Self-love Synonyms

But there is in man a faculty which takes into consideration all the springs of action, including self-love, and passes judgment upon them, approving some and condemning others.

He will not admit that there is any evidence of true virtue in the approbation of virtue and hatred of vice, in the workings of conscience or in the exercises of the natural affections; he thinks that these may all spring from self-love and the association of ideas, from " instinct " or from a " moral sense of a secondary kind " entirely different from " a sense or relish of the essential beauty of true virtue."

Indeed, we may say that an egoist must be doubly self-regulative, since rational self-love ought to restrain not only other impulses, but itself also; for as happiness is made up of feelings that result from the satisfaction of impulses other than self-love, any over-development of the latter, enfeebling these other impulses, must proportionally diminish the happiness at which self-love aims. If, then, it be admitted that human impulses are naturally under government, the natural claim of conscience or the moral faculty to be the supreme governor will hardly be denied.

The identification is slightly qualified in Hutcheson's posthumously published System of Moral Philosophy (1755), in which the general view of Shaftesbury is more fully developed, with several new psychological distinctions, including Butler's, separation of " calm " benevolence - as well as, after Butler, " calm self-love " - from the " turbulent " passions, selfish or social.

Calm self-love Hutcheson regards as morally indifferent; though he enters into a careful analysis of the elements of happiness,' in order to show that a true regard for private interest always coincides with the moral sense and with benevolence.