The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
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Book Reviews of The Four Loves
Book Review: Timelessly good.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was first published in 1960, and as such, I'm sure a lot of people might say "Hah. It is out of date. We've learned a lot about love since then!"
To which I would reply, "No we haven't. There's nothing new, really."
The subject matter of this book is just as applicable today as it was back then. And just as applicable as it was fifty years before Lewis wrote it, because it deals with timeless meanings and principles of love, albeit, from a decidedly Christian perspective.
He begins by distinguishing what he calls Need-love (based on need, such as the love of a child for its mother) from Gift-love (selfless, the kind of love we attribute to God, or to a loving father), and then divides love into four categories, based on the four Greek words for love.
Each word is treated in its own chapter.
Affection (storge) is described as fondness through familiarity, especially between family members or people who have otherwise found themselves together by chance.
Friendship (philia) is a stronger bond that exists between people who share a common interest or activity. I love the part where he said In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? - Or at least, "Do you care about the same truth?" The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.
This kind of Friendship goes beyond mere Companionship. It's like a celebration of common ground, between people of similar interests and compatibility.
Then there is the Greek word Eros, which is love in the sense of 'being in love'. This is distinct from sexuality, which Lewis calls Venus, although he does discuss sexual activity and its spiritual significance in both a pagan and a Christian sense. He warns that if Eros is elevated to the status of a god, it has a tendency to self-destruct or at least not deliver what was promised or expected. However, he praises (to the rooftops, really) the proper (indispensable) function of Eros and Venus!
Charity (agape) is a love towards one's neighbour which does not depend on any loveable qualities that the object of love possesses. In this final chapter, Lewis presents quite a challenging and well-reasoned argument against living a life of "self-invited and self-protective lovelessness."
Overall, I think it a tremendously relevant book.
In probably the most radical statement found in the entire book, he says "The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
Book Review: Amazing analysis of loves
Summary: 5 Stars
I was not especially expecting to be engrossed by a book about four greek words, but I was wrong. This was one of the better books that I have ever read. Lewis overviews each of the four types of love: storge (affection), phileo (friendship), eros (romantic love), and agape (charity or God-love). Each discussion was extremely insightful, especially the friendship one.
He desribed storge as the kind of love we have for people whome we spend a lot of time with, but whom with we do not necessarily have a lot in common with. For example, if you have a sibling whom you do not share many interests with but whom you love nonetheless, it is probably storge. These are people whom you probably would not be friends with if you were not related to or neighbors to these people. Lewis notes that these are people we often do not really realize how much we loved until they are gone (or until we realize that they are those kind of people to us).
He had an amazing chapter on phileo and the gift of friendship as well. I won't go into much detail so that you can enjoy it more when you actually get around to reading it. Let me just say that it made me appreciate my friends much more, and changed my views on what a friend is. He had the amazing insight that each friend brings out a different part of you. He noted that his friendship with J. R. Tolkien was not quite the same after Charles Williams died, because Williams brought out parts of Tokien that Lewis did not. Very insightful.
Lewis' discussion of eros was very insightful as well. He discussed the nature of romantic love, and what romantic love looks like in a marriage. His main point seemed to be that eros loves the other person, and does not try to make the other person become more like himself.
Finally, Lewis discussed agape, the kind of love that gives with no expectancy to receive in return. The whole point of this book, through there may have been amazing sidenotes on the way, is that this is the only perfect love. All the other kinds of love can be twisted until they are no longer recognizable. Storge can degenerate into condescendence, phileo can consume us and destory our lives, and eros can degenerate into lust or domineering, but agape is uncorruptable.
I highly recommend this book. I can nearly guarantee that it will change the way that you think about love.
Overall grade: A+
Book Review: The Four Loves, by CS Lewis
Summary: 5 Stars
C.S. Lewis has made a priceless analysis of love. My experience of reading his book "The Four Loves" (friendship, affection, eros and charity) and comparing it with other books on the subject, is that Lewis uses a fresh (to me) approach. It is like looking through a beautiful diamond. I have observed the diamond several times before, through people like Gerald May, Donald Goergen etc, but have not looked through that particular face of the diamond's prism that Lewis shows.
