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March 9, 2005
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The Four Loves
Chapter 4: Eros (& “Venus”)
I. Eros–romantic love (91)
A. Concern of this chapter is not human sexuality simply, of which Eros is an ingredient.
B. (Nevertheless he spends over half the chapter talking about human sexuality paired with Eros.)
II. Venus –the carnal element of Eros, but may operate independently of Eros (92)
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 lawful.”
B. Lewis, in contrast with “the evolutionist” and the ancients, 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). 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?
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.” 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)
G. “Eros, without diminishing desire, makes abstinence easier.” (97) Cf. JP2 on need for selfless
love in periodic continence.
H. Venus-love is serious (98)….
1. Mystical image of the union between God and Man (or Christ and His Church).
2. A “participation in, and exposition of, the natural forces of life and fertility—the marriage of
Sky-Father and Earth-Mother.”
3. Resulting obligations of being a parent and ancestor. Cf. traditional Christian assumption of
intrinsic procreational meaning of union.
4. Emotional seriousness of participants
I. …But Venus should not be taken too seriously
1. “We must not attempt to find an absolute in the flesh.” (99)
2. To Greeks, Aphrodite was “laughter-loving” (99)
3. Cf. eating: only epicureans and not saints are most serious about it. (98–99)
4. “When natural things look most divine, the demoniac is just around the corner.” (102)
5. Taking Venus lightly allows us to have more reasonable expectations of satisfaction.
6. Must include play (102)
J. 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. Cf. dual functions of the male urinary tract another divine joke?:. (100)
K. Three attitudes toward the body
1. Prison or tomb of the soul; source of temptation or humiliation (ascetic pagan)
2. Glorious (neo-pagan)
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March 9, 2005
CIC—Washington, DC
3. St. Francis: “Brother Ass”—no one “can either revere or hate a donkey”
L. “But in the act of love we are not merely ourselves. We are also representatives…. The man does
play the Sky-Father and the woman the Earth-Mother; he does play Form and she Matter.” Each
has a rôle in the ritual (103). “By nudity the lovers cease to be solely John and Mary; the
universal He and She are emphasized. You could almost say they put on nakedness as a
ceremonial robe—or the costume for a charade” (104).
M. “The Sky-Father himself is only a Pagan dream of One far greater than Zeus and far more
masculine than the male.” Cf. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.
N. “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). The husband also takes
on the image of Christ insofar as he sacrifices himself for his bride, as in Ephesians 5 (105).
III. Back to Eros per se
A. “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). What???
B. “Nothing is falser than the idea that mockery is necessarily hostile” (107). Hear, hear!
C. Eros is morally ambiguous: “may urge to evil as well as to good.” (108)
D. There is nothing truly transcendent about Eros except feelings.
E. Shaw’s idea that Eros is the voice of the Life Force “seeking parents or ancestors for the
superman” (109). Fittingness of lovers as breeding stock not evident in Eros. And what about in
the past? Has the Life Force “only just thought of this bright idea”?
F. Eros does not deserve transcendent obedience; Eros is near God by resemblance, not necessarily
by Approach (109–110). There is a real danger in idolizing Eros (111).
G. “Love made us do it” is no justification for evil. Cf. The English Patient.
H. 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, cf. character “Bingo Little” of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves).
I. In the end, Eros must be ruled by a higher love if he is not to become an idol or to die (115).
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