The Four Loves presents C.S. Lewis’s reflections on affection, friendship, eros, and charity.
Published in 1960, the book developed from a BBC radio series and examines four kinds of love through Greek terms and Christian interpretation. Storge refers to affection, philia to friendship, eros to romantic or sexual love, and agape, translated in the book as charity, to self-giving love.
Lewis does not present the four categories as isolated compartments. He discusses how natural loves can be generous and valuable, yet also become possessive or distorted when treated as ultimate. The book is sometimes confused with The Allegory of Love, Lewis’s earlier scholarly study of medieval literature, but the two works have different subjects and purposes. The Four Loves is a popular philosophical and theological work, while The Allegory of Love is an academic history of medieval and Renaissance ideas about love.