The Four Loves
Chapter 4: Eros (“In love”)
I. Definitions:
A. Eros–romantic love (91), that is, the feeling of being in love
B. Venus—sexual or carnal desire and expression.
II. Relationship of Eros and Venus
A. Venus is part of Eros BUT, Lewis stresses, may operate without Eros (92). (See
Diagram A) No moral implications to the separation. “I am not at all subscribing
to the popular idea that it is the absence or presence of Eros which makes the
sexual act ‘impure’ or ‘pure,’ degraded or fine, unlawful or unlawful.” (92) He is
not discussing “mere sexuality without Eros.” (93) Compare to JPII’s treatment
in L&R: Lust is not love.
B. In contrast with “the evolutionist” and the ancients, Lewis believes that Eros does
not grow out of Venus. A man in love “really hasn’t the leisure to think of sex.
He is too busy thinking of the person” “in her totality” (93). Discuss John’s
response in draft outline: True enough, but a feeling can originate in biology
without being reducible to biology. Recall your Greek mythology: Cupid/Eros
was the son of Venus/Aphrodite, cf. the so-called “Rape of the Sabines ” as
described by Plutarch. Here Lewis seems to have taken to an extreme the
independence of the spiritual from the corporeal? In counterpoint, is Lewis just
being consistent with his discussion of attraction as desiring the good? How does
this relate to JPII’s discussion of attraction and desire as a positive good?
C. For a lustful man “strictly speaking a woman is just what he does not want. He
wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of
apparatus.” (94, cf. LR: “use”)
D. “Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some
mysterious… fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself.” ( 93) Like Dante
and Beatrice? Cf. Janet E. Smith’s statement on uniqueness partner for
meaningful lovemaking. Cf. the Dark Night of the Soul.
E. Eros transforms need pleasure into an appreciative pleasure (“It is the nature of a
Need-pleasure to show us the object solely in relation to our need, even our
momentary need.”): Eros “sees the object most intensely as a thing admirable in
herself, important far beyond her relation to the lover’s need.” (95)
F. Eros regards pleasure as a by-product. Eros obliterates “the distinction between
giving and receiving.” (96) JPII might say as embodied souls, we express love
with our bodies. We pray with our bodies and marital love is sacramental within
the sacrament of marriage, a sign of God’s grace. See Fulton Sheen in Three to
Get Married (p. 38).
G. “Eros, without diminishing desire, makes abstinence easier.” (97) Cf. JP2 on
need for selfless love in periodic continence.
III.
Venus: serious? or playful?…Attitudes towards the body
A. Venus-love is serious (98)…
1. Mystical image of the union between God and Man (or Christ and His Church).
Read “The Dark Night…Songs of the soul, which rejoices at having reached that lofty
state of perfection: union with God by the way of spiritual negation” by St. John of the
Cross.
2. A “participation in, and exposition of, the natural forces of life and fertility—the
marriage of Sky-Father and Earth-Mother.”
Lewis later goes on at length at 103-104, but he contrasts this natural mystery with the
“Christian mystery” of marriage with the husband as “the head of the wife just in so far
as he is to her what Christ is to the Church.” (105). “For the Church has no beauty but
what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism of
this terrible coronation [as head] is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage but in
its sorrows…” (105). “The sternest feminist need not grudge my sex the crown offered to
it either in the Pagan or in the Christian mystery. For the one is of paper and the other of
thorns.” (106)
3. Resulting obligations of being a parent and ancestor. Cf. traditional Christian
assumption of intrinsic procreational meaning of union.
4. Emotional seriousness of participants
To Discuss: Is there a person who is “the one” who is right for each person who
discerns a vocation to marriage, a particular individual who God plans to be our
spouse? This person may be discovered through eros. But, marriage is only a precursor
of heaven so there might be a multitude of possible marriage partners, any of whom
would be consistent with God’s plan for the individual to get to heaven through the
sanctifying efforts of his or her spouse. Eros is the emotional and physical spice that
motivates a man or woman in our weakness as fallen children to overcome the difficulties
of giving oneself to another in marriage. It is possible to fall in love (eros) with many
people over the course of a lifetime, yet it is the determined efforts of two assisted by eros
(both at the outset and at times that wax and wane throughout a good marriage) to really
live love through both the joys and the sorrows that are experienced in marriage (i.e.,
love as self-giving, exclusive, mutual, lasting a lifetime and, ultimately, as agape).
B. But Venus should not be taken too seriously (99)…
1. “We must not attempt to find an absolute in the flesh.” (99)
2. “When natural things look most divine, the demoniac is just around the corner.”
(102)
3. Eros that lasts includes an element not only of comedy, not only of play, but even
of buffoonery, in the body’s expression of Eros. (101) The divine joke “that a
passion so soaring, so apparently transcendent, as Eros, should thus be linked”
with a bodily appetite which depends on so many mundane factors, e.g., weather,
health, diet, digestion. (100)
IV. Three attitudes toward the body
A. Prison or tomb of the soul; source of temptation or humiliation (ascetic
pagan)
B. Glorious (neo-pagan)
C. St. Francis: “Brother Ass”—no one “can either revere or hate a donkey”
V. Eros as Promise and Illusion
“As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at
happiness” (106). Those in love “had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be
happy on any other terms” (107). Discuss: Julia in Brideshead Revisited by Waugh
Eros is morally ambiguous: “may urge to evil as well as to good.” (108)
There is nothing truly transcendent about Eros except feelings.
Eros does not deserve transcendent obedience; Eros is near God by resemblance, yet it is
not divine love. Eros is “a means of approach…it shows us how, with prodigality to love
is properly restrained. Eros is an image, a foretaste, of what we must become to all if
Love Himself rules in us without a rival.” (114)
There is a real danger in idolizing
Eros (111).
“Love made us do it” is no
justification for evil. Cf. The
English Patient.
The voice of Eros “seems to speak
from the eternal realm,” but “is not
himself necessarily permanent.”
E.g., “people who are in love again
every few years; each time sincerely
convinced that ‘this time it’s the real
thing’” (113) John’s reference:
Bingo Little in P.G. Wodehouse’s
Jeeves.
“In the end, Eros must be ruled by a
higher love if he is not to become an
idol or to die” (115).
Friendship
Love
God
Affection
Eros
A
Venus
Lust
Power
Hell