culte du moi

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).

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".