Four Loves Part 2: Philia/Friendship
Published on February 2, 2025

This is Part 2 of our series on C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves. For Part 1, click here.
Of the many words that have slowly lost their meaning, “friend” might be at the top of the list.
In our modern world, though we long for true friendship, many of us find ourselves without it. Friendship often gets sidelined so other “loves” can take the field. Romantic love is at the center of much of our media, TV, and music, while friendship is a term used to describe anyone we hang out with regularly and at least remotely enjoy.
A lost art
C.S. Lewis actually claimed that modernity and true friendship (philia) are not as compatible as they were in past eras:
To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves…
Instead of making friendship a priority, he says, the modern disposition towards friendship is to see it as something that simply “fills up the chinks of one’s time.” Friendship is easily sidelined because, put simply, it’s not strictly necessary to human survival. Although that makes it easy to place lower on our priorities list, its “uselessness” is also what makes it beautiful.
According to Lewis:
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
It is in the very fact that friendship is unnecessary that we find its true value – to let friendship fall to the wayside is to lose a deeply personal, intimate, and very human form of companionship, a bond forged in complete freedom–freedom to give to one another and walk with one another, rather than just take or be transactional. Uselessness does not mean something is bad or should be set aside for something else–in the case of friendship, rather, its uselessness is precisely where its sacredness comes from.
In true friendship, we find the security we need to both be ourselves and become ourselves.
In true friendship, we find the security we need to both be ourselves and become ourselves. As Lewis writes, friendship often begins with the sentiment, “I thought it was just me,” or the recognition that you’re not alone in your experiences, beliefs, and desires.
Sharing the deepest things
Though we can quickly diminish friendships into just who we have things in common with, commonality is an important part of friendship’s growth. The problem is when we focus on the wrong things in common. It’s easy to let our friends be determined solely by things like location, workplace, or walk of life, but those commonalities are not the kind that necessarily create lasting friendships.
More than anything, our friendships should revolve around matters of the soul – with whom do we share our most deeply held beliefs? Who is striving for the same ultimate goals? Who perceives reality in the way that we do?
Shared circumstances can be an easy way to make friends – for example, other young mothers, homeschooling parents, coworkers, and so on. But these relationships won’t reach the heights of true friendship if we don’t also share the things that matter most. As he suggests, romantic love (eros) is centered around two people facing “inward,” absorbed in each other; friendship, on the other hand, is characterized by two or more people being side by side, in pursuit of a common interest. This side-by-side companionship can be one of the greatest gifts we enjoy in our pursuit of eternal life.
Friends… and more!
But these relationships won’t reach the heights of true friendship if we don’t also share the things that matter most.
Friendship, like affection, can be found within multiple kinds of relationships and enhances those relationships when it is present. We not only can, but should be friends with our coworkers, siblings, and spouses. We should actively seek not just to relate to them on superficial or circumstantial matters, but also on the things that matter most – the deepest questions and convictions we have about life, faith, and what we’re made for.
We not only can, but should be friends with our coworkers, siblings, and spouses.
Though the modern world may have disregarded the importance of meaningful, true friendships, our lives don’t have to conform to that trend. In choosing to take our friendships below the surface, we discover “the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”