culte du moi

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French culte du moi (“cult of the self”). Introduced by Maurice Barrès (1862-1923) in his trilogy Le Culte du moi (1888-1891).

Noun

culte du moi (uncountable)

1. (philosophy) The cult of the ego; ego worship.
   • 1915, The Library, Oxford University Press, page 119:

     However, after a while, Barrès seems to have felt that the 'Culte de moi' was scarcely satisfactory as a rule of life, and in 1897, with 'Les deracinés,' began a new series of three novels under the collective title, 'Roman de l'énergie nationale.'

   • 1911 February, Cornelia A. P. Comer, “A Letter to the Rising Generation”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     The culte du moi is one thing when it is representative, when one rhapsodizes one's self haughtily as a unit of the democratic mass, as Whitman undoubtedly did; and quite another when it is narrowly personal, a kind of glorification of the petty, personal attributes of young John Smith, used by him to conceal from himself the desirability; but that is what young John Smith, who calls himself a Whitmanite, is making of it.

   • 2018, Peter J. Gorday, Pure Love, Pure Poetry, Pure Prayer, Wipf & Stock Publishers, →ISBN, page 158:

     The process of "elevations" must stamp out the "culte de moi" and replace it with the "culte de non-moi".