The Four Loves
by C.S. Lewis
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Book Reviews of The Four Loves
Book Review: Loves are beautiful, but 'the greatest of these is charity'
Summary: 4 Stars
An illuminating view on affection, the so-called 'the most humble', friendship, 'the least natural and the most independent', eros, 'the most natural' and charity, 'the noblest' of all loves, treated in terms of the so-called 'need love', 'gift love' and 'appreciative love'. The beauty and potential danger of distortion and abuse of each love is also covered excellently. C.S. Lewis is both a psychologist and a philosopher, a brilliant one. His treatment on this subject of love is important for every one to know; some that I personally learn and thought to be beautiful, are:
- That we ought to love with decency and common sense;
- The reward of the accomplishment of a gift-love is its abdication, when it is no longer needed.
- When love becomes a god, it turns into a demon;
- The calculating love is no love at all which leads to the beauty and mark of eros, where calculations are irrelevant, and when it is in us, we "had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms", and finally...
- The excellence of charity, confirmed in the Scriptures, something Jonathan Edwards calls 'the sum of all virtues', where Lewis exhorted to love God who will never pass away, "Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away."
- The gracious call to risk and forego for the greatest good. Speaking of Christ, Lewis says, "... His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities... And who could conceivably begin to love God on such a prudential ground -- because the security is better? ...Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become ... more careful of our own happiness... We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent to all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it."
Get this book, friends, and learn that "loves" are beautiful, when handled properly, but 'the greatest of these is charity'.
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.
Book Review: Lewis Contributes to Love Scholarship
Summary: 3 Stars
The author is one of the most important theologians of the 20th century, although his scholarly discipline was literature. He examines four main types of love, with special concentration on two types of love he calls "Gift-love" and "Need-love."
Early in the book, Lewis identifies the humblest and most widely diffused of the loves, that is, the loves and likings at the sub-human level. Following an examination of sub-human love, he addresses a love that he calls "affection." Affection comes from the Greek love word storge.
The third chapter is devoted to friendship love, from the Greek work philia. This friendship love is the least of the natural loves, "the least instinctive organic, biological, gregarious, and necessary" (58). Friendship should be distinguished from community love, because communities require cooperation. Friendship love by contrast is free from instinct, free from duty, and free from the need to be needed. Following an examination of friendship, Lewis addresses eros. By eros Lewis refers to "the love in which lovers are in," i.e., romantic love.
In the book's final chapter Lewis addresses charity. Charity is `Gift-love' and the primal `Gift-love' comes from the divine energy. While Lewis claims that "to love at all is to be vulnerable" (121), he also claims that God is self-sufficient. "In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give. The doctrine that God was under no necessity to create is not a piece of dry scholastic speculation. It is essential" (126). Also, "God, who needs nothing, loves into existence, holy, superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them" (127).
After God loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures, God implants in those creatures both Gift-loves and Need-loves. Gift-love comes by grace and we call it charity. God also gives a supernatural Need-love of God and a supernatural Need-love of other creatures. It is through these two gifts that creatures have a longing for God and a love for others.