The Power of Love in The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

The Power of Love in The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

Through life, people experience many kinds of love. Many people often believe they love someone, when they actually do not because they may not know what the word means. As much as we want to understand love, it is still simply indescribable. As C.S. Lewis tries to explain it in his book, The Four Loves, it is still a mystery as to what love truly means. I believe in order to know what love means, one must experience it. It is quite true that went two individuals are in love with each other, they know it and can feel it. No matter how much love is studied and looked at, every individual must experience it to understand it. Along with this love lies circumstances which lead people to either happiness or destruction. That is why love can be divine or demonic.

Love is a very powerful word, and it has many meanings. These meanings are different for every individual. According to Lewis, there are four kinds of love. There is friendship love, affection, Eros, and charity. Lewis believes the strongest and most important of these loves is Eros. This kind of love deals with two intimate individuals. Lewis goes along to say that Eros is when one loves an individual for who they are, not what they can do. They love numerous things about an individual, not just the sexual aspects of the relationship, which is called Venus. Venus means sex, and Lewis relates this closely to Eros, he also contrasts the two. He agrees that when two love each other, they should have sex, meaning have pleasure with one another. Although, he also states that sex is not necessarily needed when in love, he does not disagree with the idea of having sex even if they are not in love or married. ...

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...eople can do nothing but hope for the best.

Love can be extremely confusing. There are just so many types of loves. Many people will state that in one point in their life they can truly pin point a time when they new that they were in love. People will also say that in that relationship they had true love and that there was affection in it too. Affection exists apart from the other loves. To be completely honest sometime it never exists at all. As Lewis would say, "As gin is not only a drink in itself but also a base for many mixed drinks, so Affection, besides being a love itself, can enter into the other loves and colour them all through and become the very medium in which from day to day they operate," (pg.34 paragraph 2). There is no one universal definition or even definite characteristics of love, it varies with people, culture, type, and circumstance.