Love

(chapter 3)

“We must therefore love love itself, or love nothing - we must love love or die; this is why love, not suicide, is the only truly serious philosophical problem.”

The Three Forms of Love

Comte-Sponville distinguishes three Greek words for love—eros, philia, and agape—each representing a different dimension of human affection.

Eros (Passionate Desire) Eros is characterized by lack and longing. It’s the love that desires what it does not possess, creating both the “great suffering of desire” (as Plato described it) and its powerful driving force. This is the passionate, often turbulent form of love that seeks to possess its object.

Philia (Joy and Friendship) Drawing on Aristotle’s insight that “to love is to be joyful,” philia represents love as joy in what already exists. Rather than being driven by lack, philia is love of what we already possess and take pleasure in. Comte-Sponville emphasizes this is no mere romantic friendship—it encompasses the love between spouses, parents and children, and genuine friends. It’s a benevolent love where we wish well to the person who brings us pleasure. Crucially, philia includes physical and sexual intimacy: “between lovers, philia feeds on and is illuminated by sex.”

Agape (Universal Charity) Agape represents a love that transcends personal benefit. It means loving one’s neighbor “inasmuch as it is possible; to love someone who neither saddens us by his absence, nor makes us happy by his presence…whom we must love uselessly, for no reason, purely for his sake, regardless of who he is, regardless of his worth, regardless of what he does, even if he is our enemy.” This is Christ’s conception of love—a selfless, universal charity that goes beyond what the ancient Greek philosophers knew.

Comte-Sponville presents these not as competing forms but as interconnected dimensions of human experience. His fundamental insight is that love, in all its forms, is central to understanding how we should live.

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