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Need-love
Appreciative Love is one of the three elements of love that Lewis identifies (along with Gift-love and Need-love). Lewis defines Appreciative Love as simple delight in the beloved, regardless of what the person can give in return. A good example is Eros, particularly when it goes beyond just sexual desire to become a delighted appreciation for the whole person. Appreciative Love can be perverted when, as in an exclusive circle of Friendship, mutual admiration stifles regard for (and even promotes prejudice against) anyone outside the circle.
Appreciative Love Quotes in The Four Loves
The The Four Loves quotes below are all either spoken by Appreciative Love or refer to Appreciative Love. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
‘God is love,’ says St John. When I first tried to write this book I thought that his maxim would provide me with a very plain highroad through the whole subject. I thought I should be able to say that human loves deserved to be called loves at all just in so far as they resembled that Love which is God. The first distinction I made was therefore between what I called Gift-love and Need-love. The typical example of Gift-love would be that love which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing; of the second, that which sends a lonely or frightened child to its mother’s arms.
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Get the entire The Four Loves LitChart as a printable PDF.
Appreciative Love Term Timeline in The Four Loves
The timeline below shows where the term Appreciative Love appears in The Four Loves. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: Likings and Loves for the Sub-human
...foreshadowed by Appreciative pleasures: love can be offered to other people, not just to things. Appreciative Love is content to gaze at and delight in the beloved. These three elements of love...
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Chapter 3: Affection
...familiar. It usually begins without one’s noticing it. It’s also humble, modest, and unrefined. The Appreciative Love , discussed earlier, plays an inconspicuous role in Affection; most often, we take objects of...
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Chapter 4: Friendship
...friends are absorbed in a shared quest, that doesn’t mean they’re oblivious to each other. Appreciative Love develops over time as a friend “rings true” again and again, causing our trust, respect,...
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...This is why friendship especially needs divine protection—it is a narrow path. If there’s no Appreciative love , it’s not friendship; and yet, appreciative love runs the risk of turning into a...
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Chapter 6: Charity
...God and a supernatural Need-love of each other. The first isn’t the same thing as Appreciative love for God, or adoration. Rather, it’s a way that God turns our need for Him...
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Lewis lists a third grace that God gives under the heading of Charity: a supernatural Appreciative Love toward Himself. It’s the most desirable of God’s gifts and the “true centre of all...
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