Finding Philia

in the Midst of a Loneliness Epidemic

Feb 11, 2026

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.

Lewis’s friendships were often born of aha moments when he discovered that his passions aligned with another person. He wrote about one such moment in Surprised by Joy, when a true connection happened with author Arthur Greeves, who would become his lifelong best friend:

I think it was shortly before the beginning of my last term at Wyvern that I received a message saying that Arthur was in bed, convalescent, and would welcome a visit. I can’t remember what led me to accept this invitation, but for some reason I did. I found Arthur sitting up in bed. On the table beside him lay a copy of Myths of the Norsemen. “Do you like that?” said I. “Do you like that?” said he. Next moment the book was in our hands, our heads were bent close together, we were pointing, quoting, talking—soon almost shouting—discovering in a torrent of questions that we liked not only the same thing, but the same parts of it and in the same way; that both knew the stab of Joy and that, for both, the arrow was shot from the North.4

Lewis had a similar moment with J.R.R. Tolkien, which eventually led to the creation of a group of friends who called themselves “the Inklings.” They gathered often to discuss literature, art, and culture. They were their own kind of rebellion in the face of a changing world. Lewis described the phenomenon so often found in friend groups in this way: “In each knot of Friends there is a sectional ‘public opinion’ which fortifies its members against the public opinion of the community in general.”5 The Inklings’s “rebellion” produced a rich catalog of material that continues to impact readers today, all originating from a single group of friends. You can read more about it in the excerpt below from The War for Middle Earth.

Read the Excerpt

While Lewis valued deep friendships, he also knew the dangers of a closed group of opinions and warned readers of it extensively in The Four Loves while also holding himself accountable to this concern. Surrounding oneself only with people who have a shared vision can cause a kind of deafness. When Lewis first met Tolkien, Lewis was agnostic and Tolkien was a believer, and yet they had a vibrant friendship, exchanging ideas and helping each other understand different aspects of the world. Lewis had other friends who challenged him in similar ways, such as philosopher and author Owen Barfield, who Lewis recounts having “an almost incessant disputation [with]…which lasted for years.”6 It was a relationship that nevertheless marked a turning point in Lewis’s life. Despite his own experience of some of the challenges that come with human relationships, Lewis still called friendship “the chief source of [his] happiness.”7

Lewis’s The Four Loves serves as both a compelling argument for understanding the value of friendship and a guidebook to cultivating it. Beyond his written words, 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.

Matthew Shaer, “Why Is the Loneliness Epidemic So Hard to Cure?” The New York Times, August 27, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/magazine/loneliness-epidemic-cure.html.

Matthew Shaer, “Why Is the Loneliness Epidemic So Hard to Cure?” The New York Times

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