AMOUR (PROPRE).—In the sense familiar to spiritual writers, it is the inordinate love of self, by which one is inclined to seek one’s own good without subordinating it to God and without sufficient care for the good of one’s neighbour, as right reason and the divine law require. According to St Augustine, amor sui is a remnant of sin in all (De Civ. Dei, V, 14); from it arise excessive desire for praise and the lust for domination (ibid., I, 19, 30). As St Thomas shows (Sum. Theol. 1. 2. 2a, q. 77, a. 5), from this inordinate self-love, often called selfishness (v.), in Latin cupiditas, there arise “the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, the pride of life” (1 Jn 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 selfish love, when it becomes one’s own 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 the scale of values, the lower part of man seeks only his own sensible, pleasurable, or useful good, and this inclination was heightened 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 surface in Pascal’s Pensées regarding the self: “Every self is the enemy and would be the tyrant of all others.” Similarly, La Rochefoucauld in his Maximes: “Virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost 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 writers practical naturalism, does not acknowledge what is disordered in self-love, seeing in it rather a force to be harnessed, though one that must be moderated. This system reduces 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 that follow from it, to the merely useful and pleasurable: “Do what you must, come what may.” Utilitarianism leads to pride, which makes one the centre 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 reward, as though there were disorder in Christian hope because it is less perfect than charity. Christian hope was misunderstood, for we do not subordinate God to ourselves but desire God for ourselves as for our neighbour, subordinating ourselves to God, the ultimate end of the act of hope.
St Thomas formulates the 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 naturally inclined also to love God more than itself, just as in our body 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 it comes from God the author of our nature, would no longer be upright, and infused charity would have to destroy rather than perfect II. Undoubtedly original sin has weakened this happy inclination of our nature, but has not suppressed II. Hence it follows that, by loving well the higher part of himself, man loves his Creator still more.
According to St Thomas (Sum. Theol., 2ª 2ªe 2ae, q. 19, a. 6), a blameworthy self-love must be distinguished from a legitimate one: “self-love can 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 man in a state of grace loves himself for and in God (so as to glorify Him in time and 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 mortal sin, that is, without turning away from God.” The Gospel itself teaches that there is a legitimate self-love, since it commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Spiritual writers have treated at length of selfish love to show how it persists, despite the state of grace, in beginners and even in those making progress and the perfect, particularly under 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 senses, the intellect, the memory, and the will, and also the necessity of passive purifications to remove the rust deposited deep within our faculties, which hinders the contemplation of divine things and intimate union with God. The great ascetical doctors illustrate this doctrine. St Francis de Sales shows very well that selfish love often deceives us, exercising its passions under the name of zeal; it is often violent, turbulent, precipitate; it crushes reason; it hides beneath humble words. To overcome it, one must not yield to its attacks and must repress its impulses (v. ABNEGATION).