Lewisian Musings: Oppositional Friendship

(Photos are not related to the post necessarily, I just wanted to break it up a wee bit.)

This has been kind of a weird blogging month so far, and I've been posting things that I do want to post (and I think you want to see--like baby goats and blog party announcements!) but not things that are especially thought-provoking or deep or even comment-able, especially (it's kind of hard to comment on a poetical stream of thought on Holy Week, methinks). And since provoking thoughts and inciting dialogue are two of my big goals for this blog, I have decided to defer my Spring Books GBB until next month (May is still spring!) and instead, launch a new blog series a little earlier than I was expecting!

Introducing: Lewisian Musings! I've been reading a whole lot of Lewis lately, and there's a lot of what he says that I want to muse on and talk about, but my family/friends don't always want to talk about Lewis's philosophy 24/7 (they're happy to do it maybe 1/4 XD), but since I know many of you also love Lewis, I thought this would be a good place to simply pull a Lewis quote or set of quotes and talk about my thoughts! So, this month's Lewisian Musing is on Oppositional Friendship, and I have a fun one for not too long from now about his thoughts on reviewing...

Anyhow. Let's cut to the chase!

I've been having a fascinating philosophical debate by email with a blogger friend over the past few weeks (blogger friend, if you'd like to identify yourself, feel free--I wasn't sure if you wanted to be acknowledged). The debate has ranged from the capabilities of government to the roles of justice and loyalty in friendship, and whether they're in opposition. (And yes, this whole debate was inspired by one thing!) It's been a lot of fun, because we do have very different views of the thing we're arguing about, and so there's a lot of food for discussion, but at the same time, we respect each other, a respect born of time getting to know one another through respective blogs, as well as the respect for a noble opponent. Our (sometimes heated) discussions are often bookended with statements of gratitude for the opportunity to debate, as well as inquiries about/updates on personal life. Previously, I hadn't experienced anything like this with a friend, and in fact, found any conflict in friendships to be a frightening thing, to be avoided at all cost. And the whole thing is making me think--and not only about philosophy! 

At around this same time as we were exchanging our second volleys, I came across The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer, a scholarly look at the Inklings, and how they influenced each other. Aside from the glorious joy it was revisiting the scholarly body of work on my favorite British authors, it meshed beautifully with my musings on friendship and conflict, clarifying and connecting several things I think I'd known before, but I hadn't really assembled into a coherent whole. 

Because, C. S. Lewis? He was the absolute king of being friends with people through arguing with them. It's a very common theme in his life, and even in his work. And he talks about this, and thinks about it, and synthesizes it in a really beautiful way. 

His first mention of this sort of friendship, and indeed a very extreme form of this sort of friendship, is in Surprised By Joy, when he talks about the "Second Friend" who "has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it....When you set out to correct his heresies, you find that he forsooth has decided to correct yours! And then you go at it, hammer and tongs, far into the night, night after night, or walking through fine country that neither gives a glance to, each learning the weight of the other's punches"
This isn't quite how I feel about the friend who I've been debating with (we don't debate all the time!), but it's certainly an interesting view of friendship on Lewis's part; most people in the modern day would not think those who argue almost every time they see each other would be called "friends"...but Lewis thinks they are. And we like Lewis. 

He shows this in his own life, so maybe we should start there to unravel what's going on here. (Lewis practices what he preaches, as he always does. Good ol' Lewis.)

The first example is the "Great War" between him and Owen Barfield, which lasted nine years, from 1922 to 1931. It was, as Lewis says in Surprised By Joy, "an almost incessant disputation, sometimes by letter and sometimes face to face, which lasted for years", during which they debated the philosophical claims of Anthroposophy vs. those of Orthodox Christianity. The interesting thing is, though they debated for so many years, afterwards, each one insisted that he had been influenced more than the other by the argument. As Diana Pavlac Glyer says, "Both Barfield and Lewis clarified their understanding of their own convictions. Perhaps more importantly, they also experimented with the most effective means of asking and answering serious philosophical questions...Commenting on the effects of the Great War, Barfield asserts that Lewis is the one who taught him 'how to think'." Each man had a great respect for the other, and found that the other had taught him much through their debate. 

