The best books are those that tell you what you already know, but didn’t know that you knew. —Neel Burton
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent much of your life trying to make sense of things: happiness and suffering, love and loss, reason and emotion, the strange business of being human.
That search has taken me through medicine, psychiatry, philosophy, literature, history, mythology, and the wisdom of the ancient world. It has also led me to write books and essays that bring these traditions into conversation.
I hope you find something here that speaks to you.
If you’re new here, these are good places to begin.
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Democritus laughed at human folly—not out of contempt, but because he saw the world more clearly.
Philosophers are not generally renowned for their sense of humour. They spend their days pondering free will, personal identity, and whether the external world really exists. Yet philosophy has always had a playful side. Socrates delighted in teasing his companions, Diogenes made a career out of puncturing pretension, and Zen masters often concealed profound truths inside what seemed to be little more than jokes. According to one tradition, Chrysippus the Stoic saw a donkey eating figs, gave it wine to wash them down, and laughed himself to death.
Despite all his outstanding achievements, the people of his native Miletus mocked Thales for his material poverty. So, one year, having predicted a bumper crop of olives, he took out a lease on all the olive presses on Miletus and made himself a fortune. “You see,” he said, “a philosopher could easily be rich if only he did not have better things to do with his time.”
Xanthippe, after berating Socrates at length, emptied a chamber pot over his head. Wiping himself dry, Socrates remarked, “After thunder comes rain.”
Aristippus was the first of the Socratics to take money for teaching. When he demanded five hundred drachmas to tutor a man’s son, the man protested, “For that much money, I could buy a slave!” “Go ahead,” replied Aristippus. “Then you’ll have two.”
When someone chided Aristippus for his extravagant catering, he replied, “Wouldn’t you have bought this yourself if you could have had it for three obols? … Very well then, it is not I who am a lover of pleasure, but you who are a lover of money.”
When Dionysus I, the tyrant of Syracuse, asked Aristippus why he had come to his court, he replied, “When I needed wisdom, I went to Socrates; but now that I am in need of money, I come to you.”
Although he prized reason, Diogenes despised the abstract philosophy practised at Plato’s Academy. When, to great acclaim, Plato defined a human being as ‘a featherless biped’, Diogenes plucked a chicken, carried it into the Academy, and declared, “Behold! Plato’s man.” Plato is said to have amended his definition by adding, ‘with broad nails.’
One day, Diogenes asked Plato for a handful of figs from his garden. When Plato had a whole bushel sent out, he muttered, “Typical Plato.”
Diogenes used to wander about Athens in broad daylight carrying a lit lamp. Whenever anyone asked what he was doing, he would reply, “I am looking for a human being.”
Diogenes delighted in walking backwards through the streets or entering the theatre against the tide of people leaving. Once a crowd had gathered to laugh at him, he turned on his heel and said, “Why do you mock me, when you’ve spent your whole lives walking backwards? At least I can turn around.”
When a young man asked to study under him, Diogenes handed him a fish and told him to carry it around the city. Ashamed, the young man threw it away and fled. Some time later, Diogenes met him in the agora and remarked, “Fancy—our friendship was ended by a fish.”
Epictetus neither married nor had children, despite urging others to do so. When he reproached his friend and pupil Demonax for remaining unmarried, Demonax replied, “Very well, then. Will you give me one of your daughters for a wife?”
Descartes invites his date, Jeanne, to a fine restaurant for her birthday. The sommelier hands them the wine list, and Jeanne chooses the most expensive Burgundy. “I think not!” exclaims an indignant Descartes. Poof. He disappears.
Kant once joked: A man tried to arrange a solemn funeral for a wealthy relative, but failed. “The more I paid the mourners,” he complained, “the merrier they looked.”
On another occasion, Kant joked: A merchant returned from India with a great fortune, but, caught in a violent storm, was forced to throw all his cargo overboard. The shock was so great that his wig turned grey overnight.
A student lent his copy of Objects of Thought by A. N. Prior to his tutor. At their next meeting, the tutor said that he had browsed the book and left it in the student’s pigeonhole. Some time later, the student burst into his office crying, “Professor, Professor! Someone’s stolen my Prior!” The old man calmly replied, “You’d be lucky around here if they hadn’t taken your posterior as well.”
