Self-love

Peter J. Leithart December 30, 2010

In his book on Dostoevsky, Rowan Williams neatly catches the complex intertwining of the love of self, other, and God:

“To love the freedom of the other [that is, the otherness of the other] is also to love oneself appropriately – as an agent of God’s giving of liberty to the neighbor, as a God-like ‘author’ of their identity; that is, not as a dictator of their fate but as a guarantor of their open future.”

Peter J. Leithart

Peter J. Leithart is president of the Theopolis Institute, Birmingham, Alabama. He posts regularly at his Substack, Notes from Beth-Elim.

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