Ancient Greek and Roman thinkers such as Aristotle and Cicero held friendship in high regard, but is not the valorisation of friendship (insofar as it is a form of preferential love) in tension with the Christian injunction to love

Recent years have seen a notable resurgence of interest in the philosophy of love and friendship. In this paper, I bring into dialogue two important texts that approach this topic from a Christian point of view: C. S. Lewis‟s The Four Loves and Søren Kierkegaard‟s Works of Love. I shall argue that each thinker helpfully clarifies important points the other leaves obscure, and that Lewis (like Kierkegaard) has a significant, but largely overlooked, 1 contribution to make to contemporary work on the philosophy of love and friendship. Our discussion will incorporate the ambivalent view of friendship within the Christian tradition; the relation between friendship and Christian love; and the importance of genuine alterity to a proper understanding of love of the neighbor.