Outside Reading, The Four Loves - Melissa Marazzi

In Lewis’ the Four Loves, he describes each of the different kinds of types of “loves” that man experiences. He speaks on affection, friendship, eros, and charity. In each of these he describes their unique and curious natures. It is especially interesting when he describes eros because of its seemingly un-human characteristics – it drives man to be what he usually is immersed in: selfishness. The thing that I thought was rather interesting was how each of these loves required the presence or fellowship of another. We are uniquely social creatures and God places in us a need to express ourselves to others, through these many different types of loves. It would be quite disastrous to ourselves to be completely isolated from one another. He says in the book, “We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.” His last point is really interesting, that we must be union with others to really know ourselves. This is certainly true in the sense that we gather much of our perception of ourselves from others; we are able to convince ourselves of things so easily, with out someone there to keep us grounded, we may all be raging with conceit.