The Desire for Esteem

Abstract

This chapter explores Pufendorf’s treatment of the desire for esteem, its role in social interaction, and its function as a source of motivation for the promotion of sociability. By the desire for esteem I mean a basic emotional need to maintain one’s esteem as well as to be positively recognized by others. It is crucial to note that the desire for esteem cannot be straightforwardly identified with a desire for self-preservation. It is also the resentment and shame prompted by insults as well as the joy at other people’s appreciation as such, inbuilt into our emotional nature. The role of the desire for esteem in Pufendorf’s moral psychology has received very little attention in the existing scholarship. In what follows, I claim that there is no indispensable conflict between the desire for esteem and the duties of sociability. Indeed, I argue, Pufendorf regards the desire for esteem as a central constituent of social experience, conceiving it to be a motor for the development of sociability.