Self-Respect and Action

Self-respect plays a vital and normative role in the response of an individual to injustice. Literature abounds with examples of this relationship. For example, in Shakespeare's Hamlet a young man learns that his father, the kind, has been murdered by his own brother, who then married the dead man's wife and usurped his throne. Hamlet vows revenge, "Thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter.... I have sworn it" (Shakespeare, 747). His self-respect requires him to respond to this injustice. While today one is less likely to take vengeance into one's own hands, the impulse to see justice done after injustice is directly linked to self-respect, which requires some

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Category: Psychology - S