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Prospering Is Not the Same as Flourishing

The tyrant overhung by the sword of Damocles
Case study: The tyrant … overhung by the sword of Damocles.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

We have to recognise that we do live in an unjust world—a stupidly unjust world. Bad people often prosper, while goodness and virtue carry no guarantee of wealth, fame, power, or even security.

But prospering is not the same as flourishing. Injustice can only secure the external goods of life. Though injustice can make us wealthy and powerful, it cannot make us wise, tranquil, or contented. 

The tyrant is the perfect test case of what I’m saying. The tyrant, almost by definition, is the most unjust person, seemingly enjoying the greatest possible success. Of course, not every unjust person is a tyrant, but the tyrant reveals, in its most extreme form, what injustice does to the person who practises it.

Seneca and Nero

The Stoic philosopher Seneca, who lived in the first century CE, once wrote a long letter to the tyrannical Roman emperor, Nero. In this letter, he warns Nero that the most powerful person in a tyranny may also be the least free. We don’t know whether he actually sent the letter, but a large part of it has come down to us. It’s called On Clemency. Clemency, says Seneca, is the trait that most distinguishes a king from a tyrant—and by winning admiration and loyalty, helps to keep the king safe and free. The tyrant, on the other hand, becomes the prisoner of his own power: he is hated because he is feared, and must make himself feared because he is hated. It’s a vicious cycle. In the end, he cannot travel freely or trust even his closest advisors. He cannot sleep soundly in his bed or take his meals without fearing that someone might have poisoned his food.

Few tyrants die in their own bed, and so it proved also with Nero, who ended his own life to evade capture. He did not even have the courage to wield the dagger: his freedman had to help him drive it into his throat. His final, deluded words were: Qualis artifex pereo—‘What an artist dies in me!’ Perhaps his last thought was of Seneca.

Plato’s Tyrant

If Seneca showed us the tyrant’s political prison, Plato showed us his psychological prison, the prison inside him. The tyrant’s soul is ruled by lawless appetites which he can neither control nor satisfy. Thus, the man who appears supremely free is in fact a slave to his own deranged psychology. He has conquered everyone except himself.

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates calculates, by some fanciful Platonic mathematics, that the true king is precisely 729 times happier than the tyrant!

How to Guard Against Tyrants

But philosophy cannot content itself with pointing out that the tyrant is miserable. The fate and suffering of the tyrant hardly make up for all his injustices—for all the injustices that he imposes upon others on his way up and then on his way down. That’s why we need to have much stronger safeguards against tyrants.

To guard against the rise of a tyrant, here are three things that we could do. First, we need to make sure that a career in politics remains desirable to decent people—or end up being governed only by power-hungry people. Second, we need to strengthen education so that every citizen can recognise the tyrant’s old bag of tricks. And third, we need to bolster constitutions and institutions so that they are able to arrest the rise of a would-be tyrant, no matter how insistent or popular they may be. We have put astronauts into space, invented nuclear reactors and artificial intelligence—so this, surely, is not beyond us.

Prospering vs Flourishing

So, yes, we live in an unjust world—a stupidly unjust world. Bad people prosper, while innocent people suffer. But prospering is not the same as flourishing. Only a life well lived can lead to the true goods of life: wisdom, freedom, tranquillity, contentedness. These are all internal goods which external goods may support, but can never guarantee.

But to lead a just life is not merely a winning strategy. It is also a refusal to become a part of the problem.

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To delve deeper into Plato, see The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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Why the Best Friends Tell us What We Least Want to Hear

Plato and Aristotle, details from Raphael's School of Athens
‘Plato is dear, but dearer still is truth’—a saying that captures Aristotle’s willingness to disagree with his teacher in the pursuit of truth, and his conviction that genuine friendship need never fear honest disagreement.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

What makes a true friend? Aristotle distinguishes friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue—and explains why the finest friends are so rare.

Today, everyone is obsessed with romantic love. Aristotle, however, conceived of the highest human relationship in terms of friendship—the bond through which we learn to value another person for their own sake.

For the Greeks, true friendship was a rare and precious thing. In Plato’s Lysis, Socrates says, “I would rather have a real friend than all the gold of Darius [the Persian emperor], or even Darius himself.” But today, on social media, we call hundreds of people our friends.

By putting romantic love on a pedestal, we have devalued friendship. Our romantic partner is also expected to be our best friend, confidant, counsellor… As a result, other friendships may be neglected or even treated as threats.

