Lewis’s life illustrates how philia can sustain, educate, and inspire us. His counsel is both practical and also carries the weight of lived experience, offering a powerful reminder that we are not alone in our longing to be entangled in the life-giving knots of friendship.

It feels like updated stats about just how many Americans identify as lonely dominate the headlines, continually cementing what has been established as a loneliness epidemic. While the headlines can feel distant, the loneliness described is, I think, a feeling that has touched everyone, even if each of us might describe it in different ways. In moments of loneliness, I find inspiration in what C.S. Lewis called his “rehabilitation of friendship,” which he argued in The Four Loves.

Lewis lived through two world wars and, with them, through large shifts in societal norms and in the way people interacted. His reflections on friendship, a type of love he used the Greek word philia to define, sprang from his own era’s diminished value of true friendship. Lewis, who had spent many years as a bachelor, knew well the value of friendship. Of philia, Lewis wrote: “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.”¹ Lewis’s own friendships brought much richness to his life through letters, evenings together at the pub, and discussions on faith and literature.

Although C.S. Lewis knew well the importance of philia, he could not have foreseen the scientific data we have today on the physical effects of loneliness. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy notes that loneliness is “associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety,”² even impacting mortality rates. This modern understanding builds on the survival instincts Lewis touched upon. Lewis theorized that early humans needed community in order to hunt and gather, and modern scientists claim that “gradually, our brains evolved to prioritize togetherness, and conversely, to generate an anxiety response when we failed to find it.”³ Long before data backed up the importance of philia, Lewis’s spiritual journey was guiding him toward this truth.

While Lewis set about to rehabilitate its value during his time, he wasn’t the first to emphasize the importance of friendship. In the Bible, we see beautiful examples of friendship—in God ensuring that David had a companion in Jonathan while he was far from home, in Mary’s friendship with her cousin Elizabeth, with whom she was able to share the joy of her miraculous pregnancy, and even in Jesus’ friendships with His disciples during His earthly years of ministry. Philia is crucial in our lives—not just scientifically but spiritually and emotionally as well.

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