AMORE (PROPRIO). — In the sense familiar to spiritual writers, it is the disordered love of oneself, by which one is led to seek one’s own good without subordinating it to God and without sufficient concern for the good of one’s neighbor, as right reason and divine law require. According to St. Augustine, amor sui is a residue of sin in everyone (De Civ. Dei, V, 14); from it derive the laudis aviditas nimia and the libido dominandi (ibid., I, 19, 30). As St. Thomas demonstrates (Sum. Theol. 1ᵃ-2ⁿᵈ, q. 77, a. 5), from this disordered love of self, egoism (v.), in Latin cupiditas, derive “the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, the pride of life” (Io. 2, 16), and then the seven capital sins. By stating: “Radix autem totius iniquitatis est amor sui ipsius,” the Angelic Doctor (In II Tim. 3,2: cap. 3, lect. 1) repeats St. Bernard, according to whom self-love, having become self-will, or a will not conformed to that of God, is the root of all sins (Sermo in Resurrect. Dom., 3). Indeed, self-love may grow to the point of contempt or hatred of God: “Civitates duas fecerunt amores duo: amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei, amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui” (St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, XIV, 28).
While right reason leads us to love every reasonable good, including personal good, respecting the subordination of ends, or hierarchy of values, the lower part of man seeks only his own sensible, pleasurable, or useful good, and this inclination was intensified by original sin.
The consequences of this sin were exaggerated by the early Protestants and the Jansenists, in opposition to the Pelagians and semi-Pelagians, who denied or diminished them. Jansenist exaggerations emerge in Pascal’s Pensées with regard to the self: “Every self is the enemy and would like to be the tyrant of all the others.” Similarly, La Rochefoucauld in the Maximes: “Virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.”
Two other doctrines stand opposed to these: utilitarianism and Quietism, between and above which Christian and Catholic morality appears as a summit. Utilitarianism, called practical naturalism by spiritual writers, does not acknowledge what is disordered in self-love, but rather sees in it a force to be used, though one that must be moderated. This system reduces the honest good, the object of virtue and duty, worthy of being loved for its own sake and more than ourselves independently of the advantages and pleasure resulting from it, to utility and pleasure: “Do what you ought, come what may.” Utilitarianism leads to pride, which causes one to make oneself the center of all those who live around us. Quietism, on the other hand, in opposition to the theory of self-interest, sought to condemn every interested love, including that of eternal reward, as though there were something disordered in Christian hope because it is less perfect than charity. Christian hope was misunderstood: through it we do not subordinate God to ourselves, but desire God for ourselves as well as for our neighbor, subordinating ourselves to God, the ultimate end of the act of hope.
St. Thomas formulates Catholic doctrine with precision and depth, observing (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 60, a. 5) that every creature is certainly inclined to love its own good, but is also naturally inclined to love God more than itself, just as in our organism the part loves the whole more than itself, and the hand naturally exposes itself to preserve the head. If this were otherwise, the natural inclination of our will, as proceeding from God, the author of our nature, would no longer be right, and infused charity would have to destroy it rather than perfect II. Undoubtedly original sin has weakened this happy inclination of our nature, but it has not suppressed II. It follows that, by rightly loving the higher part of himself, man loves his Creator even more. According to St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 2ª 2ª, q. 19, a. 6), one must distinguish between a blameworthy self-love and a legitimate one: “self-love may be understood in three ways with respect to charity: 1) it is contrary to charity if one places the ultimate end in one’s own good, preferred to God; 2) it is included in charity when a person in a state of grace loves himself in and through God (in order to glorify him in time and in eternity); 3) it is distinct from charity, without opposing it, when one loves oneself by considering formally one’s own good without sin, or at least without committing mortal sin, that is, without turning away from God.” The Gospel itself teaches us that there is a legitimate self-love, since it commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Spiritual writers have dealt at length with self-love, to show how it persists, despite the state of grace, in beginners and also in those making progress and in the advanced, particularly in the form of spiritual pride or immoderate seeking of spiritual consolations. This demonstrates the necessity of self-denial and humility, of active purifications of the sensibility, intellect, memory, and will, and also the necessity of passive purifications to remove the rust deposited at the depths of our faculties, which prevents contemplation of divine things and intimate union with God. The great ascetical doctors expound this doctrine. St. Francis
de Sales shows most admirably that self-love often deceives us, exercising our passions under the name of zeal; it is often violent, turbulent, and precipitate; it blinds reason; it hides beneath humble words. To overcome it, one must not consent to its attacks and must restrain its impulses (v. ABNEGAZIONE).