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are on a camping trip. In the middle of the night, Holmes nudges Watson awake and says, “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “I see millions of stars, my dear Holmes.” “And what do you infer from these stars?” “Well, a number of things,” he says, lighting his pipe. “Astronomically, I observe that there are millions of galaxies and billions of stars and planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I expect that the weather will be fine and clear. Theologically, I see that God is all-powerful, and man, his creation, small and insignificant. What about you, Holmes?” “Watson, you fool! Someone has stolen our tent!”
A renowned philosopher was held in high regard by his driver, who listened in awe as his boss lectured and answered difficult questions about the nature of things and the meaning of life. Then, one day, the driver approached the philosopher and asked if he would be willing to switch roles for just one evening. The philosopher agreed, and, for a while, the driver acquitted himself remarkably well. However, when the time came for questions, someone at the back of the room asked, “Is the epistemological meta-narrative that you seem to espouse compatible with a teleological account of the universe?” “That’s an extremely simple question,” replied the driver. “So simple, in fact, that even my driver could answer it.”
Two behaviourists meet in the street. “Hello,” says one. “How am I feeling today?”
Some months later, the two behaviourists have sex. One turns to the other and says, “That was good for you. How was it for me?”
Upon waking, a woman said to her husband, “I dreamt that you gave me a necklace of pearls. What do you think it means?” The man smiled and kissed his wife. “You’ll know tonight,” he whispered. That evening, he came home with a small package. She eagerly unwrapped it. Inside was a book entitled The Meaning of Dreams.
Seeing the Zen master on the other side of a raging torrent, a student shouted, “Master! Master! How do I get to the other side?” The master smiled. “You are on the other side.”
A Zen student asked the master how long it would take to attain enlightenment. “Ten years.” “And if I work twice as hard?” “Twenty years.”
For his seventieth birthday, one of his students presented the Zen master with a beautifully wrapped box. Inside was nothing. “Aha,” exclaimed the master. “Just what I wanted!”
A novice was loading the larder with flour and oil. Seeing one of the monks sitting beneath a banyan tree, he asked if he might lend a hand. “Sorry,” said the monk. “I’m busy.” “But your eyes are shut!” “Yes. I’m busy doing nothing. It’s much harder than what you’re doing. It’s what the food is for, what the kitchen is for, and why we built the temple. Don’t interrupt me again with your lardering.” Hours later, the weary novice found the monk still sitting on the bench. “Can we talk now?” he asked. “No,” he snapped, “I haven’t finished yet.”
“After twelve years of therapy,” said a man, “my psychotherapist said something that brought tears to my eyes.” “What did he say?” “No hablo inglés.”
Humour and philosophy have more in common than might first appear. Both begin by challenging what we take for granted. A joke lures us into one way of thinking before pulling the rug from under our feet; philosophy often does the same. In both cases, we emerge seeing the world a little differently.
No wonder philosophers have always been drawn to wit, irony, paradox, and satire. A good joke can expose a bad argument, puncture pomposity, or illuminate an idea more effectively than pages of solemn analysis. As Nietzsche observed, ‘It is not by wrath but by laughter that one kills.’
Perhaps, after all, laughter is simply another way of thinking.
Sisyphus, by Titian. The ancient image of a meaningless life—and, perhaps, of a meaningful one.
The question of the meaning of life is perhaps one that we would rather not ask, for fear of the answer or lack thereof.
Still today, many people believe that humankind is the creation of a supernatural entity named God, that God had an intelligent purpose in creating us, and that this intelligent purpose is ‘the meaning of life’.
I do not propose to rehearse the well-worn arguments for and against the existence of God, and still less to take a side. But even if God exists, and even if He had an intelligent purpose in creating us, no one really knows what this purpose might be, or whether it is especially meaningful.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system—including the universe itself—increases up to the point at which equilibrium is reached, and God’s purpose in creating us, and indeed all of nature, might have been no loftier than to catalyse this process much as soil organisms catalyse the decomposition of organic matter. In a word, we may be no more than complex fungi or enzymes.