And their friendship was not limited to debate. Barfield helped Lewis get out of some tricky tax problems with his royalties. Lewis served as godfather to Barfield's eldest daughter (the one who Narnia is dedicated to.) The two took long walking tours together, along with other friends of theirs. (During which they probably debated a lot, but that's a bit of a moot point. :))

And they didn't take their friendship or debates too seriously either; at one point, they had an exchange of several letters with a fictional/satirical legal debate between Tristram and King Mark, during which King Mark's "lawyers" refused to admit the excuse of "magic" and Tristram's "lawyers" responded in genuine Middle English.

But Barfield was not the only person, nor the only Inkling, with whom Lewis had a Second Friend sort of relationship. One of my favorite examples of Lewis and his oppositional friendships with the Inklings is possibly just the tip of an iceberg of debate that we know very little about. When Charles Williams died, the Inklings (and Dorothy Sayers, I believe?) put together a book called Essays Presented to Charles Williams, which Lewis edited. Fr. Gervase Mathew, an Inkling who was a Dominican Friar (HOW. COOL. IS. THAT. *cough* sorry, that was absolutely necessary) wrote an essay that was an argument against Lewis's position in The Allegory of Love. And Lewis helped him polish it, and published it without a qualm! I can just imagine that there was a lot of debate between Lewis and Gervase that hasn't been preserved, but that was a rich experience for both of them. 

And we're saving the best for last, because there were also elements of Second Friendship in Lewis's relationship with Tolkien. I know a lot of you will probably have heard that Tolkien really didn't like The Chronicles of Narnia. But did you realize that it was because he objected to Lewis taking liberties with the natures of the mythical creatures he was talking about, especially the fauns? He thought that Lewis had de-fauned the fauns, so to speak, and that they merely looked like, rather than acted like, fauns. Lewis never issued a real statement about this, but if we look at Prince Caspian, we can see that he took Tolkien's opposition and opinion and made them his own; Bacchus, the Maenads, and Silenus are not quite themselves, but he has one of the girls explicitly state that they are glad that Aslan is there, and would not have felt safe if they had met any of the mythical characters alone. To me, this points to the way that Christianity can Christianize and make safe mythology and things of that sort, so that we can enjoy them with none of the dangers. Lewis took Tolkien's point and made it part of the book, but also put his own spin on it. Tolkien influenced Lewis; but Lewis remained Lewisian. 

In all of these examples, the arguments are about one central and important thing: truth. They're not arguing about whether the bylaws of such and such organization should say this or that, they're not arguing about politics. They're arguing about Truth, trying to answer Pilate's question. I think that's an important element, as we'll see in a moment. 

All this considered, I've been thinking about why our modern world doesn't value or even recognize friendship that finds an outlet in debate. The world doesn't see people who debate as being friends; it doesn't even think they can be friends. 
But Lewis obviously thinks that people who debate can be friends. This begs the question: what does friendship mean?

I was thinking about Lewis's definition of friendship, from The Four Loves: "Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up--painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder." (Emphasis mine). Those Second Friends who are debating with each other, especially about philosophy, are not necessarily opposed to each other; they are working side by side, "fighting shoulder to shoulder" to find the truth. 

It's not impossible for people who debate or argue all the time to be friends. In fact, since they're working together to find the thing that's most important--Truth--it's extremely possible for them to be friends. Their friendship has a very important thing to be About.

But because the modern world has lost the conception that Truth exists, it seems to them that a friendship that is devoted to finding Truth--through debate--doesn't actually have a thing to be About. And this is why the modern world doesn't perceive Second Friends or friends who debate as being friends at all.

But we know better. To those of us who believe in and know Truth, the friendship of friends working together in pursuit of Truth, whether they think it looks the same (in which case they might philosophize together) or not (in which case they might debate together) is one of the most beautiful and important types of friendship. Because Truth is one of the most beautiful and important parts of our lives.