I liked "friendship" where the love of a particular subject can bring two or more people together in a love. I thoroughly enjoyed "Eros". Lewis calls that "love" that is purely genital sex, and the love that leads up to this, "Venus". He says that Venus is part of Eros. "We must not be totally serious about Venus, and if we are serious about her we can do harm to our humanity". And "Venus is a mocking, mischievous spirit, far more elf than deity, and makes game of us. When all external circumstances are the fittest for her service she will leave one or both lovers totally indisposed for it. When every overt act is impossible and even glances cannot be exchanged - in trains, in shops and at interminable parties - she will assail them with all her force. An hour later, when time and place agree, she will have mysteriously disappeared, perhaps from only one of them. ......
"In Eros at times we seem to be flying; Venus gives us the sudden twitch that reminds us we are really captive balloons ..... on one side akin to the angels, and on the other to tom cats. .... St. Francis called his body 'brother ass'..... It is impossible for anyone in his right senses to either revere or hate a donkey. An ass is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, loveable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. .... The fact that we have bodies is the oldest joke there is".
Lewis goes on to emphasise that none of the "natural" loves can survive without agape love, that is the love that comes from God, which Lewis calls "Charity".Book Review: Good Companion to Aristotle
Summary: 5 Stars
There have been many good things and helpful reviews already written about this book so there's no reason for me to go on about how wonderful and insightful it is. My comments are more directly related to those who have a wish (or are assigned) to read Aristotle's work "The Nichomachean Ethics". I read the Ethics for a philosophy discussion class my freshman year and was intrigued by mush of what Aristotle had to say about love and human behavior. While it is a very insightful work, the Ethics is extremely difficult to read, and takes much time and pastience.About a month after completing the Ethics, I happened to pick up Lewis's "The Four Loves" in my college's bookstore, and I couldn't put it down. What surprised me most upon reading it, however, was that much of Lewis's understanding of the human loves came directly from Aristotle. I went back and reread the Ethics and found (not surprisingly since Lewis was a classics scholar) that for his understanding of friendly and passionate love (for Aristotle philos and eros), Lewis's arguments followed Aristotle's very closely, and were much more clear and easy to understand. On top of this, his additions of affectionate love and agape or godly love (a Greek thought to be sure, but not in Aristotle's time), expanded upon the notions of love and offered a fuller treatment than Aristotle.
I say all this not to disuade anyone from reading Aristotle or thinking that Lewis was an Aristotle knock-off, on the contrary, both these these works should be read, and in opinion my opinion they complement each other very well and aid the reader in more fully understanding both works: understanding Aristotle because Lewis presents many of his same arguments only more clearly, and understanding Lewis by seeing the evolution and expansion of his thought from the Greek concepts.
And even if you don't feel like tackling Aristotle, "The Four Loves" is a work worth reading in and of itself (just don't think that you can get away with substituting this work for the Ethics, since the Ethics goes far beyond a discussion of love).
Book Review: A great examination of Christian love and its misuses
Summary: 5 Stars
The Four Loves describes the increasing complexity and nature of love of men toward things than themselves. From the simplest types of love that center on mere feelings and general liking, to ones with a deep sense of sacrificial giving, Lewis explains the nature of the types love so that the reader can understand the appropriate love in the right situation, and understand how to express love more consistently.
By describing definitive types of love, Lewis argues that knowledge of love, particularly for believing Christians, will lead to a better experience in exercising the types of love in their right context. Lewis illustrates his teaching by using concrete examples for each of his definitive four types of love, while giving special note to loves directed towards sub-human things. Affection, friendship, eros, and charity are what Lewis lists as his types of loves going from leastt to greatest in significance.
Lewis, especially when examining love for things subhuman and eros, deeply attacked the sentimentality and nostalgia that mistakes pride for love for sacrifice. The modern split to love either the rational man or a pantheon of natural things is shown to be a deep misunderstandings of what love really is. Ultimately, man makes the mistake of trying to assign love to things that have value in them and to treat things that have no value in themselves, like a nation-state, with unnatural love. For eros, Lewis shows that since many modern men have rejected the call of the One who is love, erotic love has become a very serious, selfish thing. We would only have to look at the so-called sexual revolution to note than man has taken the most playful and needful type of love and turned it into something that is serious and that is treated as if it can be rejected as easily as if it were never needed in the first place.
For today's church, the four different types of loves call all believers to reexamine their feelings of love in their homes, ideas, families, communities and marriages in the light not only of the love of Christ, but of Christ as love.