What Three Greats Had to Say About Male Friendship

C.S. Lewis

Aristotle: In Rhetoric, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) used the term philía to define friendship as Platonic, virtuous love. Aristotle said philía is “wanting for someone what one thinks good, for his sake and not for one’s own, and being inclined, so far as one can, to do such things for him.” In ancient texts, philos denoted a general type of love, used for love between family, friends, and combined with a desire or enjoyment of an activity. Aristotle defined this characteristic to show the importance of true friendship between pals.

Cicero: In the first century B.C., Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) took Aristotle’s philía a bit further. He wrote a book titled On Friendship after the death of his close friend Titus Pomponius Atticus. Cicero determined that in order to have a true friendship you must be honest, as this permits someone to trust you completely. Cicero found that we must do things for a pal without the expectation of reward. He also believed if a friend is about to make a mistake, you shouldn’t compromise your own moral code to help him; instead, you must explain why you think he is wrong. Cicero thought that without virtue true friendship couldn’t exist.

C.S. Lewis: C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) noted modern society’s deficit of friendship in his 1960 book The Four Loves: “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. We admit of course that besides a wife and family a man needs a few ‘friends.’ But the very tone of the admission, and the sort of acquaintanceships which those who make it would describe as ‘friendships,’ show clearly that what they are talking about has very little to do with that Philía which Aristotle classified among the virtues or that Amicitia on which Cicero wrote a book.” C.S. Lewis was using a Christian perspective to again give meaning to the views Aristotle once outlined for Ancient Greeks and Cicero pontificated to Romans. Like Cicero, Lewis also argued that true friendship grows from virtue and shared passions.