Right self love

Abstract

An adequate account of right self love must begin with an analysis of the self who is to love herself because the moral life is not simply a matter of doing good, but of being and becoming good. Chapter Three argued that as the person takes up her self-relation she responds to God's offer of the divine self. Self love can be rightly or wrongly enacted. Right self love, then, designates the morally proper form of self-relation. This chapter (1) explores the relation of self love and love for God; (2) argues that right self love is only actualized and assessed socially and historically, and, accordingly, explores the relation between self love and love for neighbor, and between self love and social justice; (3) and argues that self love is actualized and assessed in one's concrete acts and relations, such that right self love consists in the moral good of embodied integrity. This chapter continues reading Rahner and Tillich hermeneutically. By thinking with them we arrive at two insights into moral goodness. First, we see how the very structure of the person's experience of herself, mediated through what is other, arises in her asking about herself: the person comes to herself by understanding herself in relation to her world and to others. The mediated character of self-relation offsets solipsism and subjectivism, because the self's relation to itself can only be evaluated morally in terms of her acting in the world, and, specifically, in her relations with others.