Abstract

One might wonder whether the essence of love involves self-transcendence. If it does, then philosophers who speak of self-love could not really be addressing love at all. Perhaps they address a related phenomenon, maybe even a good, positive reality, but not love itself. Since St. Thomas Aquinas speaks to the legitimacy of the love of self, philosophers who argue the essence of love involves self-transcendence criticize the scholastic’s position. This is the exact criticism Dietrich von Hildebrand advances in The Nature of Love. This paper defends Aquinas against von Hildebrand’s suggestion that “self-love” is not really love at all. I will argue that, based on both natural and supernatural principles, Aquinas’s notion of the love of self, as far as it relates to the love of God, involves transcendence.