If we could go on and talk about how a man must love himself, we must first examine how this relates to “being” (ontos) more generally. A philosophy of being may help us here, or perhaps some aid from moral theology or religious anthropology, should we be interested in the matter empirically. We, men of reason, may turn to these areas – though helpful they may be for purposes of investigation – but we compromise (or neglect) the truth and depth of the divine commandment: “… love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39, Mk. 12:31).
If you look carefully, you’ll notice a presupposition behind the statement: one that is more broad and the other which is rather obvious. The first consists of a presupposition that exists as an axiology in a wider system of values where the “commandment of love” is legitimized as a norm. The other is the pressuposition that one loves one’s neighbor as he loves himself. Both are different sides of the same coin, yet equal in subtlety and significance. We can look more closely into what our Lord is saying through here.
This “wider range of values” entails norms which are expressed differently than the short and sweet “Love your neighbors,” but are nonetheless consistent and (as I said) legitimized under the New Testament commandment. For example, “love others” may be more generally expressed under the norm: “A person is an entity of a sort to which the only and adequate to relate to is love” (also known as a “personalistic norm”). Therefore, on a general level this is also consistent with the understanding of love as viewing another person as an end and not a means; not as instrumental or subservient to some higher end (be it personal gain, pleasure, etc).
Now this is just good ol’ fashioned Catholic moral theology; a very helpful but incomplete side of the coin without another half. I believe we are missing (though certainly not setting aside) what Kierkegaard calls “the tension of the eternal.” That is, man’s love for God should not be as he loves himself, but rather with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Instead, you must your love your neighbor as you love yourself. The difference lies in the obedient adoration that one pays to God in love – obeying even if that meant personal harm. This kind of love rests in the implicit commitment that God’s ways/reasons are higher than mine, that God is not answerable to me for justification of His actions, and so forth. It’s my job to simply obey in love.
Where does this “tension of the eternal” come in? Perhaps you missed it. This short phrase, as yourself, wraps itself intimately with our notion of loving another person. One need not spend hours meditating and exercising their brains about this phrase (so they think), and yet reflection shows that its depth is truly the stronger. We, just like Jacob and God, must wrestle with each other.
This commandment stands as a rejection of the rebellion men would typically give when their world is broken and despair is rampant. Man rebels when he (through the gradual and increasing awareness of self and others, of becoming a person and etc) comes across meaning in his life and yet rejects what he was fundamentally set out to be (as made in the image of God). All men see and/or come across this meaning and yet reject it. They experience that “inner ache,” because they are “existentially bored” or “spiritually starved.” Yet, love is the renunciation of the primacy of carnal desires and passions over other persons and now, reversely, regards the person as an end and not my desires.
A finishing paragraph from spiritual master Thomas Merton:
This matter of “salvation” is, when seen intuitively, a very simply thing. But when we analyze it, it turns into a complex tangle of paradoxes. We become ourselves by dying to ourselves. We gain only what we give up, and if we give up everything we gain everything. We cannot find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others, yet at the same time before we can go out to others we must first find ourselves. . . The only effective answer to the problem of salvation must therefore reach out to embrace both extremes of a contradiction at the same time. Hence that answer must be supernatural. That is why all the answers that are not supernatural are imperfect: for they only embrace one of the contradictory terms, and they can always be denied by the other. . .
Man is divided against himself and against God by his own selfishness, which divides him against his brother. This division cannot be healed by a love that places itself only on one side of the rift. Love must reach over to the both sides and draw them together. . .” (No Man Is An Island)
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