Caring for Esteem and Intellectual Reputation: Some Epistemic Benefits and Harms

This paper has five aims: it clarifies the nature of esteem and of the related notions of admiration and reputation (sect. 1); it argues that communities that possess practices of esteeming individuals for their intellectual qualities are epistemically superior to otherwise identical communities lacking this practice (sect. 2) and that a concern for one's own intellectual reputation, and a motivation to seek the esteem and admiration of other members of one's community, can be epistemically virtuous (sect. 3); it explains two vices regarding these concerns for one's own intellectual reputation and desire for esteem: intellectual vanity and intellectual timidity (sect. 4); finally (sect. 5), it offers an account of some of the epistemic harms caused by these vices.