I. Reply to the question
Ordinatio III, d. 29, q. un.
"Is each person required to love himself the most, after God?"
1 Concerning distinction 29 I ask whether each person is required to love himself the most, after God.
2 Arguments for the negative:
In Ethics IX [1168a29–30] the lover of self is disparaged. There is a great deal on this topic there.
3 Furthermore, Gregory, commenting on Luke [10:1], "He sent them out two by two," says, "No one is properly said to have charity toward himself; rather, if one's love is to be truly called 'charity,' one tends toward another through that love."1
4 On the contrary:
A measure is more perfect than what it measures, and love of oneself is the measure of love of neighbor, according to Matthew 20:39: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
I. Reply to the question 5 The answer to this question is clear from what was said in the previous question about how charity has to do with one's neighbor [d. 28 nn. 11–15]. For charity, in virtue of being a principle for tending immediately to God by a direct act, is a principle for reflecting on those acts by which one tends to God. And thereby, as I said there, it is a principle for willing that anyone who has the capacity to love God, and whose friendship is pleasing (or not displeasing) to God, love God; that is how it is a principle for loving one's neighbor. Now among all the acts of the same character, the principle of tending toward God is most immediately the principle for reflecting on the act that one elicits; that is the act by which the one who has charity loves God.
Therefore, after God, one immediately wills through charity to love that through 1 Gregory, Homiliae 40 in Evangelia I hom. 17 n. 1.