Eros

English uses a single word, “love,” for erotic desire, affection between friends, family tenderness, religious devotion, and benevolence toward strangers. Ancient Greek had several terms, and Western philosophy inherited three of them as central categories: eros (the desire that reaches for what it lacks), philia (friendship, reciprocal affection), and agape (disinterested love, made central by Christianity). C. S. Lewis, in The Four Loves (1960), added storgē, family affection, but the triad eros–philia–agape remains the classical axis of the discussion. This article traces the philosophical history of these ideas: it begins with Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, passes through Aristotle and the Christian tradition, and arrives at Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and twentieth-century and current philosophy. The concepts can be consulted in the glossary: Eros, Philia, and Agape. ...