Many feel that true friendships have been devalued in our digitized society, with studies reporting that people have fewer and fewer close friends. But for philosopher Mark Phelan, this is an opportunity. Rather than lamenting the loss of true friends, and lauding them as the ultimate goal, we need to embrace lesser, more casual friendships for their experimental nature. They can teach us to be more playful in life and break free from those cultural frameworks that keep us locked un our comfort zone.

We may be forgiven for thinking that friendship has been devalued these days. Pop songs by superstars like Taylor Swift describe casual sexual partners as “friends.” We speak of governors as having a friend in the White House or evangelicals as having a friend in the Republican party. Facebook insists that we publicly avow friendship to everyone we have ever known. A deeper and more lasting kind of interpersonal bond — one based on privately shared ideals — seems to have been replaced or crowded out by something shallower and more fleeting. Friendship, the critic William Deresiewicz argues, has gone “from a relationship to a feeling — from something people share to something each of us hugs privately to ourselves in the loneliness of our electronic caves.”

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In everyday life we commonly use the word ‘friend’ flexibly without causing any confusion.

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But has friendship really changed? Friendship always has been a concept that covers a broad spectrum of relationships, including those that are quickly and lightly formed. Aristotle, whose discussion of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics has proved definitive, distinguished several types of friendship, from significant enduring relationships between people who understand one another’s character, to friendships of utility, such as a Governor might have with the President, and friendships of pleasure, such as a pop star might have with her latest fling. Indeed, text databases such as Google Books suggest that, for more than a century, friendship has been one of the most common things one might ‘strike up.’ And in everyday life we commonly use the word ‘friend’ flexibly without causing any confusion. If you describe a close confidant you have known since high school and the person with whom you are currently engaged in a merely sexual relationship as your ‘friends,’ you can reasonably expect any listener to understand your meaning. On the other hand, if you describe the person with whom you are currently engaged in a merely sexual relationship and the person with whom you have invested a large sum of money as your ‘partners’, expect some bewildered stares.

Critics like Deresiewicz seem to think that true friendships are fundamentally different from lesser friendships — that they differ in kind. But a better understanding of friendship, which I discuss in a pair of articles, shows that true and lesser friends differ only in degree. The word ‘friend’ appears to be what linguists call a context sensitive term, like ‘expensive.’ The meanings of such terms lie along a continuum and the way in which we use them depends on the situation. Consider: Is a $5,000 item expensive? We don’t know until we know what the standard costs are for the class of items of which we are speaking. If we are speaking of watches, then yes; if cars, then no. ‘Friend’ is similar. Is Meghan a friend? Well, do you need a friend that will help you move your belongings into a new house or a friend that will help you move the body of someone you just murdered? In other words, whether Meghan counts as a friend depends on the situation.

If ‘friend’ is a context sensitive term what is the continuum along which friendships lie? Whether something is more expensive is a matter of cost. What draws the distinction between greater and lesser friendships? To answer, we might ask what happens after two strangers strike up a little friendship. One thing that happens is that they form different expectations of one another than they had when they were simply strangers. Two people, having struck up a little friendship, may expect a loosening of the strictures of polite conversation — for example, in languages that have them, this may result in the loosening of honorific word forms. Our expectations of what it is appropriate to do for and request from one another also change at the moment of friendship. We are not surprised and may respond favorably when our new friend asks for a smoke or buys us a drink. We would be surprised if a stranger did those things. It seems then, that what happens when we strike up a little friendship is that we move from a framework of norms that govern the interactions of strangers within a culture, to a new, unique framework of norms that is the product of the collaborative act of friend-making.

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But there is also a freedom in lesser friendships to experiment with who we are and what our relationships can be.

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If a friendship is a sui generis shared normative structure formed through the modification of cultural norms, then it is no derogation of the term to call the people with whom we have less substantial relationships our ‘friends’. These lesser friendships comprise fewer modifications to shared cultural frameworks, but what modifications they do comprise make for unique relationships. Indeed, some valuable activities are possible in some of our lesser friendships that are not possible in some of our more substantial ones. This follows, in part, from the fact that lesser friendships are often formed around common interests. Your board gaming buddies may make certain activities possible that your spouse does not, though a more expansive normative structure presumably exists between you and your spouse. You may collaborate with someone in your field to produce a work and a unique working friendship in the process. Clearly, certain things are possible within this working friendship that are not possible in the deeper friendships you share with non-specialists. But even lesser friendships not built around common interests may afford certain possibilities that more developed friendships foreclose. The unique normative framework that comprises a significant friendship makes its own demands on what actions are appropriate or inappropriate. To be sure, this is part of the value of deep friendships and part of the reason it would be sad for someone to have only lesser friends. But there is also a freedom in lesser friendships to experiment with who we are and what our relationships can be.

If the foregoing is correct, then true friendships are not fundamentally different than lesser ones, they just lie further along that continuum. Our smallest friendships are the products of only a few normative manipulations, just significant enough in number to reach the loosest standards for application of the word ‘friend’. Further along the continuum lie more significant lesser friendships. Our deepest friendships are the products of countless collaborative departures from a shared cultural framework—sometimes so many that deep friendships become almost isolated cultures in their own rights. 

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In that case, some of our lesser friendships open up possibilities that are unavailable in some of our deeper ones. Greater freedom of thought and action seems to lie in a variety of friendships of different shapes and sizes.

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None of this is meant to suggest that our lesser friends mean as much to us as our true friends. Nor is it meant to suggest that how much our friends mean to us is directly proportional to the amount of norm manipulation in which we have collaboratively engaged. At best, our love for our friends only roughly corresponds to the depth of our friendships. However, if the value of a friendship consists at least in part in the things it makes possible, then the present view does suggest a way in which lesser friends matter. Just as many of our thoughts and actions are possible only against a cultural framework of norms—for example, I cannot marry someone or make a bet with them unless my culture contains frameworks for marrying and betting—so some thoughts and actions may be possible only within the context of a particular friendship’s unique, shared framework of norms. In that case, some of our lesser friendships open up possibilities that are unavailable in some of our deeper ones. Greater freedom of thought and action seems to lie in a variety of friendships of different shapes and sizes. We need both the drinking buddy and the bosom one.