The quality of persons analyzed in this chapter, self-esteem, was said by Rawls to be “perhaps the most important primary good.” In this he is in harmony with the contemporary concern for self-respect as a superordinate value, an end in itself. I shall take issue with this evaluation, suggesting that, instead, self-esteem is an instrumental good whose value depends upon its contributions to the two final or primary goods that we have identified as criteria for judging the market: happiness and human development.

As one might expect, self-esteem is closely correlated with self-attribution and internal locus of control discussed in the previous chapter. The similarities are obvious: Both imply favorable beliefs about the self, both are treasured features of an identity, and both are subject to perceptions distorted to favor a more flattering self-image. Just as self-attribution is said to be the most “profound” and “farreaching” cognition a person can adopt, so opinions about the self are said to be “the most treasured” of all our opinions. In dealing with these two aspects of the self, we touch the foundations of personality. The two aspects are also related to each other by their reciprocal support: The belief that when the self acts, the environment responds is certain to support self-esteem, and the belief that one is worthy supports the idea that one is an effective cause. Both are also closely related to the sense of well-being or happiness, but self-esteem has the closer relationship; indeed, measures of self-esteem may be substituted for measures of subjective well-being. These close relationships mean that as the market encourages and undermines self-attribution, it also encourages and undermines self-esteem.