Eros, Agape, Storge, and Philia

The Greeks believed that love had a nature, and characteristics. Now, when it came to describing and understanding that nature; it became difficult. So the Greeks used four different words to describe the nature of love. The word Eros was used to describe a passionate, or intense desire for something. "The platonic-Socratic position maintained the position that the love we generate for the beauty on this earth can never be appreciated until after our lives have passed.

Storge was the word the Greeks used to refer to the type of love you begin to have as you become familiar with something, or someone.

Philia was a way of describing, or saying you had a fondness, and an appreciation of another. Aristotle believed that we all seek proper friendship, and our goal is to share our dispositions with others, and share them with individuals whom we do not have a grudge against or want to have grudges with, but we all seek friendship with those that do what we do, and those who share similar passions to ours. He also believed that friendship was all about having good people around you that support you, and admire you. Friendships were considered to be based on our pleasure or utility. Even today we all desire to meet friends who make us better; as well as those who help us achieve our goals. 

The greatest and most supreme type of love was called Agape. Agape was the term used to refer to a paternal type of love. It is the love that God had for man, and it extends to describing a brotherly type of love. 

As you can see the nature of love is hard to describe, and the nature of love manifests it self in different ways but in our western culture we have a tendency to use one word; Love, to describe all the ways that we love. It would be better if we used different terms to describe love. This would help us define our relationships better as well as make better choices in friendships because we will be determining what type of love we desire with a person. The philosophical study of love has been studied by many disciplines such as epistemology, metaphysics, religion, human nature, politics, and ethics.