The Four Loves

The Four Loves
The Four Loves is a book by C. S. Lewis

which explores the nature of love from a
Christian and philosophical perspective
through thought experiments.[1] The book
was based on a set of radio talks from
1958, criticised in the US at the time for
their frankness about sex.[2]
The Four Loves
First edition
Author C. S. Lewis
Cover artist Michael Harvey
Country Northern Ireland
Language English
Genre Philosophy
Publisher Geoffrey Bles

Publication date 1960
Media type Print (Hardback &

Paperback)
Pages 160
OCLC 30879763
Need/gift love
Taking his start from St. John's words
"God is Love", Lewis initially thought to
contrast "Need-love" (such as the love of a
child for its mother) and "Gift-love"
(epitomized by God's love for humanity), to
the disparagement of the former.[3]
However he swiftly happened on the
insight that the natures of even these
basic categorizations of love are more
complicated than they at first seemed: a
child's need for parental comfort is a
necessity, not a selfish indulgence, while
conversely parental Gift-love in excessive
form can be a perversion of its own.[4]
Pleasures
Lewis continued his examination by
exploring the nature of pleasure,
distinguishing Need-pleasures (such as
water for the thirsty) from Pleasures of
Appreciation, such as the love of nature.[5]
From the latter, he developed what he
called "a third element in
love...Appreciative love",[6] to go along with
Need-love and Gift-love.
Throughout the rest of the book, Lewis
would go on to counterpart that three-fold,
qualitative distinction against the four
broad types of loves indicated in his title.[7]
In his remaining four chapters, Lewis

treats of love under four categories ("the
highest does not stand without the
lowest"), based in part on the four Greek
words for love: affection, friendship, eros,
and charity. Lewis states that just as
Lucifer (a former archangel) perverted
himself by pride and fell into depravity, so
too can love—commonly held to be the
arch-emotion—become corrupt by
presuming itself to be what it is not.
A fictional treatment of these loves is the
main theme of Lewis's novel Till We Have
Faces.
Storge—empathy bond
Storge (storgē, Greek: στοργή) is liking

someone through the fondness of
familiarity, family members or people who
relate in familiar ways that have otherwise
found themselves bonded by chance. An
example is the natural love and affection
of a parent for their child. It is described as
the most natural, emotive, and widely
diffused of loves: natural in that it is
present without coercion; emotive
because it is the result of fondness due to
familiarity; and most widely diffused
because it pays the least attention to
those characteristics deemed "valuable" or
worthy of love and, as a result, is able to
transcend most discriminating factors.
Lewis describes it as a dependency-based
love which risks extinction if the needs
cease to be met.
Affection, for Lewis, included both Need-

love and Gift-love. He considered it
responsible for 9/10th of all solid and
lasting human happiness.[8]
However, affection's strength is also what
makes it vulnerable. Affection has the
appearance of being "built-in" or "ready
made", says Lewis, and as a result people
come to expect it irrespective of their
behavior and its natural consequences.[9]
Both in its Need and its Gift form, affection
then is liable to "go bad", and to be
corrupted by such forces as jealousy,
ambivalence and smothering.[10]
Philia—friend bond
Philia (philía, Greek: φιλία) is the love

between friends as close as siblings in
strength and duration. The friendship is
the strong bond existing between people
who share common values, interests or
activities.[11] Lewis immediately
differentiates friendship love from the
other loves. He describes friendship as
"the least biological, organic, instinctive,
gregarious and necessary...the least
natural of loves".[12] Our species does not
need friendship in order to reproduce, but
to the classical and medieval worlds it is a
higher-level love because it is freely
chosen.
Lewis explains that true friendships, like

the friendship between David and
Jonathan in the Bible, are almost a lost art.
He expresses a strong distaste for the way
modern society ignores friendship. He
notes that he cannot remember any poem
that celebrated true friendship like that
between David and Jonathan, Orestes and
Pylades, Roland and Oliver, Amis and
Amiles. Lewis goes on to say, "to the
Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest
and most fully human of all loves; the
crown of life and the school of virtue. The
modern world, in comparison, ignores it".
Growing out of companionship, friendship

