(Continuing a series based on Dunbar’s book, “Friends”. You can find the basic thesis here: https://jotsandscribbles.blog/2023/09/18/introduction-to-friends-by-robin-dunbar/ )
Robin Dunbar’s definition of friendship is primarily focused on usefulness- the people who would help each other without immediate reciprocation. https://jotsandscribbles.blog/2023/09/24/the-definition-and-value-of-friendship/
C.S.Lewis in “The Four Loves” speaks of friendship that arises from a shared interest or vision of the world. And he explicitly denies that friendship is about usefulness:
“I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. 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.”
“The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.”
I don’t think this is really in conflict with Dunbar’s view of friendship. Partly because much of Dunbar’s friendship circle would be companionship (a wider and less intense form of friendship in Lewis’s account) or the type of love he calls affection (especially family). So Dunbar’s focus on the support and benefits of friendship is broadly true. Lewis in his account of friendship focuses on a small number of Dunbar “friendships” which are not linked to family or work but to a shared interest that is close to our hearts. These friendships are indeed less common than Dunbar’s 150 “friends”. And they are enjoyed primarily not for practical help but for the joy of sharing a deep part of ourselves with someone who really gets why it matters.
For Christians, for whom walking with Jesus is something profoundly important, there will be a type of friendship that we can only have with others who share that experience and concern- Christian friendship. There will also be friendships we share with people who are not Christian, that we may not share with any Christian- the shared love of jazz, or knitting, or Man City. Not all our friends will overlap. But where we share something deep in us with others, then real friendships can form. The problem is that we so often stay on the surface level (weather, school, busyness, sports results, etc) that we do not reveal what is deeper in our souls, nor glimpse what is deep in another, and so we cannot find those friendships that go deeper than companionship.
Jots and Scribbles 