There is another important mistake that it is traditional for us philosophers to start our inquiries with, that I want to attack head on and straight away. This is an obvious falsehood that often blocks our inquiries altogether, namely the idea that you can’t get anywhere in philosophical inquiry unless you start with a formal, explicit, and watertight definition. No such definition is available in most of the cases that philosophy is interested in. And that includes our topic here, friendship. This is why I have got two chapters into the topic and counting, and I still haven’t offered any formal definition of friendship. I won’t be offering a definition any later, either – not even in the Q & A session in Chapter 18 – except in a loose and informal way.