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paso-liati · 10 months

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Good Omens (TV) and the 7 Classical Types of Love

Word of caution I guess, this is an essay that is a few citations short of getting it's bona findes. It's 3, 217 words and is estimated to be about a 16 minute read. This sucker's long, my children. It's a meta that discusses love thru a sort of academic(ish?) framework. Anyway, if you like long-form essays about fictional people-shaped-beings being in oodles of love, you've got one, and if you don't, I've saved you from the horror of expanding the post.

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Sometimes I get a pathological urge to write an essay about something I'm obsessed with and right now (and simmering for awhile) it's Good Omens.

This essay is about love, and some of the kinds of love that English is ill-equipped to talk about. I've tried to organize my thoughts around the kinds of love as conceptualized by the Ancient Greeks/Early Christians. There may be other systematic classifications of the differing ways of talking about love, but the only one I've read about enough to write a half cogent - though probably still unhinged - essay about is the Ancient Greek one. Note, most of the kinds of love aren't mutually exclusive, but some of them do fade into the background as other kinds of love become more important to the relationship in question or are transformative. So here we go:

Agape - universal, selfless love, empathetic, kind, cosmic, communal, pure, rare

In the beginning, there was agape. Before Aziraphale and Crowley ever met one another, they loved one another all unknowing.

Not only does this one come first, it's really, really important - and I think it reverberates beyond the story into our poor benighted world. You know when a good story gets into you, one that won't let you go, that burrows under your skin to nestle in your heart, where it hurts and heals? Those stories have taught you something. That's why they hurt. Learning is growing and growing hurts. For a little while, anyway. I believe these lessons come when they're needed, when we're able to perceive them. I believe a lot of books have more than one, but I think agape is what we're meant to learn from Good Omens now. At the very least, it's what I'm meant to learn from it.

Ancient Greeks started talking about agape and slightly less ancient Christians continued. It was considered difficult to achieve and harder to sustain. It was also the kind of love to strive for because it was how Jesus was said to have loved everyone and everything. "No greater love hath any man than this, but he lay down his life for his friend." I think agape is the kind of love that holds people and communities together when everything else falls apart. (Gestures at everything.)

Agape is the bravest of the loves. It is fearless in its kindness. It will be kind in the face of evil. It will be kind in the face of indifference. Agape is feeding refuges and not asking or caring which side of the war their papers say they belong to, because agape knows they belong to the side of not seeing their children ground into puree by powerful people perverted by too many weapons and too few scruples.

It's supposedly the default state of angels, probably only the default state of some angels (and one notable demon). It doesn't require any sort of other connection to the object receiving the love, as it's broad, all encompassing, and empathetic.

Agape is openly practiced by Aziraphale and covertly by Crowely. "I want to destroy the blameless children of blameless Job the way I destroyed his blameless goats," says Crowely, somehow both sarcastic and convincing all at once… until a crow bleats and Aziraphale reveals the transmogrified animals, whereupon he makes that face, you know the one, when he is just so very, very pleased that Crowely still has his empathy, his agape, even after the war in heaven, even after Falling.

Aziraphale also shows agape in the Job story when he doesn't quite know what to do with himself upon learning that heaven actually wants these cruel things to happen to Job - and perhaps worse - doesn't understand or even care to try to understand, why they're cruel. But Aziraphale cares for no other reason than that he loves in brave kindness, and lies to do that act of kindness. Even by the end of series 2, Aziraphale still can't quite believe that Heaven, the Archangels, and The Metatron wanted Armageddon, or that with the exception of Gabriel, they still want Armageddon 2.0.

I think most of us want Aziraphale and Crowely to realise they're in love and acknowledge it. I was convinced they were after season 1, and I think agape is where it started. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that there isn't a more powerful way to tell this story than to frame it as a love story, with agape as the shared moral foundation upon which their True Love must rest. It is sine qua non. If they didn't share this one thing, they can share nothing else of substance. Agape is why Crowely is a demon who does kind things that get him punished enough to need Holy Water. Agape is why Aziraphale is an angel who lies though he believes it will cost him damnation. Agape is why they both try to make a guess at Right and Wrong and harm reduction. Agape is why they're able to team up and work towards a shared goal. Agape, selfless, open, fearless, empathetic kindness. For the cosmos. For Earth. For animals. For humans. For each other.

2. Ludus - Infatuated, flirtatious love

Ludus is a crush, that most mortifying state of being that couldn't care less that you're immortal and so can't die to end the squirming delighted, soul-crushing torment.

I'm putting this one second not because it's a super powerful form of love but because it's pervasive in the story. Crowley and Aziraphale flirting is everywhere. They've flirted and heart-eyed each other from the cradle of creation to the end of days. Somewhere the scroll holder for starting up the universe still has Aziraphale's name doodled on it. I like that this form of their love is cute, sweet, and wholesome while containing an element of pining as well. It's adorable and we humans can sigh and giggle and go awww.

