Question XXI: Whether a man ought to love himself out of charity

I ASSERT that the love of oneself is also included in the precept of Charity.

It is PROVED by the Saintly Doctors; for in the precept of the love of neighbor it is said: thou shalt love him as thyself; but we love our neighbor out of Charity: therefore by the same Charity also ourselves, as St. Aug. observes serm. 3. post Pentecost. and the Saintly Doct. dist. 28. q. 6. ad 2.

It is PROVED second by the Saintly Doctor, because to love God with the whole heart, with the whole soul, and with the whole mind is to love oneself. Therefore it is said Lucae 10. after the precepts of Charity have been handed down: Do this, and thou shalt live.

That a special precept need not have been handed down, the Saintly Doctor admonishes, because from natural inclination we are sufficiently inclined toward ourselves: For no man ever hated his own flesh. Ephes. 5. Therefore a third commandment was not necessary, as St. Augustine says Lib. 1. de doctrina Christiana, cap. 24.

Yet the Saintly Doctor NOTES, dist. 28. quest. 5. in the body, and quest. 6. there, that since Charity, properly speaking, is friendship, we can speak of Charity in a twofold way: in one way under the common aspect of friendship; and in this sense friendship toward oneself is not had, because friendship implies the union of several, as D. Dionysius says cap. 4. de divin. nominibus, part. 2.; but toward oneself for each one there is unity, which is more powerful than union with another. Therefore with a more sublime love than friendship we love ourselves; for as unity is the principle of union, so the love by which one loves himself is the form and root of friendship. For we have friendship toward others in this, that we bear ourselves toward them as toward ourselves; for it is said in 9. Eth. cap. 8. that the things of friendship which are toward another come from those which are toward oneself. In another way we can speak of Charity as it is the friendship of man with God principally,¹ and in consequence toward the things that are God's, among which is also man himself, who has Charity; and thus among the other things that he loves out of Charity, as pertaining to God, he loves also himself out of Charity. Thus Tannerus also discusses it disp. 2. quest. 3. dub. 1. ¹ Editor's note: the print reads 'de Charitate, pto vt est amicitia' — a defective letterform (apparently broken 'r' in 'pro'); rendered 'prout est' (insofar as it is).

From these understand what St. Gregory means homil. 27. in Evang. that Charity cannot be had as less than between two; whence he infers that Charity is not had toward oneself; clearly in the reason of friendship, as the Saintly Doctors expound it.