Why You Should Love Yourself

Loving yourself has a common following in popular culture, but why should you love yourself? In altruism, where the proper beneficiary of actions is the other, it may be acceptable to not love yourself, as you and your love is supposed to be subordinated to others. However, in egoism, loving yourself is a moral necessity. If you don’t love yourself, you’re neglecting your most important and intimate relationship. There are instances where you don’t love yourself, but these are instances where you’ve contradicted your love of self itself.

You should love yourself if you’re good. The good is that which one ought do. It would be improper for a good person not to love themselves, because that would mean by extension they don’t love the good, since the good must be practiced by an agent.  Even if you can do better, as long as you’re being good, you have no reason to dislike yourself. One can’t be responsible for things they don’t know, even if those things are virtues. If you’re a good person, it is assumed your habits are to commit good acts and any future good acts that you can commit will be committed.

In egoism, loving yourself is a moral aim. To hold yourself in high regard follows from the moral proclamation that you live for yourself. You are the one that thinks for you, acts for you, takes care of you, etc. It would be natural that you love yourself, as you’re the source of the resolution of your problems. You’re the source of your values and the standard by which you judge success. You’re existentially bound to yourself. Taking care of yourself and loving yourself go hand in hand and reinforce each other. If you didn’t love yourself, you would be abandoning your most intimate relationship. You’re meant to love yourself in egoism, and it should be a consistent aim.

To not love yourself is to put your status as a living being into question. You would have to not value yourself highly, which means not taking a great interest or concern in oneself. A person who does not think highly of oneself, the source of one’s values, doesn’t have an incentive to focus on oneself. They see themselves as secondary to other concerns, which puts the integrity of one’s life in question as it is subordinated to other things. Since you’re the locus and source of any appreciation of another thing, being secondary to other things undercuts you existentially and ultimately undercuts your appreciation of any other thing.

The only time you should not love yourself is when what you do contradicts your self-love. Murdering someone contradicts the sovereignty of your own life, as you can’t claim peace or safety in the way you deny it to others. Things like murder preclude a love for self by implication. It’s a contradiction to love yourself no matter what you do, because that would include you committing acts that contradict self love itself. You couldn’t say you love yourself as you brutally and unhealthily punish yourself for the punishment itself. It’s the same for many actions that a person may commit. Loving yourself doesn’t have an infinite extension of valid actions. There are certain actions which are better for loving yourself than others.

Loving yourself is a moral aim of egoism. It’s right to love good things and the thing that is the source of all of your values, yourself. Not loving yourself opens you to self neglect. You can not love yourself if you commit evil acts and acts that contradict loving yourself. Without self love, there is an emptiness.