The Virtue and Joys of Friendship: When Heart Speaks to Heart
We can deepen our friendships by deepening our conversations.
Aristotle famously wrote that no one would want to go on living without friends—even if he possessed all other goods (Ethics, 8.1). That is quite the claim! Is it really the case that if you had all of the pleasure, and influence, and beauty, and wealth, and leisure, and wisdom you could imagine—that you would still not want to live without friends? But I think it makes sense. For a friend is someone with whom you can share and enjoy these gifts. And a good friend is also someone who, in bad times, can lighten the load of sorrow.
I think anyone who has had the privilege of living with friends knows the truth of this observation. We can scrape by in life, but seeking the good together with friends makes that process easier, more delightful, and more worthwhile.
The State of Friendship in America
Americans actually think pretty highly of friendship. In data from a recent Pew Center Poll, 61% of respondents said that close friendships are extremely or very important for a full life. In contrast, marriage, children, and wealth fared less well. Only 23% of respondents thought that it was very important to be married to live a fulfilled life. Only 26% thought that it was important to have children for a fulfilling life. And only 24% thought wealth mattered a lot for a happy life.
While the statistics about marriage and children might need some more looking at, I do find it encouraging that most people seem to think that friendships are important for a happy life. That makes what some have called the “friendship recession” even more alarming. This is the case especially for American men and for those who are under 50. According to one study, 20% of single American men report having no close friends. And while almost half (49%) of those who are 65 or older report having five or more close friends, only a third (32%) of those who are under 30 report having five or more close friends. And nearly 10% of all respondents reported having no close friends at all.
Now, perhaps having five “close” friends is actually a greater accomplishment than we think. And those who are closer to retirement age may have more time and leisure for friendships. But it still might lead us to ask: how can we cultivate more intentional friendships? And what purpose do friendships serve?
The Nature and Three Kinds of Friendship
Ancient and medieval philosophers, following the lead of Aristotle, often grouped friendships into three different kinds: pleasant, useful, and true friendships.
Friendships of pleasure are those that we basically seek for our own delight. These could be your drinking buddies, your gym friends, and fellow sports fans. Such friends might be more than that, but if they are merely your friends with whom you go to bar or mall to hang out with, they fall into this category.
Friendships of utility are those we pursue for some useful good that we derive from the relationship. So perhaps we are friendly with our plumber or colleague at work because it benefits us in the long term to do so. Arthur Brooks playfully calls these friendships of utility not real friends but deal friends. Deal friends are more common in mid-life, as we engage in the business world, while friendships of pleasure are more common to younger people and children who are looking for diversion and play.
True friendships are those in which we seek the good of another as if it were our own (and not merely for our utility or pleasure). For this reason, a friend is another self (alter ego) whom we love for their own sake. And this good that we will or wish for them must also be, in fact, a true good. If we are mistaken about the good of human life, we might think we have a good friendship with someone when we go on a bender at the local bard, but that wouldn’t really qualify as true friendship. And so Augustine would say that there can be no true friendship among thieves, even if they are on good terms, because they are not together pursuing the integral and authentic human good.
What else does friendship require?
Friendship must be mutual. I must will good to another and the other must will good to me. I might wish a famous celebrity well, but that does not make us friends. There must be an open and mutual two-way street of affection.
Friendship also requires a shared life. In other words, friends need to spend time together, in one another’s presence. Friendship can sustain time and distance apart, but the essence of friendship—friendship in act—requires living life together. This is the conviviality that friends enjoy.
Friendship also involves a communicatio or sharing of goods. This is going to differ depending on the friendship. One might pursue a friendship in serving the less fortunate, in researching a cure for a rare disease, or in striving to be a better spouse or parent with others in that situation. True friendship is open to as many possibilities as there are genuinely good ways of life.
Forming Friendships and the Business of Life
Why bother with friends? To someone with close friends, I’m not sure this question really arises. But the business of life can definitely crowd out the time we spend with friends. I am as guilty of this as anyone! Still, I think one of the core experiences of friendship is something that C.S. Lewis describes: two people who discover a shared love, exclaim—you, too, love this? I thought I was the only one. From this discovery a close friendship can be born.
The image of two friends is thus those who look outward at a shared good. It is this good that binds the friends together. And the higher the good it is the closer the bond will be. Spouses who are joined in their love for a child, if all is well, will be closer friends than two people who share a love for the same rock band, or gardening, or downhill skiing. The point is that we can form closer friendships when we move our friendships into higher goods and higher conversation.
To Know and Be Known: The Conversational Core of Friendship
If we want closer friends, aim for higher goods. One concrete way to do this is to shift conversation toward more substantial topics than the weather or the news or the business at work. Those might be fine to open a conversation with, but if we never discuss the higher things—meaning and purpose in life, hopes and dreams, spiritual and philosophical commitments, confessions and admissions of failure—then we are not going to have any close friends. For a close friend is someone with whom you can freely talk about those sorts of things.
In other words, to be known we must allow others to see us. This can be a scary prospect if we have suffered from betrayal or gossip or simple misunderstanding. But if we never reveal our hearts to others, we will never feel known in this life. And to never feel known can be a deeply lonely form of existence.
We can all do better on this score. Obviously, not every conversation we have can or should be a deep, hours long, heart to heart communication. But we can in small ways practice the virtues of friendship by steering a conversation and question beyond the superficial and closer to the heart. When we can do this in a lighthearted way, that’s even better. As one of my Latin teachers used to tell us in class, you don’t have to be somber to be serious. Serious things can be joyful, too. And there is nothing more serious or joyful than a good friendship.