Love (Self)

LOVE (SELF). - In the sense familiar to spiritual authors, it is the inordinate love of oneself, by which one is led to seek one's own good without subordinating it to God and without sufficient care for the good of one's neighbor, as right reason and the divine law require. According to St. Augustine, amor sui is a remnant of sin in all men (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 inordinate love of self, often called 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. Affirming: "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 will not conformed to that of God, is the root of all sins (Sermo in Resurrect. Dom., 3). Self-love can even 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 scale of values, the lower part of man seeks only his own sensible good, pleasant or useful, and this inclination was accentuated by original sin.

The consequences of this sin were exaggerated by the first Protestants and by the Jansenists, in opposition to the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians who denied or minimized them. The Jansenist exaggerations surface in Pascal's Pensées regarding the I: "Every I 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 in the sea."

Two other doctrines stand opposed, utilitarianism and quietism, between and above which Christian and Catholic morality appears as a summit. Utilitarianism, called by spiritual authors practical naturalism, does not recognize how much there is of disorder in self-love, in which it sees rather a force to be utilized, but which must be moderated. This system reduces to the useful and the pleasant the honest good, the object of virtue and duty, worthy of being loved for itself and more than ourselves independently of the advantages and pleasure that follow from it: "Do what you must, come what may." Utilitarianism leads to pride, which leads one to make oneself the center of all who live around us. Quietism, on the other hand, in opposition to the theory of interest, wished to condemn every interested love, even that of eternal recompense, as if there were a disorder in Christian hope by the fact that it is less perfect than charity. Christian hope was poorly understood, by which we do not subordinate God to ourselves, but desire God for ourselves as for our neighbor, subordinating ourselves to God, the ultimate end of the act of hope.

St. Thomas formulates Catholic doctrine in a precise and profound way, 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 it were otherwise, the natural inclination of our will, as it comes from God the author of our nature, would no longer be right, and infused charity would have to not perfect it but destroy it. Undoubtedly original sin has attenuated this happy inclination of our nature, but it has not suppressed it. It follows that, loving well 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 a reprehensible self-love and a legitimate one: "the love of self can be conceived in three ways in relation 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 man in a state of grace loves himself for and in God (so as to glorify him in time and in eternity); 3) it is distinct from charity, without opposing it, when one loves oneself considering formally one's own good without sin, or at least without sinning mortally, 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 authors have treated at length of self-love, to show how it subsists, despite the state of grace, in beginners and also in the progressing and the advanced, particularly under the form of spiritual pride or of immoderate seeking of spiritual consolations. This demonstrates the necessity of abnegation and humility, of the active purifications of the senses, the intellect, the memory, the will, and also the necessity of passive purifications to eliminate the rust deposited at the bottom of our faculties, which impedes the contemplation of divine things and intimate union with God. The great ascetic doctors illustrate this doctrine. St. Francis de Sales shows excellently that self-love often deceives us, exercising its own passions under the name of zeal; it is often violent, turbulent, impetuous; it blinds reason; it hides under humble words. To conquer it one must not consent to its attacks and must repress its impulses (v. ABNEGATION).

Reginaldo Garrigou-Lagrange