S5E13 – TFL 4 – “Friendship” (Part I)

Today the gang begin discussing a new love, “Friendship”.

S5E13: “Friendship” – Part I (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

“Nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. ”

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

Chit-Chat

Andrew’s Updates

Carlota’s observation in Slack about the repeated phrase “nine-tenths”:

“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.”

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 3)

“A love like that can grow to be nine-tenths hatred and still call itself love”.

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Part II, Chapter 1)

Matt’s Updates

• Back in Michigan
• Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen

David’s Updates

• I have begun to reach out to local churches about starting a C.S. Lewis discussion group here in La Crosse, Wisconsin…
• …and I came across this haiku the other day:

Help me!
I am trapped in a Haiku factory.
Save me, before they

An awesome Haiku

Beverage and Toast

• Andrew
  • London Pride

• Matt
  • Macallan 18

• David
  • Glen Moray Single Malt (Elgin Classic)

Recap & Summary

Recap

In the introduction, we were introduced to the concepts of Nearness-by-likeness, Nearness-of-approach, Need-love and Gift-love. We heard how loves become corrupted when they’re elevated beyond their station…

In the second chapter, we were introduced to Appreciative Love, and we talked about love of nature and love of country.

Finally, in the third chapter, we looked at the first of the four “official” loves – Affection (in Greek, “storge”). This is the humble love of the familiar. It combines well with the other natural loves and, while it is wonderful and can open our eyes to appreciate others, Jack reminds us to not mistake it for charity and also that it can be corrupted… The Need-love element of Affection can go wrong if we develop a sense of entitlement, or if we misuse its informality, or if we allow our desire for it to become ravenous. The Gift-love element of Affection can likewise become twisted, encouraging us to keep others dependent upon us.

Summary

Lewis introduces Friendship love – in Greek, “Philia”.

While it was lauded among the ancients, Jack says moderns mostly ignore friendship, either because of their lack of experience of it, the absence of biological imperative, or simply because of its exclusivity. Jack rejects the claim that friendship is really just disguised sexual attraction.

He explains why Philia is the least jealous of the loves, flourishing as the friend group grows and he ends this section by distinguishing between Companionship and Friendship, and also by examining the interaction between Philia and Eros.

S5E13 Episode Summary

Discussion

1. “The Ignored Love”

Jack says that, in today’s world, Affection and Eros often receive praise but friendship does not. 

“To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it”

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

To prove his point, he says that, while the great lovers of history (Tristan and Isolde, Antony and Cleopatra) have their modern counterparts, the great friends of antiquity don’t.

He says that, the very way that modernity begrudgingly admits that a man needs “a few friends” makes it clear that they don’t hold it in high esteem and actually mean something very different from…

…that Philia which Aristotle classified among the virtues or that Amicitia on which Cicero wrote a book. It is something quite marginal; not a main course in life’s banquet; a diversion; something that fills up the chinks of one’s time.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

2. “Why Ignored?”

After asserting that modernity ignores friendship, Jack offers some reasons why he thinks this is the case…

Reason #1: Lack of Experience
Lewis suggests that friendship is ignored for the simple reason that very few people experience real friendship! Sad…but he thinks this to be the case, and it’s possible because friendship is…

….the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological…

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

…therefore friendship isn’t guaranteed and here we come to a line which Andrew quoted in a previous episode:

Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically considered, has no need of it.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

As a result, friendship is therefore not only rare, but often distrusted by those in authority because “the moment two men are friends they have in some degree drawn apart together from the herd”

Reason #2: Least Animal
So the first reason for modernity’s disparagement of friendship is that few experience it. One of the reasons few experience it is because it is the least biological. 

Lewis says this is itself a reason why the ancients and moderns viewed friendship differently. Right up until medieval times there was a real sense in society of asceticism. Nature, instincts, and emotion were treated in a rather suspect manner. 

[Friendship] alone, of all the loves, seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

But then came Romanticism, a subject we’ve mentioned before, which was all about embracing nature, exalting sentiment and feeling emotion. It was now friendship’s turn to look suspect. Jack writes…

[Friendship] had not tearful smiles and keepsakes and baby-talk enough to please the sentimentalists. There was not blood and guts enough about it to attract the primitivists. It looked thin and etiolated; a sort of vegetarian substitute for the more organic loves.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

Not only that, but those who believe that humanity is “merely…a development and complication of animal life” can be suspicious of behaviours which don’t reveal an animal origin or generate survival value.

