Which C.S. Lewis work is a 1960 study of affection, friendship, eros, and charity?

The Four Loves is C.S. Lewis’s 1960 study of affection, friendship, eros, and charity.

The book develops ideas first presented in a 1958 BBC radio talk titled “The Four Loves.” Lewis examines four Greek terms used to distinguish kinds of love: storge, philia, eros, and agape. In the book, these are associated respectively with affection, friendship, romantic or sexual love, and self-giving divine love.

Lewis does not treat the four categories as sealed compartments. Human relationships can involve more than one kind of love, and he considers both the beauty and the dangers of each. He also argues that natural loves can become distorted when they are treated as absolute or placed above love of God.

The title is sometimes confused with The Four Loves documentary or with Lewis’s broader writings on Christian ethics. The book is specifically a philosophical and theological meditation on human relationships. It is unrelated to A Grief Observed, which concerns Lewis’s personal response to bereavement.