So IVp20 suggests, as IVp44s does, that consciously trying to preserve oneself is right and neglecting to preserve oneself is wrong.
They quote Spinoza's statement that "The [effort] to preserve oneself is the primary and sole basis of virtue".
Velthuysen's Dissertatio is an unabashed defense of Hobbes' thought, in which the duty to preserve oneself is given pride of place (esp. Sect. XIII).
As Spinoza puts it, "it is one thing, I say, to defend oneself, to preserve oneself, to give judgment, etc., by right, another thing to defend and preserve oneself in the best way and to give the best judgment" (TP 5/1).
In his extensive ethnographic study on residents, Mizrahi identified three main defensive attitudes: denying that an error occurred, discounting part of one's own responsibility while looking for and blaming any scapegoat, and finally distancing to preserve oneself when other defenses do not work (e.g. "Everyone makes mistakes").
Any efforts done by a hurt person, like defense mechanisms to preserve oneself from getting hurt and remain sane, should be appreciated but not necessarily agreed with if the acts done aren't right.
Infidelity can be corrosive in marriages worth preserving, and guarding oneself against sexual deceit is a bipartisan practice.
Absolute, attainment-relative, and shortfall-relative all represent plausible positions on what one could consider as being an inequality preserving change in health one need not hold that view oneself, merely acknowledge that someone else could.
Homosexuality gets barely a mention in the Bible, compared with caring for the poor and the sick, preserving God's creation, and loving one's neighbor as oneself.
Attributing greater concerns to others than to oneself reflects optimistic attribution bias, a protective response enabling expression of concern while preserving "face" (22).