Reason #3: False Equality
Jack offers a final reason why friendship is less popular. He says it’s due to the “democratic sentiment”, which dislikes the fact that, if some people are my friends and others are not. It is argued that this is somehow unfair.

3. “Philia or Eros?”

Because Lewis thinks that the ancient opinion regarding Friendship was correct, he tells us that this chapter is going to be his attempt to rehabilitate our view of Philia…

In order to perform this rehabilitation of Philia, Jack says that he’s first got to do some demolition:

It has actually become necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

Now, regardless of how one regards homosexuality, I think everyone must admit that if the concept of friendship is to be saved, it must be distinguished from this form of Eros. So, rather than praising or dispraising, let’s describe and define…

Lewis thinks that in the word “really” is significant in the assertion that “every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual”. It’s significant because the claim that every friendship is consciously homosexual is obviously false. Therefore, those who wish to discredit friendship instead have to say that, although it’s not explicit or conscious, it is really homosexuality.  This line of argumentation can’t ever be proved, but can’t be refuted either.  It’s like every conspiracy theory, where lack of evidence becomes evidence!

…the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

To those who would argue in this way, Jack has a stinging rejoinder:

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. 

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

To distinguish homosexuality from friendship, he points out the differences between Philia and Eros:

1. Language

Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. 

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

2. Focus

Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. 

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

3. Cardinality

Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. 

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

He takes a paragraph out to explain what he means by this….

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

He then alludes to two of the Inklings, Charles Williams and J.R.R. Tolkien:

Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

And from this he concludes…

Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third…

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

Now, there are limits to this of course. Not everyone is a kindred soul and there are practical limitations…

…but within those limits we possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

He quotes Shelly:

True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away

Shelly, Epipsychidion

…and here Lewis takes us back to Chapter 1, declaring that Friendship has a “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven:

For every soul, seeing [God] in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

After taking that aside, Jack gives examples of where Philia and Homosexual Eros have been combined. The very fact that they’re combined means that they’re not the same thing.  He encourages us to look at the evidence rather than trying to apply our own theories.

4. “Companionship vs Friendship”

In the next section, Jack says he needs to distinguish between friendship and something which is often mistaken for friendship, which he calls “the matrix of Friendship”… 

Jack explains by pointing out that historically, men had to cooperate with each other in order to survive. They would get together to plan the hunt or battle and discuss it afterwards…

…bound together by shared skill, shared dangers and hardships, esoteric jokes–away from the women and children.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

He notes that the women no doubt had their own rituals, common skills, toils and triumphs… but he’s not a woman so he’s going to declare his ignorance and move on. The point he wants to make is that these shared skills, experiences and time together are…

…only the matrix of Friendship. It is often called Friendship, and many people when they speak of their “friends” mean only their companions.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

This doesn’t make it bad…only different.

We do not disparage silver by distinguishing it from gold.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

And, while he said earlier that society doesn’t strictly need friendship… it definitely needs this companionship.

So, he’s distinguished between friendship and companionship. That begs the question – how do companions become friends? Jack says:

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

…and here we have the classic line which most people have heard quoted:

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 (Chapter 4)

This is a somewhat rare experience, but when it happens, Jack says…

Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

While lovers seek privacy, in friendship a barrier naturally arises, separating the knot of friends from the herd (even if, as he says, more friends would be welcomed)

Nowadays, few of us are hunters, but nevertheless we still have companionship through shared activities – studies, religion, work and recreation. Lewis says that…

All who share it will be our companions; but one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends… 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.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

There need not necessarily be agreement. This was true of Jack’s relationship with Owen Barfield:

He is not so much the alter ego as the anti-self. Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one… – Surprised By Joy (Chapter 13)

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

Lewis says that those who seek friendship for friendship’s sake will not find it. Friendship requires them to want something else.

Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

5. “From Friends to Lovers?”

In the final part of today’s text, Lewis speaks about friendship between the sexes.

When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass–may pass in the first half-hour–into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

Not only can Philia lead to Eros, but the opposite is true, Eros can lead to Philia, and it’s wonderful and enriching. The fact that someone can be both a friend and lover more clearly distinguishes Philia from Eros, such as whether love can be shared with more people!

Jack ends with a thought experiment which attempts to prove that Friendship is a truly great love.

Either you two will cease to be lovers but remain forever joint seekers of the same God, the same beauty, the same truth, or else, losing all that, you will retain as long as you live the raptures and ardours, all the wonder and the wild desire of Eros. Choose which you please.” Which should we choose? Which choice should we not regret after we had made it?

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

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