Ludus can remain casual, a fun, playful fling, or it can - and in their case already has been - added on to other kinds of love. They start with agape, move straight into ludus, and by the end of that scene in space, they're already well in the early throes of philia which will just get stronger the longer they know and care about one another…

3. Philia - The love between friends, the bonding of souls, classically considered the most trustworthy type of love

Philia is a love of deep trust and unshakeable loyalty. I've seen it described in one breath as platonic and in the next as something that arises out of the transformation of Eros (more on that later) into something deeper. I think it can be either. Sometimes people become inseparable besties with no romantic interests whatever. Sometimes people who are besties catch romantic/sexual feelings and become friends who add that to their relationship.

Our heroes barely spoke to one another and were head over heels in philia. They aren't, I think, quite at the point of being ready to suffer the growing pains of acknowledging just how deep that philia goes, because they have other loves to grow first, but it's there, simmering, likely all the more for the break up. They trust one another more than they trust anything, anywhere, anywhen, and I wager that includes God, however conflicted that may make Aziraphale. Speaking of that conflict…

4. Storge - unconditional, familial devotion

Storge is usually described as a parental or fraternal love, but in my reading there always seems to be a heaping dose of obligation, fealty you might call it. I see storge as a kind of responsibility or duty-based love. But it's very protective. Remind you of anyone?

I think Aziraphale struggles with this one. He loves what Heaven probably advertised itself as being in the earliest propaganda scrolls and maybe what it was for him when he existed with Crowley before time, before the war, still unaware of cruelty in the face of an indifferent(or worse) god, a happy witness to the ecstasy of creation.

This wraps round to his agape for that creation, perhaps felt all the stronger for Crowely having been a creator and also a member of the Host.

The Host that Aziraphale misses (or at least misses his fantasy of what he imagines it ought to be like) to the point of wondering after Crowley's loneliness as a demon self-alienated from Hell, and later to calling Crowely round to report his good works since he no longer reports to Heaven. Heaven are awful, but they are his family and he seems to feel storge towards them.

Aziraphale knows that Heaven is flawed, and finally - will wonders never cease - even acknowledges it. The critical difference between storge and philia is that storge isn't a shared love between equals. Storge is unidirectional. It's typically described as the love of a parent for a child, even though that child is a monumental cunt. Well, here Aziraphale (child) loves Heaven (monumentally cunty parent) unconditionally. They don't reciprocate his love and sadly don't have to do.

There's more to it than that though. Even if Aziraphale wanted to alienate himself from Heaven he couldn't. Remember how I said he also loves (agape) Earth? If there's a hierarchy to his loves, and I don't see why there wouldn't be, Aziraphale probably loves (agape) Earth and loves (all ways always) Crowley more than he loves (storge) Heaven, even if he isn't ready to admit it yet. He loves Earth and Crowley so much he'll risk deletion to try to fix his awful, cunty family.

Because if he doesn't somehow change Heaven - an institution that only builds its pretty sandcastles to test the building by kicking them over - the Earth, all the cosmos, Crowley, and whatever of his divinity he invested in them, will sooner rather than later be destroyed as well.

Look at that, there's that agape again and philia. I don't know if he can love the awfulness out of Heaven, but if love is enough, he's half the equation.

But guess who else seems just steeped in storge? If you said Crowley, the demon who still prays and can stroll around Heaven indistinguishable from an angel and open top level records, you got it in one. Crowley's storge is no doubt for his fantasy of what he imagines Heaven/god ought to have been. I would be surprised if his and Aziraphale's fantasies weren't pretty similar.

But the difference is Crowley knows - really, really knows in the marrow and meat of the burnt bones of his soul - that it's a fantasy. He knows that Heaven is flawed and he knows that it's flawed because no one has ever been allowed to ask what Good is. Or Evil for that matter. Or question anything going on there.

"Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it," wrote St. Augustine, possibly speaking in moral absolutes that still reverberate in the prosperity gospel. But how would anyone in Heaven or Hell know one way or the other? The Metatron could have God Themself hog-tied and locked in a broom closet in Hell for the last 4000 years and say, "I'm an angel, what I've done must be Good" and most of the Host would have to nod along because they have been denied knowing and thus free will.

"Be pretty funny if I did the right thing and you did the wrong one," said Crowley on the last day in Eden. Very funny, but I think that's how it shook out.

Part of me thinks, in the end, it will be Crowley's storge combined with Aziraphales that will be instrumental in the resolution of things so that they can have their happy ending. Maybe it'll have something to do with Crowely dealing with his impulse to flee. I wouldn't go so far as to suppose he'll reconcile with heaven, but I do think he'll work through his familial issues and maybe reconciliation with himself.

Which leads us to…

5. Philautia - Love of self, self-care, self-compassion

It sounds narcissistic and it can be, but it doesn't have to be. They say you have to love yourself to love another, and I think the non-pathological levels of philautia are just that.

Aziraphale needs to love himself enough to acknowledge that he, like Crowley, somehow against all odds, has cobbled together a sense of Right and Wrong. That being an angel is what has made him Good, that his love has made him Good, and that he is not Good by affiliation but by (heretical?) choice.