If our God-given purpose is to act as super-efficient heat dissipators, then having no purpose at all is better than having this sort of purpose—because it frees us to be the authors of our purpose or purposes and so to lead truly dignified and meaningful lives.
In fact, following this logic, having no purpose at all is better than having any kind of pre-determined purpose, even more traditional, uplifting ones such as serving God or improving our karma.
In short, even if God exists, and even if He had an intelligent purpose in creating us (and why should He have had?), we do not know what this purpose might be, and, whatever it might be, we would rather be able to do without it—or at least to ignore or discount it.
For unless we can be free to become the authors of our own purpose or purposes, our lives may have, at worst, no purpose at all, and, at best, only some unfathomable and potentially trivial purpose that is not of our own choosing.
Can We Really Create Our Own Purpose?
You might object that not to have a pre-determined purpose is, really, not to have any purpose at all.
But this is to assume that for something to have a purpose, it must have been created with that particular purpose in mind, and, moreover, must still be serving that same original purpose.
Many things acquire purposes that were never intended for them.
Many Junes ago, I visited the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the South of France. One evening, I picked up a rounded stone called a galet which I took back to Oxford and put to good use as a bookend.
In the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, these stones serve to capture the heat of the sun and release it back into the cool of the night, helping the grapes to ripen. Of course, these stones were not created with this or any other purpose in mind. Even if they had been created for a purpose, it would almost certainly not have been to make great wine or serve as bookends.
That same evening over a rabbit stew, I invited my friends to blind taste a bottle of Bordeaux—an evil trick, given that we were in the Southern Rhône. To disguise the bottle, I slipped it into one of a pair of socks.
Unlike the galet, the sock had been created with a definite purpose in mind, albeit one very different from (although not strictly incompatible with) the one that it came to assume on that idyllic evening.
The point I’m driving at is that purpose need not be fixed at the moment of creation: it can also emerge afterwards.
What If the Meaning of Life Lies Beyond This Life?
But this raises a related question. Can meaning come from us at all? Or must it come from somewhere beyond us—whether from the intention of a creator or from a life beyond this one?
Many would argue that the meaning of life lies beyond this life, which is merely a prelude to some eternal afterlife.
However, I can marshal at least four arguments against this position:
It is not at all clear that there is, or even can be, some form of eternal afterlife that entails the survival of the personal ego.
Even if there were such an afterlife, living forever is not in itself a purpose. The concept of the afterlife merely displaces the problem to one remove, begging the question: what then is the purpose of the afterlife?
Reliance on an eternal afterlife not only postpones the question of life’s purpose but also dissuades or at least discourages us from determining a purpose or purposes for what may be the only life that we do have.
If it is the brevity or finiteness of human life that gives it shape and purpose (an argument associated with the philosopher Bernard Williams), then an eternal afterlife cannot, in and of itself, have any purpose.
So, whether or not God exists, whether or not He gave us a purpose, and whether or not there is an eternal afterlife, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
Existence Before Essence
To translate this into Sartrean (or existentialist) terms, whereas for the galet it is true only that existence precedes essence, for the sock it is true both that essence precedes existence (when the sock is used on a human foot) and that existence precedes essence (when the sock is used for an unintended purpose, for example, as a bottle sleeve).
We human beings are either like the rock or the sock, but whichever we are like, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
In fact, let me correct myself. We human beings are neither like the rock nor the sock—because capable of discovering and creating meanings.
This echoes Kant’s insistence that human beings are not merely means to some external end, but self-determining ends in themselves. It is this capacity for autonomy—for rationally determining our own ends—that gives us our special dignity.
Human life may not have been created with any pre-determined purpose, but this need not mean that it cannot have a purpose, or that this purpose cannot be just as good as, if not much better than, any pre-determined one.
And so the meaning of life, of our life, is that which we choose to give it.
But how to choose?
Camus and Nietzsche
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus compares the human condition to the plight of Sisyphus, the mythical king of Ephyra who was punished for daring to defy the gods by being made to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll back down again.
Yet Camus reaches one of the most startling conclusions in all philosophy: ‘The struggle to the top is itself enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’
Even in a state of utter hopelessness, Sisyphus can still be happy. Indeed, he is happy precisely because he is in a state of utter hopelessness, because in recognising and accepting the hopelessness of his condition, and embracing it, he at the same time transcends it.
