Section 8: True self-love

The question is also debated, whether a person should love himself or someone else the most. People criticize those who love themselves most, and call them self-lovers, using this as an epithet of disgrace, and a bad person seems to do everything for his own sake, and the more so the more wicked he is–and so people reproach him, for instance, with doing nothing of his own accord–while the good person acts for the sake of the noble, and the more so the better he is, and acts for his friend’s sake, and sacrifices his own interest.

But the facts clash with these arguments, and this is not surprising. For people say that one ought to love best one’s best friend, and one’s best friend is the person who wishes one well for one’s own sake, even if no one knows about it. Yet these characteristics are found most of all in a person’s attitude towards himself, and so are all the other characteristics by which a friend is defined. For, as we have said, it is from this relation to ourselves that all the characteristics of friendship have extended to our neighbors.

All the sayings, too, agree with this: for example, ‘a single soul,’ and ‘what friends have is common property,’ and ‘friendship is equality,’ and ‘charity begins at home.’ For all these marks will be found most of all in a person’s relation to himself. He is his own best friend and therefore ought to love himself best. It is, therefore, reasonable to ask: Which of the two views we should follow? [Is it good to love oneself or bad to love oneself?] For both views are plausible.

Perhaps we ought to mark off such arguments from each other and determine how far and in what respects each view is right. Now if we grasp the sense in which each view uses the phrase ‘lover of self,’ the truth may become evident.

Those who use “lover of self” as a term of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves the greater share of wealth, honors, and bodily pleasures. For these are what most people desire, and busy themselves about as though they were the best of all things, which is the reason, too, why they become objects of competition. So people who are primarily striving to get these sorts of things gratify their appetites and in general their feelings and the irrational element of the soul. And most people are of this nature (which is the reason why the epithet has come to be used as it is–it takes its meaning from the prevailing type of self-love, which is a bad one). It is just, therefore, that people who love themselves in this way are reproached for it.

It is plain that most people usually call those who put themselves first when it comes to objects of this sort “lovers of self.” For if a person were always anxious that he himself, above all things, should act justly, temperately, or in accordance with any other of the virtues, and in general were always to try to secure for himself what is noble, no one will call such a person a lover of self or blame him.

Yet such a person who strives to be virtuous would seem more than the other a lover of self. At all events, he assigns to himself the things that are noblest and best, and favors the most authoritative element in him and in all things obeys this. And just as a city or any other systematic whole is most properly identified with the most authoritative element in it, so is a person. Therefore, the person who loves this and favors it is most of all a lover of self.

Besides, a person is said to have or not have self-control according as his understanding rules his life, on the assumption that what each person is is his understanding. And the things people have done according to their rationality are thought to be most properly their own acts and to be voluntary acts. That this is the person himself, then, or is so more than anything else, is plain, and it is also plain that the good person loves this the most.

Thus it follows that the good and self-controlled person is most truly a lover of self. But such a person is a different kind of lover of self than someone who’s selfish is. Such a true lover of self is as different from a selfish person as living according to reason is different from living as passion dictates, and desiring what is noble from desiring what seems advantageous.

Those, then, who busy themselves in an exceptional degree with noble actions everyone approves and praises. And if all were to strive towards what is noble and strain every nerve to do the noblest deeds, everything would be as it should be for society, and everyone would secure for themselves the goods that are greatest, since virtue is the greatest of goods.

Therefore, it is necessary that the good person is a lover of self, since he benefits both himself and others by doing noble actions. But the wicked person can’t be a true lover of self. For the wicked person hurts both himself and others, by following his evil passions. In the case of the wicked person, what he does clashes with what he ought to do. But what the good person ought to do he does. For the understanding in each of its possessors chooses what is best for itself, and the good person obeys his understanding.

It is also true of the good person that he does many actions for the sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary dies for them. For he will throw away both wealth and honors, and in general the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself nobility. For he would prefer a short period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild enjoyment, a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of lived in a random way, and one great and noble action to many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless attain this result. It is, therefore, a great prize that they choose for themselves.

They will throw away wealth too on condition that their friends will gain more. For while such a person’s friend gains wealth, he himself achieves nobility. He is, therefore, assigning the greater good to himself. The same too is true of honor and office. All these things he will sacrifice to his friend, since this is noble and laudable for himself.

Rightly then is he thought to be good, since he chooses nobility before all else. But he may even give up actions to his friend. It may be nobler to become the cause of his friend’s acting than to act himself. In all the actions, therefore, that people are praised for, the good person is seen to assign to himself the greater share in what is noble. In this sense, then, as has been said, a person should be a lover of self. But a person should not be a lover of self in the selfish sense that most people are.