Is self-love justifiable?

…Another problem is whether one ought to love oneself most or somebody else. People are critical of those whose chief concern is for themselves, and call them self-lovers derogatorily. Also a bad man is generally supposed to do everything from a selfish motive, and to be the more selfish the worse he is (e.g. he is accused of doing nothing unless he has to); whereas the good man acts from a fine motive (and the better the man the finer the motive), and for the sake of a friend, and neglects his own interest. But these theories are not borne out by the facts; nor is this surprising. For they say that a man should love his best friend most. But a man's best friend is the one who not only wishes him well but wishes it for his own sake (even though nobody will ever know it): and this condition is best fulfilled by his attitude towards himself - and similarly with all the other attributes that go to define a friend…. [A]ll friendly feelings for others are extensions of a man's feelings for himself. Besides, all the proverbial sayings agree on this point: 'Two friends, one soul', 'Friends share everything', 'Caring is sharing ', 'The knee is nearer than the shin ' [clichés from Aristotle's era]. All these sayings can be applied most aptly to oneself, because a man is his own best friend. Therefore he ought to love himself best. Naturally it is hard to say which of these opinions we should follow, since both have some plausibility.

Presumably, then, we should take such divergent arguments separately and try to distinguish how far and in what way each of them is true. Perhaps the difficulty would be cleared up if we discussed what meaning each side attaches to the word self-love. Those who give it a pejorative twist describe as self-loving those who assign themselves the larger share of money, public honors, and bodily pleasures, because most people have a craving for these, and set their hearts on them as the greatest goods, which also makes them objects of fierce competition. Well, those who try to get more than their share of these things gratify their desires and their feelings generally, and the irrational part of their soul; and such people are in the majority. Hence the word has be come a term of reproach, from the fact that the self-love of most people is a bad thing. Therefore those who are self-lovers in this sense are rightly reproached. And there is no doubt that most people regularly describe as self-lovers those who secure such advantages for themselves. For if anyone made it his constant endeavor to set an example in performing just or temperate or any other kind of virtuous actions, and in general always claimed the prerogative of acting honorably, certainly nobody would reproach him with being a self-lover.