Self-love

Use in the book

The household argument gives each person a figurative kingdom in which faults can be at ease and self-love can contribute to happiness. But the same domestic life continually requires sacrificing those rights. The relinquishment is valuable because it is voluntary and can become a further enjoyment. The two shorter notes make satisfied self-love tender and personify grateful self-love giving thanks to providence. These effects do not determine whether its gratitude is generous or self-serving. The compound must therefore remain distinct from both a blanket condemnation of pride and a modern prescription of healthy self-esteem.

Places to read

1. I, p. 127–128, entry 6, ¶1Domestic privileges and their voluntary sacrifice accommodate self-love.
2. II, p. 482, entry 1, ¶1Content, grateful self-love thanks providence.
3. II, p. 581, entry 8, ¶1Satisfied self-love is called tender.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses self-love for both spaced amour propre and hyphenated amour-propre. It preserves the condition content or satisfied rather than attributing tenderness to self-love under every circumstance. No moral verdict is added to the thanksgiving personification.

Use in the book

Traherne refuses to condemn self-love simply. It is a condition of receiving anything as good and of being moved by gratitude. God’s generosity satisfies that concern and opens it outward: the recipient comes to delight in the benefactor’s goodness and then in the happiness of others. The pool must be filled if it is to overflow.

This is an account of transformation, not permission for unlimited self-preference. Self-love alone is dishonourable; perfected charity may love another more than oneself. Heaven completes the movement by removing the necessities and distractions that divide earthly concern. Divine self-love provides the exemplary unity: God loves himself as the lover of others, so his glory and their welfare coincide.

Places to read

1. IV.49Gratitude allows self-love to issue in love of God beyond self.
2. IV.55Self-love is distinguished from isolated and mercenary self-endedness.
3. IV.57Love of others makes their joys available to oneself.
4. IV.60Earthly need complicates the unity perfected in heaven.
5. IV.65Divine self-love is explained through love of the beloved.

In this edition

The hyphenated headword follows the attested form. Do not translate every self-love as selfishness: the distinction from self-endedness is the very point of IV.55.