Which C.S. Lewis book examines the idea of four kinds of human love?

The Four Loves examines four kinds of human love: affection, friendship, erotic love, and charity.

C.S. Lewis developed the book from a series of BBC radio talks and published it in 1960. He uses four Greek terms to distinguish different forms of love: storge for affection, philia for friendship, eros for sexual or romantic love, and agape for self-giving charity.

The book does not treat these categories as isolated compartments. Lewis explains that healthy relationships can contain more than one kind of love, while natural loves can become distorted when they are treated as ultimate. He gives particular attention to the difference between friendship and romance, a distinction he thought modern culture often blurred.

The Four Loves belongs to Lewis’s nonfiction and Christian apologetic writing, but its subject is broader than doctrine. It considers family bonds, companionship, romantic attachment, and divine charity in accessible prose.

Mere Christianity also originated in radio talks, which sometimes causes confusion. Its subject is shared Christian belief, whereas The Four Loves focuses on the varieties and limits of love.