This basic type of confidence must be distinguished from other, more superficial and localized types of self-
confidence, which reflect a person's sense of efficacy at particular tasks or in particular areas. This basic self-
confidence is not a judgment passed on one's knowledge or special skills; it is a judgment passed on that which
acquires knowledge and skills. It is psycho-epistemological self-confidence; it is a judgment (an implicit judgment,
not necessarily conscious) passed on one's characteristic manner of facing and dealing with the facts of reality.
Man needs such self-confidence, because to doubt the efficacy of his tool of survival is to be stopped, paralyzed,
condemned to anxiety and helplessness—rendered unfit to live.
Self-Respect:
The Sense of Worthiness
A man's character is the sum of the principles and values that guide his actions in the face of moral choices.
Very early in his development, as a child becomes aware of his power to choose his actions, as he acquires the
sense of being a person, he experiences the need to feel that he is right as a person, right in his characteristic
manner of acting—that he is good. He is not aware of this question in relation to the issue of life or death; he is
aware of it only in relation to the alternative of joy or suffering. To be right as a person is to be fit for happiness; to
be wrong is to be threatened by pain.
As I have stressed, no other living species faces such questions as: What kind of entity should I seek to become? By
what moral principles should I guide my life? But there is no way for man to escape these questions.
Man cannot exempt himself from the realm of values and value-judgments. Whether the values by which he judges
himself are conscious or subconscious, rational or irrational, consistent or contradictory, life-serving or life-
negating—every human being judges himself by some standard; and to the extent that he fails to satisfy that
standard, his sense of personal worth, his self-respect, suffers accordingly.
Man needs self-respect because he has to act to achieve values—and in order to act, he needs to value the
beneficiary of his action.