The Four Loves

A wonderful book written late in C. S. Lewis\’s career, and so reflects a greater sort of wisdom. As usual, he covers all the peripheral issues first, and seemingly in parallel, yet by the end of the book he ties all the elements together in a powerful essay. This is his reflection on love, both natural (as in coming from man\’s nature) and divine (coming directly from God), and in this way the book is timeless. There are, however, a few points dealing with friendly relationships between the sexes that may seem dated — they are thoughtful and astute, but they are mostly reflective of a time in England when men and women rarely worked side by side. Yet, even here, Lewis is aware of the transitory nature of these conditions, and mentions that if these situations changed then the nature of the friendly interactions would also change. His general observations remained true regardless. This essay is not as easy to read as \”Mere Christianity\”, but with patience I would think almost anyone who persevered to the conclusion should be able to understand and gain from it. It is very highly recommended.

Love reading me some C.S. Lewis, and he\’s got some great insights in this book. Having it on Kindle was also really nice, since even though I\’ve always been at an advanced reading level (because I\’ve been obsessed with reading since I was 4), I definitely had to read through this slower to comprehend Lewis\’ often long-winded sentence structures, and being able to look up definitions at the tap of a finger undeniably made the read-through even quicker and more seamless. I bought this version to read for a class since it was the cheapest option, and having the Chinese characters didn\’t hamper me in reading it at all, if anyone was concerned about that. I definitely can\’t say I agreed with absolutely everything Lewis writes in this book, but overall, it\’s an absolutely fantastic read that I would encourage everyone to take some time to devour at some point in their life.

I read this book back in the 1980s when I was a senior in High School, I wanted to read it again because I had enjoyed it so much. It was well worth reading again. Dr. Lewis explores the topic of love in terms of need/gift love and pleasure. Later categorizes love into four topics based on the four different Greek words for love which are affection, friendship, eros, and charity. He is an academic, but he is also a Christian. The book is based on Christian beliefs and these beliefs are used to explain the topic of love. His writing style is wordy, yet it is easy enough to understand. He explains well what the different loves are and how they are important in our lives. If you are looking for a book that focuses on erotic love or the \”Hollywood movie \” love, you are better to find another book that panders to that kind of audience.

In this classic C.S. Lewis, the celebrated author of \’the Chronicles of Narnia,\’ reflects on love. He begins by observing that at birth we all start out with need-love, needing gift-love. Gift-love is the kind of love the creator shows to the created, in the process of creating and taking care of the created. It is the love a mother bestows on her newborn child. In contrast, need-love is the condition of poverty that every created being begins with at birth. I feel this quote sums up the point Mr. Lewis was making about need-love, \’Man approaches god most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence.\’ Mr. Lewis continues with a brief synopsis of things that we can show love for; these include others, nature, country, and finally, the transcendent creator. Dissecting each, he illustrates that love of nature, patriotism, etc. are inadequate receptacles of our love. Next, Mr. Lewis looks at the different kinds of love which include affection, philios, eros, and charity or agape. Affection includes the love of parents for their child, love of our pets, etc. Philios is the love between friends. Eros is the love between two lovers. Finally, charity is the love of the creator towards the created and the return of that love by the created toward both the creator and creation. Of all the loves, Mr. Lewis holds charity or agape in the highest esteem. All other loves fall short of Agape, as Mr. Lewis states in this quote, \’The (other) loves prove that they are unworthy to take the place of god by the fact that they cannot even remain themselves and do what they promise to do without god\’s help.\’ They are merely images of this \’charity or agape\’ which is both immanent and transcendent of creation. By placing our faith in images we are placing faith in what is transient and temporary. Yet, the love that is immanent and transcendent of creation is all encompassing, therefore imageless, and thus beyond human conceptual understanding.. To understand love in all of its aspects we need both the images of affection, philios, and eros as well as the transcendent for the images are stepping stones on our way up to this feeling of all encompassing love. Here, Mr. Lewis makes an important point about love when he states, \’To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to him; throwing away all defensive armour.\’ We have to feel love for the images in order to understand and feel the love of the transcendent. Yet, we cannot become entranced by our love for the images of the love immanent and transcendent of creation, because they like we are merely temporary, here one day, gone the next.. Mr. Lewis concludes with this point, \’Only those into which love himself has entered will ascend to love himself. We were made for god. Only by being in some respect like him, only by being a manifestation of his beauty, loving-kindness, wisdom or goodness, has any earthly beloved excited our love.\’ Most of the time when we think about love we think about it in its aspect of eros. Mr. Lewis compelled me to contemplate love in all of its different manifestations, and through this reflection, to see that love is much more complex than what we frequently assume it to be. It is for these reasons that I consider this a classic read worth pondering.

This book, as with all books of this kind, should be read at least three or four times to fully absorb its deep and enriching observations about life, or in this case love, it these four different connotations. I approach this kind of writing in the same way as reading Shakespeare,. The first time reading without thinking too much about it in order to experience the essence of what\’s being said, enjoying the parts that resonate the most which for me were the sections on affection and friendship. Whilst I didn\’t agree with some of the ideas such as women being stereotyped as housewives, and men and women not being able to have close, meaningful friendships, I loved the idea that \’affection has a very homely face\’ and that \’affection opens our eyes to the goodness we could not have seen, or should not have appreciated without.\’ In terms of friendship, there is a lovely passage that captures the essence of a mutual interpersonal bond where \’one knows nobody so well as one\’s fellow … an appreciative love of a singularly robust and well-informed kind.\’ In another interesting vein, the author highlights how authority frowns on friendship, where real friendship is a rebellion \’of serious thinkers against accepted clap-trap or of faddists against accepted good sense; of real artists against popular ugliness or of charlatans against civilised taste; of good men against the badness of society or of bad men against its goodness.\’ Fascinating, challenging and brilliant, superb cognitive stimulation for the mind.

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