It took a global beauty product campaign with a well-worn signature phrase to focus Simon Blackburn’s philosophical mind on the issue of self-love. He tells Joe Gelonesi that although we seem to be in the midst of a narcissism epidemic, we might be worth it after all.

Philosopher Simon Blackburn has been known to turn his highly attuned analytical radar to ideas of the times. His work on lust and moral goodness has brought him very much into open view, feeding a public hunger for clarity on the things that seem to matter most: flesh, blood and feeling.

Blackburn’s interest in the life of the passions is partly a consequence of his long-term attention to the ideas of that Scottish colossus David Hume, who was big on desire, emotion and sentiment. Hume understood the ongoing stoush between heart and mind, famously pronouncing that ‘reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them’.

The unselfconscious person goes on telling jokes no one finds funny, their manners are bad, they cause offence. So self-consciousness is often an alertness to the impression we’re making on other people.

Hume’s observations offer a vital tool of analysis in the era of marketing and advertising, so much of which relies on entrapping and channelling those all-too-familiar raw impulses and inclinations.

And so to that advertisement, where Blackburn’s Humean take collides head-on with a modern global marketing campaign.

‘I found myself getting very despondent and angry at the famous L’Oreal byline “because you’re worth it”,’ says Blackburn. ‘I didn’t quite understand my own reaction, so I went about interrogating myself.’

Far from lifting him to new heights of self-esteem, the advertisement led Blackburn to glimpse ‘a darker, more wicked world’. In this cosmos, lying is concealed and the opposite of what is being presented is in fact the truth.

‘There were other things I did not understand. Look at how people are portrayed: they sneer; they’re arrogant; they look at you as if you’re a worm. If you look at a catwalk show the models look like they despise being there, and they despise you. Why would that kind of arrogance be attractive?’

In trying to answer that question, Blackburn suddenly found himself on the trail to a larger, altogether more threatening beast with ancient antecedents.

In the Greek myth of Narcissus, a very beautiful boy catches sight of himself reflected in a stream. The rest is mythological history, and gives us a way of describing a condition of maladaptive self-absorption. Psychiatrists have put the category to handy use.

Now, the modern fear is that our young have fallen into that abyss of self-love. Psychologist Jean Twenge spoke recently on All in the Mind about the increase in the number of young people being diagnosed with the condition. Researchers in the USA have found that young people’s average scores against narcissistic personality tests are significantly higher than in previous generations.

Read more: Human nature and science

Related: An epidemic of narcissism

Spurred by the L’Oreal byline, Blackburn pulled closer to the narcissist’s pool to see for himself what the condition entailed. The nearer he came, the clearer he could see the connections between a family of emotions and attitudes, of which narcissism is perhaps the most unvirtuous relative.

‘I think now it is spread over a whole spectrum of vanity, a lot of words not used very carefully: there is vanity, there is conceit, and there is narcissism,’ he says.

Blackburn carefully separates the members of the Narcissus family to better comprehend their hold on us.

‘Vanity strikes me as a craving for the good opinion of others, or a fear that they’re not thinking well of you. By the time you get to conceit you get a person who begins to be indifferent to the voices of other people, [they are] cocooned in their own self esteem. If other people don’t appreciate them, then that’s other people’s problem.’

From here the family tree gets dangerous.

‘Finally, the narcissist is completely self-absorbed. He doesn’t even recognise the social world. In the myth this kills him because we are social animals and eventually we only deceive ourselves if we think that we can live without others.'

A simple set of relations, perhaps. But a philosopher of Blackburn’s pedigree knows not to stop at the obvious. It would be far too easy to condemn narcissism as a necessary final cause. Self-love in the age of the selfie need not lead us into temptation.

In fact, Blackburn sees a useful side to self-regard. Its very existence signals a sense of self-consciousness which in the right proportion can help navigate us through a messy social universe.

‘A lack of self-consciousness is sometimes a pitfall,’ he says. ‘The unselfconscious person goes on telling jokes no one finds funny, their manners are bad, they cause offence. So self-consciousness is often an alertness to the impression we’re making on other people. You need that to be a fully paid up member of society.’

Blackburn cites the recollections of Charles Darwin’s granddaughter Gwen Raverat, who described her uncle William (Darwin’s son) as one of the least self-conscious people ever known.

‘He hardly knew he had a self at all,' said Raverat. 'There is a story about him at my grandfather’s funeral at Westminster Abbey. He was sitting in the front seat ... and he felt a draught on his head; so he put his black gloves to balance on the top of his skull, and sat through the service with the eyes of the nation upon him.’

The aim of the story is to show that self-love engaged properly is an essential ingredient for living well in close proximity to others. It can also save one from a whole lot of embarrassment.

Of course, finding that golden mean is the tricky part.

‘It reminds us that there are two ways of going wrong,’ says Blackburn. ‘One can value something more than it deserves or less than it deserves, and in most contexts each kind of mistake can bring its penalties.’

In this, he relies on the analysis of 18th century French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who already did some hard yards on this very question in his novel Emile.

‘The distinction that structures Rousseau’s work is that between amour de soi and amour propre. The former is honest, self-interest issuing in our desire for basic wellbeing. There is nothing regrettable about that. Amour propre is a different, more dangerous, much hungrier beast. At its worst it acts as a voice in our ear telling us we have a right to the deference and humility of others.’

For the love of self Listen to Simon Blackburn tackle the philosophical question of how much self esteem is too much.

The propre version is starting to look like the personality disorder unearthed by the US researchers. And that’s something Blackburn warns against. But amour de soi does have a perfectly legitimate place in our lives.

Part of the challenge seems to be the way we discuss narcissism. The mythical Narcissus is completely cut off from his social world. His self-love erects a barrier through which no other human can penetrate. He is an island. He does not try to one-up nor arrogantly gaze down; rather, he doesn’t even know that there is anyone else.

Yet narcissism as loosely applied in our time refers to those who know all too well that others exist, and believe that those others exist to serve the narcissist.

This accusation is often thrown at Generation Y, seen as an entire cohort in love with itself, wanting the rest of us to wait on them hand and foot. Vain? Maybe. Conceited? Possibly. But narcissistic? Well, not in the classical sense.

Ultimately, Blackburn is concerned by the dangers of moralism when it comes to the conversation around narcissism. In his reckoning, unless we untangle all the family members of self-love, the conclusion is always bad. But it need not be in every instance. Self-love can be abused, but it can also be used in ways vital to human flourishing. In fact, as Blackburn proposes, we might be more worth it than we sometimes care to admit.

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