Abstract

Feeling good about oneself is, today, a fashionable way of describing self-esteem. Collections of more or less discrete feeling states, whether of happiness, confidence, competence, success, well-being and others, supposedly add up to feeling good about oneself. Accordingly, a villain and a saint might implausibly find themselves in company, as belonging to the class of those enjoying self-esteem. That both may be victims of self-deception, pathological cases, is irrelevant, for to the extent that self-esteem is tied to feeling states, virtually anyone may be a candidate. What makes this idea of self-esteem slippery is that one may possess it irrespective of the worth of one's deeds. For the educator bent on abetting self-esteem, the task must surely be viewed with great apprehension; for whatever measures are taken, the results could be disastrous. Flattery, gold stars, slogans, and a host of other incentives, just as they are successful in making us feel good about ourselves, could, after all, unwittingly nourish the growth of the most obdurate tendencies already in place.