As St Thomas Aquinas explained, there are two dimensions on loving something or someone: an objective dimension and subjective dimension.
The objective dimension, the thing being loved, dictates the quality or type of love it should receive. I love sunsets a different way than fried chicken, and both loves are different to the love I have for my mother. I do not want to eat my mother, nor do I want to just gaze at fried chicken, nor do I want to hug a sunset. Based on this, the types of love can be qualitatively higher or lower based on the object being loved. Obviously, it is a higher kind of love to love someone compared to the love of an inanimate object. In this way it is a higher kind of love to love oneself than to love others, because the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” means that the love of neighbor should be modeled on the love of self. You cannot love somebody else well if you cannot love yourself well.
On the other hand, the subjective dimension, the love of the lover themselves, dictates the quantity or intensity of love. It depends on the judgement and predisposition of the lover to determine how intense this love should be. Even if the kind of love a mother has for her child is higher than that of the dog, the mother would have a more intense love and care for the dog if she noticed the dog has a wound. From this it is clear that, normally, we are to love our neighbor more intensely than ourselves, because it is natural to love ourselves, maybe even too natural: we do not normally need to tell ourselves to eat when we’re hungry, while it may need rather prodigious urging to ourselves to feed others.
