The Four Loves

Lewis asks whether it is appropriate to say that we “love” something such as a strawberry, given the context in which he views love. He begins his investigation with a discussion of pleasure, of which he says there are two sorts. First, there are pleasures that depend on anticipation and desire, and second, there are pleasures that are pleasures in their own right. For the first, he uses the example of a drink of water. Drinking water is pleasant when one is thirsty but is not a pleasure that anyone aspires to otherwise. For the second type of pleasure, he uses the example of a sudden, pleasant smell. It is not planned for or anticipated but is a pleasure in its own right when it occurs. Lewis separates these two classes into “Need-pleasures” and “Pleasures of Appreciation” (11).

He insists that “[t]he human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define” (12). The characteristics of the two types of pleasure are important in that they will foreshadow the characteristics of what Lewis will be calling the four loves.

A Need-pleasure can cease to be a pleasure as soon as it is satisfied. But Pleasures of Appreciation are different. They make a claim on people because their gratification cannot be resisted. Pleasures of Appreciation demand attention. They insist on being savored and appreciated and are not pursued with desperation.

Need-pleasures foreshadow “Need-love”(15). With a Need-love, the object of the love is seen in relation to the lover’s needs, similar to the Need-pleasure of a glass of gin when drunk by an alcoholic. Need-loves and Need-pleasures are extinguished as soon as they are satisfied.

The foreshadowing of “Appreciative pleasures” (16) is not as simple. They have a quality that Lewis states requires people to see them as “very good” (16). It is this sort of love that makes men happy at the preservation of forests they will never seebecause the forests have qualities to them that are good in their own right. This charitable feeling towards unseen things is closer to Gift-loves.

Lewis then defines two forms of love for what is not personal: love of nature and love of country. Professed lovers of nature are, in Lewis’s view, typically concerned with objects. They will remark upon beautiful forests or flowers, cataloging them in a mental inventory, as if adding to a collection. But by so doing, these lovers of nature neglect—or fail to notice—the “moods” or the “spirit” of nature (18), prioritizing instead the comparing or ranking one sight above another. Everything in nature has been provided by God, and to rank his creations on an aesthetic level is to forget this.

While discussing patriotism, Lewis returns to de Rougemont’s quote: “Love becomes a demon when it becomes a god” (22). Because it is rare that two people share an identical definition of patriotism, love of country can be exploited for power and used as a justification to enforce policies and laws, sometimes internationally. Love of country includes love of home and love of one’s neighbor. There is nothing aggressive about this aspect—it just wants to be left alone.

There is a more serious aspect that can arise from what looks like love of country: the belief that a country is superior to others. Take, for instance, Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden.” If a man truly believes himself to be superior to another person, then the possibility of his own sovereignty can arise, if only in his mind.