Can you love others without loving yourself?

At one point, I defined love as "being willing to work for the happiness of another". I also pointed out that it's, in general, an internal definition. You can use it easily to decide that you do, or don't, love someone, and you can use it to determine what you feel you should do to be loving, but it's not something you can use to say "soandso doesn't love PersonX." You could guess, and probably guess with a great deal of accuracy, but the key word is happiness. We can only guess what is "happiness", sometimes even for ourselves, let alone someone else.

In alt.callahans, there's a discussion of whether it's essential to love yourself to love another. That's an old question, and it's stated as nearly axiomatic. Well, is it true?

On the face of it, you'd say "no, it's not. You can work for the happiness of another without loving yourself."

Ah, but then there's a question... are you truly willing to work for the happiness of another, if you're not willing to work for your own happiness?

If you don't love yourself, if you're not willing to do what's right by yourself, if you're not trying to create what is happy/good for you, what is your will driven by?

If someone puts a gun to your head, and tells you to do something immoral, you're not considered "willing" to do it by most standards. Now, whether you 'should', or not, that's arguable. And, it's probably unkind to say "well, you were willing to do that instead of dying!" While strictly true, unless the immoral action you performed seemed likely to cost another person's life, it's often been accepted that an immoral action may be performed to save a life (in this case, to save your life).

Fear does not, in our normal consideration, make you willing.

Now, you could think, from that, that I'm claiming fear is the only motivation that people who do not love themselves could have to do something that is otherwise "loving". I'm not... but I do think that fear is a good representative of motivations.

You see, if there's a good motivation for this loving action, well, remember, a people who don't love themselves won't work for their own happiness/betterment. If they are willing to work for their own betterment, then there *IS* some level of love they have for themselves.

And the bad ones... well, like fear, most of them don't count as "willingness".

So, while you can act loving without loving yourself, it can be said that you can't truly love someone else unless you love yourself.

(John now tries to think of a good ending line, but the last time he did psuedo html "mode = forrestgump" and that's all I have to say about that "/mode", well, Livejournal took it as real html, and ignored it as an unknown tag. Sigh.)

Can you love others without loving yourself?

At one point, I defined love as "being willing to work for the happiness of another". I also pointed out that it's, in general, an internal definition. You can use it easily to decide that you do, or don't, love someone, and you can use it to determine what you feel you should do to be loving, but it's not something you can use to say "soandso doesn't love PersonX." You could guess, and probably guess with a great deal of accuracy, but the key word is happiness. We can only guess what is "happiness", sometimes even for ourselves, let alone someone else.

In alt.callahans, there's a discussion of whether it's essential to love yourself to love another. That's an old question, and it's stated as nearly axiomatic. Well, is it true?

On the face of it, you'd say "no, it's not. You can work for the happiness of another without loving yourself."

Ah, but then there's a question... are you truly willing to work for the happiness of another, if you're not willing to work for your own happiness?

If you don't love yourself, if you're not willing to do what's right by yourself, if you're not trying to create what is happy/good for you, what is your will driven by?

If someone puts a gun to your head, and tells you to do something immoral, you're not considered "willing" to do it by most standards. Now, whether you 'should', or not, that's arguable. And, it's probably unkind to say "well, you were willing to do that instead of dying!" While strictly true, unless the immoral action you performed seemed likely to cost another person's life, it's often been accepted that an immoral action may be performed to save a life (in this case, to save your life).

Fear does not, in our normal consideration, make you willing.

Now, you could think, from that, that I'm claiming fear is the only motivation that people who do not love themselves could have to do something that is otherwise "loving". I'm not... but I do think that fear is a good representative of motivations.

You see, if there's a good motivation for this loving action, well, remember, a people who don't love themselves won't work for their own happiness/betterment. If they are willing to work for their own betterment, then there *IS* some level of love they have for themselves.

And the bad ones... well, like fear, most of them don't count as "willingness".

So, while you can act loving without loving yourself, it can be said that you can't truly love someone else unless you love yourself.

(John now tries to think of a good ending line, but the last time he did psuedo html "mode = forrestgump" and that's all I have to say about that "/mode", well, Livejournal took it as real html, and ignored it as an unknown tag. Sigh.)