Onedia has been writing about friendship this month. (Onedia, I'm making this post part of 'chatting over the fence' if that's ok with you.) In her post 'Nature of Friendship' she quotes C.S. Lewis on friendship...."Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival". This looks like a very negative statement I know. But to me the sentence that stood out was that friendship is "one of those things that give value to survival". How true that is. Why we survive one more day may have many reasons. But surely whatever makes that survival valuable is good, is beautiful! In fact, you could say philosophy and art are like that too--adding value to survival. If survival had no value, why would we want to survive?? I think maybe C.S. Lewis missed a point there--the things that go into giving value to survival are essential to our survival and relationships of all kinds are part of that.
I read the same sentence and thought perhaps he was being ironic, as if he'd said, "water is like air, not essential to survive." Because life is not living without art. Just my thought.
ReplyDeleteOnedia picked a good conversation starter, didn't she? :)
For sure Moanna.
ReplyDeleteHgm,
ReplyDeleteJust a thought I had - The C S Lewis quote is from his book 'The Four Loves', where he categorizes love into four types - affection, friendship, eros and charity.
In this, he, like the ancients, terms friendship or 'philia' the most admirable love and as having 'civilisation value' as it is 'unnecessary', i.e., not based on a biologial need.
I think 'The Four Loves' is a book you may enjoy reading.
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ReplyDelete"friendship is "one of those things that give value to survival". How true that is."
ReplyDeleteI can't agree more :) Have a lovely week!
Giving value to survival is more important than just being . And friendship adds that much value to your sense of being.
ReplyDeleteI have tagged you . Do work on it .
Friendship helps to give more meaning to our lives. I do agree with this.
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