buber elaborated on the anthropological foundations of his cosmic vision of dialogical life. The central question is “How is man possible?” Buber’s answer is very important to the further development of his principle of dialogue in psychology (primarily his notion of confirmation) and philosophy of art, but it is not quite clear how compatible it is with some of his earlier theses from I and Thou . In particular, the relation between “distance” and the I-It relation is unclear. There are two seemingly contradictory statements: “In the beginning is the relation” and “The primal distance is a presupposition of the relation”. The aim of this paper is to examine these anthropological foundations and to elucidate this apparent contradiction.

Despite the rich variety of entertainment in Western European countries, some people choose to spend their limited spare time participating in the democratic process. They not only go to the polls at election time, but also sign political petitions, take part in legal demonstrations, contact politicians and participate online. These people’s actions are relevant to their democratic systems so this paper aims to provide a better understanding of their participation. We present new evidence from a large-scale survey in Austria. In our analysis, we examine a new concept of feeling discontented, we focus on individuals’ perceptions of how society is developing in relation their own situation, and argue that these judgements drive their participation. We find that a feeling of discontent has a positive effect on participation, as do internal efficacy and social capital. However, discontented people with high levels of external efficacy tend to participate less.

After the coup d’état in 2012, the Malian state experienced progressive decomposition in terms of loss of territorial integrity as well as in the functioning of its institutions. Against this backdrop, this article examines life histories of a former student generation whose members were actively involved in the protest movement of 1980. At the time they fought for student rights and democratization under a military junta, but were not able to induce the desired change. Today they portray themselves as committed patriots for whom the state serves as an ongoing point of reference in their identity constructions. Bringing together higher education, protest movement and state decline, I argue that their narratives not only reveal how damaged identities and political visions are narratively repaired, but also, on a symbolic level, their damaged country as well.