Familial ties are only strong and beneficial when they are not only familial, but religious also, when all the members of the family believe in the same God and his law.
Without this, the family is a source of suffering, not joy.
Familial egotism is more cruel than personal egotism. A person who is ashamed to sacrifice the good of another for himself alone thinks it his obligation to exploit other people’s misfortunes and needs for the good of his family.
The good of the family is the most common and unjust justification for one’s bad deeds.
Miserliness, corruption, oppression of workers, dishonest schemes—all this is justified by a love for one’s family.
Familial and national ties cannot and must not limit the soul. From the day of his birth, a human being is surrounded by a small number of people, whose gentleness produces in him a feeling of love for humankind. But when familial and national ties become exclusive and thereby exclude the common demands of humankind, then, instead of being the educators of the heart, they become its grave.
— Channing
The love for one’s family is a selfish feeling which can therefore cause, but not justify, unjust and unkind deeds.
Some people told him, “Your mother and your brothers stand outside, desiring to see you.” But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are these who hear the word of God, and do it.”
— Luke 8:20–21
He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
— Matthew 10:31
“If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) “Hate”—by this Christ does not mean that he rejects his family or teaches hatred towards them, he means only what is said in Luke 8:21, i.e. that the people whom Christ, his disciples and his followers consider close and dear are not based on familiar ties, but on their connection with God, and therefore with each other.
These verses naturally tempt people who have in mind the condition of an immoral person and a morally higher condition of a family man or woman, but who do not have in mind the condition of a religious person for whom the condition of the family is not the highest condition but, on the contrary, one that for the most part presents an obstacle for the attainment of this highest condition.
Some people seek the good in power, others in curiosity, in the sciences, yet others in pleasure. These three kinds of desires have founded three different schools, and all philosophers have followed one of the three. But those who came closer than anyone to true philosophy have understood that the common good—the object of everyone’s pursuit—must not consist in any private thing, which only some can possess and which, being a separate thing, sooner disappoints its owner by what it lacks than brings him pleasure by what it has. They have understood that the true good must be such that everyone can have it simultaneously, without diminishing it and without feeling envy, and that no one can lose it against their will.
— Pascal
In a moral sense, there is nothing good or bad in the love for one’s family, just as there is nothing good or bad in the love for one’s self: both this and the other are natural phenomena. Beyond its natural limits, however, the love for one’s family, just as the love for one’s self, can become a vice, but it can never be a virtue.
