C.S. Lewis published The Four Loves in 1960.
The book developed from a series of BBC radio talks and examines four Greek terms connected with kinds of love: storge, philia, eros, and agape. Lewis discusses affection, friendship, romantic love, and charitable or self-giving love, while emphasizing that these categories can overlap.
The Four Loves belongs to Lewis’s later Christian nonfiction. It was written after many of his best-known apologetic works and near the end of his Oxford period. In 1954, he had moved from Oxford to Cambridge, where he held the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English.
The title can lead to a common misunderstanding: Lewis does not present the four loves as four completely isolated emotions. He considers both their strengths and their dangers, including the possibility that natural loves can become possessive when treated as ultimate. The book is therefore part literary discussion, part moral reflection, and part Christian theology.