He can't really love Crowely in the fullness of philia - to say nothing of pragma - (more on that later) until he loves that in himself that gave away his flaming sword, and until he loves himself more than he loves being able to fall back on the institution. He seems to already be moving past that though.

Crowely needs to find philautia too and is likewise on that path. He couldn't really open himself up to Aziraphale if he hadn't started to make some kind of peace with himself. He looked beyond insulted when Aziraphale offered to re-instate him as an angel, and well he should do. I think the unfairness of the rejection that led to his damnation hurt him, but I don't think Crowely dislikes what he's made the wreckage of an angel into. He loved his precious, fragile existence with Aziraphale around after foiling Armageddon. Now he must learn to love it without him, maybe come to terms with the fact that sometimes he is nice, for no other reason than he wants to be.

It hurts that they're apart in the story now with no clear path back together and no promise of a series 3, but they've grown together as far as they can. Now they need to grow as individuals for a little bit (hopefully not terribly long), because if they don't grow, they are never, ever going to learn to communicate properly. Which they will need for…

6. Pragma - Enduring Love, aka the HEA

Pragma is the love you work for, fight for. It's a repeated choice and it isn't always easy. Pragma is a steward that shelters love and nurtures it to weather every storm. It is the canopy against the rain, but there's some work to keeping it strong enough not to collapse under the weight of the water.

If the kiss at the end of a movie or book feels satisfying, if it steals your breath, or swoops in your chest, it comes of the writer convincing you that the characters have or will have this kind of love.

It's what Nina and Maggie were talking to Crowley about. It's why Nina won't rebound with Maggie and squander the chance of pragma for the temporary balm of Ludus and/or Eros.

Pragma is what Aziraphale and Crowley have to work towards for their love story to feel satisfactory. They could have all six other kinds of love, and it wouldn't feel satisfying f they didn't get this one right. This is the one they're working for, hurting for, and suffocating without. But they need to work on themselves so that they can do the work of this kind of love.

Pragma introduces a break in Crowley "saying something clever and [Aziraphale] say[ing] something unintentionally funny back." They'll end up doing that, but once they get into pragma, they'll be witty around being nourishing to and for one another. They'll be able to say "I love you" not "let's get fantastically drunk" or "I forgive you." Pragma comes off shades off, righteous pride down, open soul-rending honesty, trust, and work, that for immortals is a big commitment. Forever is a really long time. And not long enough. So here's where I tell you that I love the sad ending of Series 2. I didn't think I would, but this is the rend they have to mend to get to where they love in a way that feels meaningful to the promise of their story.

I also quite selfishly want them to achieve pragma because I don't think I can survive another desperate, pleading, miserable kiss that looked painful because it was born of pain.

And last love of the lot…

7. Eros - Physical, Lustul love of the physical body

This one's kind of pointless in this context all thing's considered, but I'll write a little here about it to be thorough, I guess. Eros seems to kind of be misunderstood, I think, and I'm not sure if I fully understand it even after having read about it a fair amount. It's not exactly the desire, attraction, lust, or sexual component of what we nowadays call romantic love.

Eros is only pure, undiluted desire, attraction, lust, and sexual interest, and that interest is only physical. Nothing else. At all. I don't even think hate-sex qualifies because the hate suggests some kind of emotional component that isn't about some chemicals making you wanting to raw someone because you like their pretty body. The closest thing I can think of nowadays is maybe anonymous hook-ups. "You're hot." "Cool, I think you're hot, too, let's smash." Or since the rest of this draws from the Greeks, there's the example of Zeus and Ganymede. (And no you should absolutely not google that at work if you don't know about it).

The second there's something else to it, it's not quite eros anymore. Eros can lead to a fling maybe with some Ludus to make it more fun. It can end there or transform into philia. I'll remind you philia doesn't have to be platonic. (I'm looking at you Achilles and Patroclus).

Classically it was considered a wild and dangerous form of love because it wasn't formed from or about the kinds of social attachment that lead to stable social or familial bonds. Philia was was the trustworthy love. I suspect that even in the ancient world it wasn't uncommon for one half of an erotic love pair to catch feelings and for the other half to just. Not. And then discord ensuese.

So. For our two heroes, I think this one was out of the question before time began. They loved one another before they had physical corporations to lust after, even if lust had been invented at that point, which it probably hadn't.

None of this is to suggest they couldn't one day decide to add physical pleasure to their relationship, the same way they've decided to do loads of human things.

They could make every kind of Effort and do the tango horizontialis under the aurora borealis for a decade or twenty, just for funsies, just as they’ve chosen to enjoy eating and drinking and collecting material property.

But. It can't really be eros. They're already in six other kinds of love that are deeper than eros can ever be. And if that's not enough, because sex would be a conscious, considered choice, it also can't be the hormonally deranged, almost drugged state of lust that drags people along against their will. (Literally Ganymede).

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens 2 spoilers #good omens meta #I think?#7 kinds of love #classical love

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