The moment that virtue begins to be born in the self and in...

The moment that virtue begins to be born in the self and in the friend with whom one also shares in the mutually conditioned self-love, this love is intensified by the lovability of the nascent virtue element that has become detectable both to oneself and to the other.[^5] The classic concern that virtue must be loved for its own sake, indifferent to the desires of the self, prove to be entirely wrong-headed; that until the self awakens to the desire for virtue and begins to embody it through self-cultivation of virtue, virtue cannot truly begin to be realized.

Indeed, the affinity of the human being with another human being is the ground of friendship, such the self-love and other-love cannot be wholly distinguished from one another. Just as true self-love will not be tolerant of the failures of the self to be virtuous, so too will the friend be intolerant toward failures to pursue the same by the friend.

Although Kant's reasoning on this matter called for duty to supersede all other virtues, this is clearly not a balance tending toward the favoring of love and mercy. His overwhelming concern with self-conceit and arrogance hardly leaves any room for rightful self-love. Kant's goal was an objective grounding of morality, not a yet higher principle of mercy and love.

But like fundamental concern with the law, the mature, highly differentiated and cultivated self that corresponds at a creaturely level to the Creator Self that is the unique deity, is completely lost on Kant.[^6] Indeed, Kant does not believe that a proper self-love ever exists.

Benevolence is only a duty; and while he is most concerned with duty as an invariable cause of right action - love or affection being to easily disturbed to be relied upon, even the pleasure of seeing other takes joy in one's benevolence toward them could just as well be taken as a matter of indifference.[^7] Thus, while Kant is guided by his reduction of human agency to that of duty and virtue as the unwavering commitments to fulfill one's duty - objectively and universalistically[^8], he fails to give a proper account of the person as a highly affective self comparable at the creaturely level to the Creator.

Suffice it to say that Kant can affirm self-respect along with respect for others, but as helpful and laudable as his cultivation of autonomous agency is, it does not conceive largely nor intricately enough of the self as ethical agent.