Is Effort the Basis for Esteem?

On Difficulty and Value in Plato's Republic

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that we esteem those things we work for more than those we are gifted.

His two examples are wealth and poetry. Inheritors don’t esteem their wealth the way the “self-made” do. Similarly, poets admire their own work (which they labor for) more than the work of others (which they inherit, as it were, but don’t create t…