25 Apr 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
Philo1305 March 5, 2012
Lecture 7
Love According to C.S. Lewis (Continued)
John Paul II: “Love is the opposite of using.”
- Love is a good in itself. There is a goodness in being with that person themself.
- No one desires to be used as a means to an end. We are all an end in ourselves.
- Pleasure is a consequence of wanting to become one with one another. When we seek
pleasure for the sake of pleasure, we are left unsatisfied. We achieve pleasure when we
find it through surprise.
- Pleasure is a paradox: it comes when we least expect it.
Affection (Storge)
- Has no relationship to appreciation.
- Anyone and everyone can be an object of affection. Anybody can be familiar with
anybody.
- Familiarity is the reason why you have a relationship (has nothing to do with qualities
that you enjoy in that person).
- This type of love has nothing to do with love as the unification of persons. They bond
solely on the basis of physical presence.
Friendship (Philia)
- Also has no relationship to appreciation.
- We are connected because of some mutual otherness. (The otherness could be good or
bad.)
- Friendship is not good for the political regime. What brings the people together is a
common vision – for a country that could be good or bad.
Eros
- Venus (God of passion)
o Can you have one without the other? Lewis says yes.
o Lewis argues that Venus can only be appreciated through Eros.
- Not solely sexual – it could be, but is not always the case.
- Revolves around the beloved and not the pleasure he or she can give.
- The lover and beloved recognize the intrinsic value of one another, and want to become
one.
- Sex can be in or out of eros. When it is within Eros, sex is about your partner, not about
you – it is an expression of unification. It is not the reason for the relationship, but the
by-product for the relationship; it is not the essence or (sole) purpose of the relationship.
Charity (Agape)
- Complete unconditional love that we may have of another, totally independent of
anything we may receive from that love.