The tragedy of Sisyphus became the very source of his freedom. The universe may not provide us with a ready-made meaning, but this need not prevent us from creating one, and living with dignity, courage, and even joy.
Nietzsche, too, challenged us to embrace our fate, even to love it. In Ecce Homo, he wrote, ‘My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati [love of fate]: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but love it.’
How to Find Meaning
In Man’s Search for Meaning, the psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl (d. 1997) wrote about his experiences during the Second World War.
Tellingly, Frankl found that those who survived longest in the concentration camp were not those who were physically strong, but those who retained a sense of inner freedom and purpose.
He observed:
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.
Frankl’s message is ultimately one of hope: even in the most absurd, painful, and dispiriting of circumstances, life can still be given a meaning, and so too can suffering.
Life in the concentration camp taught Frankl that our deepest drive is neither pleasure, as Freud had argued, nor power, as Adler had maintained, but meaning.
After his release, Frankl founded the school of logotherapy (from the Greek logos, meaning ‘reason’ or ‘principle’), which is sometimes referred to as the ‘Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy’ for coming after those of Freud and Adler. The aim of logotherapy is to carry out an existential analysis of the person, and, in so doing, to help them uncover or discover meaning for their life.
According to Frankl, meaning can be found through:
Experiencing reality by interacting authentically with the environment and with others.
Giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression, and,
Changing our attitude when faced with a situation or circumstance that we cannot change.
‘The point,’ said Frankl, ‘’is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.’
The Final Freedom
Whether or not God exists, whether or not He created us for a purpose, and whether or not there is an afterlife, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
We began with a fear: that if life has no pre-determined purpose, it must be meaningless. But it now seems, the opposite is true. A purpose imposed upon us from outside may give us a goal, but not necessarily meaning—for meaning requires that we recognise and embrace it as our own.
The meaning of life is not hidden in the stars, waiting to be discovered like buried treasure. Nor is it handed to us at birth. Instead, it emerges from our attitudes and choices.
Thus, it is more of an activity than a state—something that we create, discover, and renew throughout our lives.
Continue Exploring
If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my books The Gang of Three, an overview of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and their enduring answers to the question of how to live, and The Art of Failure, on how adversity, loss, and failure can become sources of meaning, growth, and fulfilment.
How to improve your blind tasting—for examinations, competitions, or simply the love of wine
Blind tasting begins not with answers but with passion and attention.
In Why Blind Taste Wine, I argued that blind tasting frees us from our preconceptions, obliging us to attend to the wine itself rather than the noise surrounding it. This temporary suspension of preconceptions—what the ancient Skeptics called epoché—is, I think, a pre-requisite for learning about wine.
Here I want to ask a different question: how do we become better at blind tasting?
Many people first encounter blind tasting through examinations and competitions. Others simply want to deepen their understanding of wine. Whatever your motivation, it’s all too easy to lose sight of why you embarked on the journey in the first place—not to punish yourself or put yourself through an obstacle course, but to learn more deeply about the thing you love. Blind tasting, remember, is a means, not an end in itself—not to pass examinations or conquer competitions, but to commune with the world.
There can be no shortcut to expertise. Nor is there any substitute for a long and loving relationship with wine. No examination technique, tasting grid, or mnemonic can replace years spent tasting attentively, visiting wine regions, talking to growers and vintners, reading widely, and, above all, drinking good wine in good company.
Practice is indispensable, but not all practice is equally valuable. Resist the temptation simply to reinforce your strengths. The quickest way to improve is to identify your weaknesses and work on those.
Blind tasting is less about memorising and recalling possibilities than distinguishing between plausible alternatives. Focus on tasting and thinking accurately, not on getting it right. Many wines, remember, are inherently misleading. If you’re a good taster, you’re a good taster, and no Furmint can take that away from you.
Above all, immerse yourself in wine. Attend as many tastings as you can. Visit wineries and wine regions. Talk to growers, vintners, and other wine lovers. Read books, magazines, and the wine press. Every encounter adds another layer of understanding.
