Storge is the Greek word for natural affection discussed by C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves.
In The Four Loves, Lewis examines four forms of human love using Greek terms: affection, friendship, eros, and charity. He identifies natural affection with storge, the kind of fondness associated with family, familiarity, and ordinary bonds between people and even between humans and animals.
The book developed from a series of BBC radio talks and was published in 1960. Lewis distinguishes storge from eros, which concerns romantic or sexual love, and from philia, which describes friendship. He uses agape, translated as charity in the book’s framework, for a higher form of self-giving love.
The terms can overlap in modern discussions, and Greek vocabulary is often simplified in popular summaries. In Lewis’s specific four-part scheme, however, storge is the canonical term for affection. The spelling “storgē” may also appear in scholarly discussions.