Søren Kierkegaard on Self, Love, and Self-love (Text in Description)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2020-10-08

Soren Abaye Kierkegaard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard

"Works of Love" by Søren Kierkegaard

"When it is said: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself,' therein is contained  what is presupposed, that every man loves himself. Is it possible for anyone to misunderstand this, as if it were the intention of Christianity to proclaim self-love as a prescriptive right? On the contrary, it is its purpose to wrest self-love away from us human beings. This implies loving one's self; but if one must love his neighbour as himself, then the command, like a pick, wrenches open the lock of self-love and thereby wrests it away from a man.
  
This as yourself does not waver in its aim, and with the firmness of the eternal it critically penetrates to the innermost hiding place where a man loves himself; it does not leave self-love the slightest excuse or the tiniest escape-hatch. As Jacob limped after having struggled with God, so shall self-love be broken if it has struggled with this phrase, which nevertheless does not seek to teach a man not to love himself but in fact rather seeks to teach him proper self-love. 

Therefore -- as yourself. Suppose the most cunning deceiver who has ever in order, if possible, to have the opportunity of using many words and becoming loquacious (for then the deceiver would quickly conquer), were temptingly to question the royal law year in and year out, 'How shall I love my neighbour?' then the terse command, unchanged, will continue to repeat the short phrase, 'as yourself.' And if any deceiver has -- deceived himself throughout his whole life by all sorts of verbosity concerning this subject, the eternal will only hold him to the terse word of the law, as yourself. No one, to be sure, will be able to escape this command. If its as yourself comes as close to the life of self-love as is possible, then one's neighbour is again a qualification as fatally close to self-love as possible. Self-love itself perceives that it is an impossibility to shirk this. The only escape is the one which the Pharisees in their time also tried in order to justify themselves: to let it be doubtful who one's neighbour is -- in order to get him out of one's life."

Works of Love
Author: Soren Kierkegaard
Publisher: HarperCollins
Copyright HarperCollins, 2009
Pages: 34-37

Original here, courtesy of Dorcas Williams: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC43t6gMm8otGN7OONLKRRxw