Understanding Friendship

“Gary Chartier’s new book, Understanding Friendship, is the most exciting and profound study on the topic that we have seen in three decades, since the youthful days of Gilbert Meilaender, Stanley Hauerwas, and Paul Wadell. Chartier presents the most diligent and comprehensive discussion that I have ever read, and he takes us to new levels of analysis throughout. His engagement with politics and economics breaks new ground and makes friendship the most important heuristic key for solving the problems of our modern times. Bravo. A sure classic from the get-go.”

Stephen G. Post

“Wide-ranging in its exploration of the literature of friendship, Gary Chartier’s Understanding Friendship invites serious reflection about how we ought to live. Chartier examines the nature, the importance, and the limits of friendship from ethical, political, and theological perspectives. Few readers are likely to agree with every claim he makes, but through engaging his discussion, any reader can come to appreciate more fully the ways in which friendship enriches human life.”

Gilbert C. Meilaender

“Gary Chartier offers a rich set of reflections about the most essential of human relationships—friendship. His insights are rooted in the classical Western ethical tradition and at the same time creatively addressed to our culture today. At a time when true friendship has been more and more replaced by transactional relationships, Chartier offers ancient wisdom that speaks to our deepest longings as ‘social animals.’ His poignant reflections on vulnerability and contingency need to be heard by every thoughtful person.”

Stephen J. Pope

“In Understanding Friendship, Gary Chartier invites the reader on a journey to explore the mystery, richness, and blessed possibilities of relationships we frequently take for granted but clearly cannot live well without. He is a most trustworthy and insightful guide who, along the way, deftly demonstrates not only why the love, acceptance, and support that are given and received in friendships are integral to a flourishing and fulfilling life, but also why affirming, protecting, and celebrating good friendships help create and sustain healthy and just societies. Drawing upon theology and philosophy as well as psychology, economics, and social and political theory, Chartier gives a compelling and inspiring account for why friendship matters and deserves greater scholarly attention. Best of all, in opening up the many dimensions of friendship, Chartier, like a good friend, makes Understanding Friendship a gift to a most grateful reader.”

Paul Wadell

“In this wise, wide-ranging, and philosophically astute treatment of friendship, Gary Chartier offers what precious few theologians have dared in the modern period: an account of friendship that does not begin by trying to update Aristotle. We are offered instead a marvelously stimulating proposal: that friendship is ‘vulnerable co-creation,’ an opening of oneself to embrace life with beloved people one cannot control.”

Brian Brock

“A degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.”

Mary Wollstonecraft

“who has a deep and abiding affection for us, to whom in time of trial we may turn for advice or help, adds greatly to the security and happiness of life.”

Benjamin Jowett

“I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”

E. M. Forster

“There is nothing contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, nothing inconsistent with the fulness of Christian love, in having our affections directed in an especial way towards certain objects, towards those whom the circumstances of our past life, or some peculiarities of character, have endeared to us.”

John Henry Newman