Sinful Self-Love
...is no evil greater than that of self-love. The winged children of self-love are self-praise, self-satisfaction, gluttony, unchastity, self-esteem, jealousy and the crown of all these, pride.
St. Hesychios, “On Watchfulness and Holiness,” #202
How are we to understand the fathers’ condemnation of “self-love”? As with the word “pride,” the connotation of “self-love” has shifted making it sound to our, contemporary ears at least, as if the fathers are recommending that we cultivate a lack of gratitude—or even disdain—for the gift of our own life.
While it’s dangerous to try and discern the psychological state of earlier eras, our era seems to place more emphasis on our psychological well-being than what we would have found in late Antiquity. Scholars and pundits can debate the particulars of the matter, but Christopher Lasch seems to me broadly correct when he writes that ours is a "therapeutic, not religious” culture.
While it’s dangerous to try and discern the psychological state of earlier eras, our era seems to place more emphasis on our psychological well-being than what we would have found in late Antiquity. Scholars and pundits can debate the particulars of the matter, but Christopher Lasch seems to me broadly correct when he writes that ours is a "therapeutic, not religious” culture. Unlike an earlier age, we “hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.”1
Understanding the patristic condemnation of self-love then requires an awareness of the significant shifts between the patristic era and our own in how we understand the spiritual life. To help clarify the difference the the fathers are talking about sinful self-love. While not an exact parallel, sinful self-love is something like what contemporary psychiatrists mean by Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy.” 2
While we might expect to see one, two, or even three or four of the defining symptoms of NPD in a person now and then, what psychiatry (and the fathers) are aiming at is something more serious because it is a deeper, broader part of the personality: a habitual and global “lack of empathy.” Or, to use more theological language, turning away from communion with God and neighbor.
…if the virtuous man feels towards his friend in the same way as he feels towards himself (for his friend is a second self)—then, just as a man's own existence is desirable for him, so, or nearly so, is his friend's existence also desirable.
Aristotle
Whether we call it NPD or [sinful] self-love, whether it is the result of genetic deficits, learned behavior, freely choosen, or some combination of these, my failure to see my neighbor as my second self3 makes me vulnerable to sins such as “gluttony, unchastity, self-esteem, jealousy and the crown of all these, pride” for while these are all, different sins, they all fall short of being an event of communion.
The glutton takes no real pleasure in eating much less does he experience it as an expression and celebration of hospitality. The unchaste individual degrades self and others sexually precisely because of a fundamental lack not of moral integrity but because of a fractured personality and poverty of self-knowledge and possession.4
To these the saint adds “self-esteem,5 jealousy, and the crown of all these, pride.” Whether taken singly or together, these are the characteristics of an individual at war with others because he is at war with himself. Once again, contemporary psychology is helpful here.
Karen Horney writes with great insight and compassion into the situation of “the neurotic” or the individual who motivated by a rigid view of self and others. “The neurotic,” she argues, “must adhere to his illusions about himself, cannot recognize limitations, the search for glory goes into the unlimited.”
The reason for this is glory (or “vainglory” to use the patristic term) rather than accomplishment, is “the main goal.” As a result,
...he becomes uninterested in the process of learning, of doing, or of gaining step by step — indeed, tends to scorn it. He does not want to climb a mountain; he wants to be on the peak. Hence he loses the sense of what evolution or growth means, even though he may talk about it.
Without intervention, sinful self-love results in the loss of inner freedom as the individual pursues “the creation of the idealized self [that] is possible only at the expense of truth about himself.”
Without intervention, sinful self-love results in the loss of inner freedom as the individual pursues “the creation of the idealized self [that] is possible only at the expense of truth about himself.”
This a cascade series of decisions in which to actualize the illusory self-image, “requires further distortions of truth, imagination being a willing servant to this end. Thereby, to a greater or lesser extent, he loses in the process his interest in truth, and the sense for what is true or not true — a loss that, among others, accounts for his difficulty in distinguishing between genuine feelings, beliefs, strivings, and their artificial equivalents (unconscious pretenses) in himself and in others. The emphasis shifts from being to appearing.”6
In condemning what I’m calling here sinful self-love, St. Hesychios is not counseling his readers to degrade themselves but the opposite. Sinful self-love is the default response of the monastic novice as well as those who are taking their first steps in the spiritual life. To borrow from Horney, the saint is pleding with me to reject the idealized view of myself that I have built on a foundation distortions and hostility to being.
Far from alienating me from self and others (both human and divine), putting sinful self-love to death frees me for “genuine feelings, beliefs,” and from the grip of striving after bread that “does not satisfy” (see, Isaiah 55:2). Intentionally or not, Horney’s words bring to mind St. Paul’s when he reminds the sinfully self-loving Corinthians of their true calling and worth.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
From the outside, the battle against sinful self-love looks wholly negative. It also looks frightening. If I don’t love myself, who will? Seen from within, however, it is the process by which we learn to “put away childish things” and to see evermore clearly what I now only glimpse “in a mirror, dimly” (see 1 Corinthians 13:12).
But this of course now leads us to another question. What is virtuous self-love? The answer, alas, will need to wait for another time.
Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979; reprint, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018).
According to Paroma Mitra and Dimy Fluyau, “Narcissistic Personality Disorder,” Nih.gov (StatPearls Publishing, March 13, 2023), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK556001/ typically, someone suffering from NPD will have “at least five of the following:
Have a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents).
Be preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
Believe that they are ‘special’ and can only be understood by other special or high-status people.
Require excessive admiration.
Have a sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment).
Take advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.
Lack empathy: or is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of them.
Show arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.”
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes:
…if the virtuous man feels towards his friend in the same way as he feels towards himself (for his friend is a second self)—then, just as a man's own existence is desirable for him, so, or nearly so, is his friend's existence also desirable. But, as we saw, it is the consciousness of oneself as good that makes existence desirable, and such consciousness is pleasant in itself. Therefore a man ought also to share his friend's consciousness of his existence, and this is attained by their living together and by conversing and communicating their thoughts to each other; for this is the meaning of living together as applied to human beings, it does not mean merely feeding in the same place, as it does when applied to cattle (1170b).
For more on the relationship between chastity and integrity see Erik Varden, Chastity (New York City, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023).
In the Philakolia, self-esteem means smugness, vanity, or self-complacence.
Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle toward Self-Realization (London: Routledge, 1950), 38
Years back I read a book "The danger of self-love" as I was searching for answers to an epidemic sweeping Christian circles of encouraging us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. The author (?) said it was to be able to forget about yourself altogether being taken up with something greater which you are excited about. The example he gave was shouting at a football match.
A very timely, astute post. Thank you.