Love comprehends the complexity
of human relationship in all its forms. All of us hold feelings for others, but
these feelings differ according to the people involved and the circumstances
under which we interact. In the English language there is only one word to
describe all of them: Love.
It wasn’t always so. The Ancient
Greeks had around thirty words to describe Love in all its shades and
complexities. The most easily recognizable of these forms are generally
accepted to be the following seven:
Agape – the love of
humanity (also known as ‘Love without desire’)
The kind of love which makes us sad
when we hear of a crisis in another country (or our own); that makes us give
our time or money to charity; and makes us feel connected to people we don’t
know simply on the basis of our shared experience as human beings.
Storge – family love
The love a parent or grandparent
has for a child, or the love a child has for a favourite aunt or uncle. Equally,
the love a foster parent feels for children in his/her care. Also of course the
love between siblings.
Pragma – love which
endures
The love between a married couple
which typically develops over a long period of time. This is the love that endures
in sickness and in health and is also the love which exists between old friends
(of the same or different sexes) and which causes one to care for another in
later life.
Philautia –
self-respect
The love we give to ourselves.
This is not vanity, like narcissism, but our joy in being true to our own
nature and values. It gives us the strength to care for ourselves so that we
can in turn care for others.
Philia – shared
experience
The love we feel for people we
combine with to achieve a shared goal – our fellow workers, the players in a
team or soldiers in an army.
Ludus – flirting,
playful affection
The feelings we have when we play
at what it might be like to be in love with someone.
Eros – romantic and
erotic love
The one which is most often
thought of as love but is really based on sexual attraction. It can turn into
other kinds of love – like pragma – but it starts as romance.
