Self-respect

Regard for one's own worth and dignity as a human being includes concern for personal integrity and awareness of self and may be an inner guarantee of objectively moral conduct. Although a sense of duty will ensure conduct to a level of what is required, self-respect goes beyond this. Morality here is not what instinctive or customary reaction will produce but an inner and voluntary act of self determination.

True self-respect is contrasted with that induced through pride in one's worldly position, fear of not coming up to some moral norm because of what others may think, or desire to impress others. Rather, self-respect is responsive to external impulse and to sympathy and duties towards others, respecting them as persons also having self-respect and worthy of it. It requires pursuit of common ends which are beyond the personal; and leads to respect for social institutions and to a reform of those institutions so as to allow self-respect to the under-privileged within them.