for Lewis was a deeply appreciative love,
though one which he felt few people in
modern society could value at its worth,
because so few actually experienced true
friendship.[13]
Nevertheless, Lewis was not blind to the

dangers of friendships, such as its
potential for cliquiness, anti-
authoritarianism and pride.[14]
Eros—erotic bond
Eros (erōs, Greek: ἔρως) for Lewis was

love in the sense of "being in love" or
"loving" someone, as opposed to the raw
sexuality of what he called Venus: the
illustration Lewis used was the distinction
between "wanting a woman" and wanting
one particular woman—something that
matched his (classical) view of man as a
rational animal, a composite both of
reasoning angel and instinctual alley-
cat.[15]
Eros turns the need-pleasure of Venus into

the most appreciative of all pleasures;[16]
but nevertheless Lewis warned against the
modern tendency for Eros to become a
god to people who fully submit themselves
to it, a justification for selfishness, even a
phallic religion.[17]
After exploring sexual activity and its

spiritual significance in both a pagan and a
Christian sense, he notes how Eros (or
being in love) is in itself an indifferent,
neutral force: how "Eros in all his
splendor...may urge to evil as well as
good".[18] While accepting that Eros can be
an extremely profound experience, he does
not overlook the dark way in which it could
lead even to the point of suicide pacts or
murder, as well as to furious refusals to
part, "mercilessly chaining together two
mutual tormentors, each raw all over with
the poison of hate-in-love".[19]
Agape—unconditional "God"
love
Charity (agápē, Greek: ἀγάπη) is the love
that exists regardless of changing
circumstances. Lewis recognizes this
selfless love as the greatest of the four
loves, and sees it as a specifically
Christian virtue to achieve. The chapter on
the subject focuses on the need to
subordinate the other three natural loves—
as Lewis puts it, "The natural loves are not
self-sufficient"[20]—to the love of God, who
is full of charitable love, to prevent what he
termed their "demonic" self-
aggrandizement.[21][22]
See also
Attachment theory
Friendship
Heterosociality
Homosociality
Inklings
Love styles
Romance
Platonic love
Triangular theory of love
Unconditional love
References
1. Carl Rogers, Becoming Partners (1984)
p. 238
2. Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Companion
& Guide (1996) pp. 779 and 88–90
3. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960) p. 9-
12
4. Hooper, p. 368-70
5. Lewis, pp. 20 and 27
6. Lewis p. 26
7. R. MacSwain ed, The Cambridge
Companion to C. S. Lewis (2010) pp. 147–
148
8. Lewis, pp. 50 and 66
9. Lewis, pp. 50–2
10. Hooper, pp. 370–1
11. Hooper, p. 654
12. Lewis, p. 70
13. Lewis, pp. 77, 84–5, and 70
14. Hooper, p. 372
15. Lewis, p. 108-9 and p. 116
16. Hooper, p. 373
17. Lewis, p. 127-32 and p. 113
18. Lewis, p. 124
19. Lewis, p. 124 and p. 132
20. Lewis, p. 133
21. MacSwain, p. 146, Love, in
Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in
Christian Apologetics. Ignatius Press 1988,
p. 181]
22. The Question of God, Program Two:
C.S. Lewis: The Four Loves. PBS
External links
The Four Loves at Faded Page (Canada)
Quotations & Allusions in The Four
Loves
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What are the four types of love discussed in the book?

What are the four types of love discussed in the book?

How does Lewis categorize love qualitatively?

How does Lewis categorize love qualitatively?

The Four Loves is a book by C. S. Lewis

Cover artist Michael Harvey

Country Northern Ireland

Publisher Geoffrey Bles

Media type Print (Hardback &

In his remaining four chapters, Lewis

Storge (storgē, Greek: στοργή) is liking

Affection, for Lewis, included both Need-

Philia (philía, Greek: φιλία) is the love

Lewis explains that true friendships, like

Growing out of companionship, friendship

Nevertheless, Lewis was not blind to the

Eros (erōs, Greek: ἔρως) for Lewis was

Eros turns the need-pleasure of Venus into

After exploring sexual activity and its

Last edited 1 day ago by Deprecate…

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless

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