Twenty Ninth Distinction

Single Question. Whether Everyone is Bound to Love himself most after God

1. About the twenty ninth distinction I aska whether everyone is bound to love himself most after God.

a.a [Interpolation] About the twenty ninth distinction, where the Master deals with the order of love of charity, one question is asked, namely whether...

2. That he is not:

In Ethics 9.8.1168a29-30 the self-lover is blamed, and much is said there on the matter.

3. Further, Gregory in Homily 40 on Luke 10 (“he sent them out two by two”) says, “No one is said properly to have charity for himself, but in order that his love may properly be called ‘charity’ he tends by love toward another.”

4. On the contrary:

The measure is more perfect than the measured; but love of oneself is the measure of love of one’s neighbor, according to Matthew 20.39, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

I. To the Question

5. From what was said in the previous question, namely about how charity has regard to one’s neighbor [d.28 nn.11-15], the solution of this question is plain. For charity, because it is a principle of tending immediately to God by a direct act, is a principle of reflecting on the acts by which one tends to God - and in this too, as was said there [n.11], it is a principle of wanting all to love God who are able to love, when their love is welcome to God and not displeasing; and thereby it is a principle of loving one’s neighbor. Now among all the acts of the same idea, the principle of tending to God is a principle of very immediately reflecting on the act that it elicits; this act is the act whereby he who has charity loves God; therefore, immediately after God, he wills from charity that he love that whereby he tends to God, or whereby he wills himself to love God. In willing himself to love God he loves himself from charity, because he loves the good of justice for himself;     therefore , after love of God he immediately loves himself from charity.

6. There is also a confirmation, that when one weighs, after the infinite Good (in which is the most perfect idea of goodness), all the ideas of goodness and unity that are ideas of what is lovable, there arises within oneself another very great idea, namely the idea of unity that is perfect identity. For anyone is naturally inclined to love himself after the infinite Good; a natural inclination is always correct; therefore etc     .

II. To the Principal Arguments

7. To the first argument [n.2] I say that the Philosopher there explains himself, about how blamable excessive love of self is but not moderate love of self.

8. To the second argument [n.3] I say that everyone who loves from charity loves himself in a way ordered to the infinite Good, because he loves for himself the act or habit whereby he tends to that Good; and in this way does his love tend to another, in that he tends to God as to the principal object of his act and yet he has charity toward himself, but not as final object, as proximate object, ordered to the ultimate and first object that is distinct from it.