The single most important thing is to find or form a dedicated study group. Aside from the purely social aspects, the benefits of a study group include: imposing structure and discipline, sharing knowledge and experiences, shaping indistinct impressions, uncovering blind spots, and, last but not least, dividing expenses.
I have known generations of blind tasters at Oxford, and the best among them were always those who lived and breathed wine—often, it has to be admitted, at the expense of their studies. Nothing can make up for love, or madness.
Continue Exploring
Here I have focused on the bigger picture, partly to restore perspective and remove any anxiety. The details—examination strategies, competition tactics, tasting grids, and so on—are better left to The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting, which draws on many years of teaching, judging, competing—and, mainly, drinking.
A wine rating is a summary of the appraisal of a wine by one or more critics—most famously Robert Parker, whose 100-point scale came to dominate the wine world from the 1970s until his retirement in 2019. Other systems remain in use, while many websites now invite wine lovers to contribute their own ‘community ratings’.
In theory, a numerical score merely supplements a tasting note. In practice, the tasting note—if it even exists—is often ignored, and the wine reduced to a single headline number.
This has obvious advantages. Ratings convey information clearly and simply, especially to novices. Assuming the tasting has been conducted under rigorously blind conditions, they reflect quality rather than price or reputation. They encourage producers to improve, and reward those who do. Wines awarded more than 90 points are considerably easier to sell, while those in the high nineties can become cult wines almost overnight. Château Tirecul la Gravière, in Monbazillac, became an overnight sensation after Robert Parker awarded 100 points to its 1995 Cuvée Madame.
Yet ratings can be criticised on three grounds: concept, procedure, and consequences.
The first objection, then, is conceptual. However objective or scientific a score may appear, it remains an expression of human judgement.
Consider these two reviews of the same wine:
The greatest Cantenac Brown I have ever tasted, the 2010 is one for the ages.
V, v sweet, And alcoholic. And a bit drying on the end—a sort of right-bank Margaux. What’s the point?
The first is from Robert Parker. The second, Jancis Robinson.
What is Beethoven’s Ninth out of 100?
What is the Sistine Chapel out of 100?
How much do you love your partner out of 100?
A great wine, too, is more than an object of measurement. It is the expression of a place, a season, and the care and attention of those who made it. It can certainly be judged, but not reduced to a single number.
Scoring wines might be compared to ranking contestants in a beauty pageant. Like the contenders in the pageant, the wines are often very young, and scores cannot fully account for the delights and disappointments that are yet to come. In any case, the prettiest boy or girl is probably not on the stage but sitting at home buried in War and Peace. Many of the most hallowed producers shun competitions, mainly, I think, because they have little to gain and much to lose. Artisan winemakers, who make the most soulful wines, do not have the time or means to enter competitions.
The second objection is procedural. Competition scores are influenced not only by personal preferences and prejudices, but also by the context and conditions of the tasting, and, in a panel, by the group dynamics, with junior judges exquisitely sensitive to every ‘um’ and ‘aah’ from the more distinguished panel chair. The outcome of this process might be of existential import to the producer, who has toiled for a year, indeed, several years, to make his or her wine, but in fact reflects no more than a few seconds of tasting with no or very little time for discussion and debate.
There is also a financial incentive to dish out medals, which invite further paid entries and increase sales of medal stickers. As a result, there has been a devaluation of wine scores over the years—so that many wineries would now hesitate to publicise a score below 90.
The third objection concerns consequences. The highest-rated wines often become objects of speculation, traded like financial assets rather than uncorked and enjoyed around a table.
More subtly, ratings favour wines that make an immediate impression on a fatigued palate: concentrated, powerful, and rich in fruit, oak, and tannin. More restrained wines—those that whisper rather than shout and speak more faithfully of place—are liable to be undervalued. This contributed significantly to the homogenisation—or ‘Parkerization’—of wine styles during the late twentieth century.
Wine ratings have played an important role in the rise of wine culture, but their grip seems to be loosening, if not quite fading, as consumers become more experienced and knowledgeable—and as wine scores tend asymptotically towards 100.
To me, a score of 98 is a signal for caution.
Continue Exploring
If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my book The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting, which explores not only how to taste wine, but why it matters. Practical yet thoughtful, it will help you taste with greater confidence—and greater pleasure.
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