C S Lewis on True Friendship

Here's the fifth part of the Love series I wrote for the Straits Times. You may wish to read the first four parts first, in which case simply scroll down the page.

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LOVE 05: C. S. Lewis on True Friendship

(800 words)

“What we ordinarily call friends and friendships are nothing but acquaintanceships and familiarities formed by some chance or convenience … [But] in the friendship I speak of, our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seams that joined them.” (Montaigne)

This is the fifth in a series of articles about love. In the previous two weeks I discussed Aristotle’s analysis of the love that exists between friends.

Aristotle identifies three kinds of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure and perfect friendship. The highest and noblest of these is perfect friendship, where we love people not merely because they are useful or pleasant, but because of who they are. This is what most of us would call true or real friendship. Friendship with a capital ‘F’.

Friendships like this give value and meaning to our lives. Without them, life would be empty. Aristotle says, “Without friends no-one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” But how are such friendships forged?

C. S Lewis on Friendship

According to the writer C. S. Lewis (whose views on likings and loves I examined in part 2) Friendship arises out of Companionship.

Companionship is the feeling of closeness that comes about whenever people work together, play together or pursue common goals. You see it all the time: office-workers chatting during the lunch-break; football-players enjoying a drink after a game; church-goers picnicking on a Sunday afternoon…

Companionship and Friendship are not the same. “[Companionship] is often called Friendship,” says Lewis, “and many people when they speak of their ‘friends’ mean only their companions. But it is not Friendship in the sense I wish to give the word.”

There is no doubt that companionship is a good thing; and companions are friends, of a sort. But they are friends with a small ‘f’ - no substitute for the intimate friends we all want and need.

Although Companionship is not Friendship, it is Friendship’s source. C. S. Lewis calls it ‘the matrix of Friendship’. Our closest and dearest friends start out as mere companions – but then something sets them apart.

“Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest… which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

An example

Perhaps I can illustrate this with a personal example. In my early thirties I became obsessed with the question of whether or not I ought to believe the doctrines of the Christian church. I had been brought up as a Christian, but had begun to have doubts.

This was a very lonely place to be. My non-religious friends couldn’t understand my passionate interest in religion; and my church-going friends disapproved of my doubts.

Luckily, my work brought me into contact with a Church of England minister, named Rick. He was the first person I had ever met who was passionately committed to the Christian faith, but willing to accept that others might have valid reasons to doubt it.

Rick was older than me, but that didn’t matter. I had found somebody who shared (or at least sympathised) with my obsessions, and we became firm friends. In the end I rejected the Christian faith and became an agnostic. But our friendship survived.

With characteristic insight, C. S. Lewis observes, “The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.”

Making friends

Dale Carnegie’s 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, has sold millions of copies worldwide. Its success shows just how important friends are. It’s a good book, which offers sound, practical advice. But its techniques have more to do with Companionship than Friendship.

In The Four Loves, after describing how Friendships arise through shared insights, C. S. Lewis adds, “That is why those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends.”

His point is valid. True friendship requires that people ‘see the same truth’. There has to be something for the friendship to be about.

Aristotle says, “The wish for friendship arises quickly; friendship does not.” It cannot be forced. But it will develop naturally, given time and the right conditions.

There is no magic formula for ‘winning friends’ – not real friends, anyway. Friendship would be impoverished if there were. Perhaps the best advice is simply to lead a full life, cultivate interests, and treat people with consideration and respect. Friendship will follow.