Aristotle’s Three Kinds of Friendship

Friendship is so important to Aristotle’s account of the good life that he devotes two of the ten books of the Nicomachean Ethics to it.

Aristotle famously distinguishes between three kinds of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of virtue. In a friendship of utility, we value them for what they can bring us. In a friendship of pleasure, we value them for the enjoyment they provide. These relationships are not necessarily base: colleagues, neighbours, and tennis partners may genuinely like and help one another.

But the limitation of these first two kinds of friendship lies in their reason for being: when the advantage or pleasure fades, the friendship fades with it.

Why Perfect Friends Are Rare

Lasting friendships, on the other hand, are based on character or virtue: each friend values the other, not for what he brings, but for who he is. The friend’s wellbeing and flourishing become part of our own.

Because we are invested in the wellbeing and flourishing of our friend, we owe them the hard truth—and expect the same thing in return. A real friend does not simply accept us as we are, but recognises our potential and helps us become what we could be.

That’s why “perfect friendship”, as Aristotle calls it, is not for everyone. Most people would sooner ghost us than listen to the truth about themselves—particularly now, when there are so many less demanding distractions around. Whereas social media affirms our public image, true friends challenge the person underneath.

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If this essay spoke to you, you might look into The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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The Stoic Method for Reducing Anxiety

The Stoic archer
Antoine Bourdelle’s Herakles the Archer (1909) captures the Stoic ideal: complete commitment to the action, complete detachment from the outcome.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Whereas depression weighs upon life as it is, anxiety points towards the future: what might happen, what might go wrong, what might be expected of us.

Of course, some concern for the future is necessary. It motivates us to do what’s needed, pay our bills, and avoid danger. So the aim cannot be to abolish anxiety altogether—simply to prevent occasional alarm from becoming a permanent state.

Modern Life

The modern world makes this difficult because threats are seldom all-or-nothing. Our ancestors faced a predator, or did not. We have emails, deadlines, mortgages. And when we look on social media, we feel we are falling behind.

Because the pressure is diffuse and continuous, we internalise it. Eventually, nobody needs to chase us; we carry the pursuer in our head.

Once the pursuer is inside us, we try to outrun them by keeping busy. Activity gives us a sense of control, but often we are not addressing the anxiety so much as preventing ourselves from feeling it. We run faster and faster so that we never have to ask where we are going.

There is a Zen story about a horseman galloping down a path at speed. It seemed as if the rider was on some urgent and vital mission. “Where are you heading?” hollered a bystander. “I don’t know!” came the already distant reply, “Ask the horse!”

How to Reduce Anxiety

The first step, then, is to stop running and name the anxiety. A vague anxiety can fill the whole sky; a named fear becomes one object within it. Once identified, it can be worked with, accepted, or dismissed.

In particular, we can determine what part of the anxiety is actually within our control. The ancient Stoics emphasized this distinction between what is and is not in our control. What is not in our control must simply be let go.

The Stoics had this image of an archer. The archer does all he can to shoot accurately. But once the arrow leaves the bow, its fate is no longer within the archer’s control. So the right-thinking archer focuses on the action, not on its result—because the first is in his control, whereas the other is not.

When dealing with our anxiety, we should all become like the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, who wrote, “Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.”

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If this essay spoke to you, you might look into The Meaning of Madness.

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The Best Cure May Also Be the Simplest

Anger by le Brun
Many people have been able to cure their anger simply by looking into a mirror.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

In the first century CE, the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote a short book called On Anger, which to this day, in my view, remains the best book on anger management.

The first thing we should know about anger is that it is both learnt and highly contagious. Seneca tells the story of a child who was raised in Plato’s house. When the child was returned to his parents, he saw his father shouting, and remarked, ‘I never saw this at Plato’s house.’

If you are surrounded by angry people, it is hard not, in turn, to become angry—and conversely, calm people tend to calm us. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle remarks that even wild animals grow gentle in the company of the calm—although I wouldn’t go to the zoo to test this out.

So our first defence against anger is the company that we keep. Avoid the angry, seek out the calm.

Why We Get Angry

Beyond this, it is important to understand why we get angry. Anger feels powerful because it converts injury or helplessness into reaction and aggression. But it is in fact a sign of weakness, revealing the very injury or helplessness that gave rise to it.

And it is often irrational: we assume the worst about people, exaggerate the harm they have done us, and interpret their incompetence or lack of thought as contempt.

We sometimes rationalise our anger as moral courage, that is, as a spur to virtue. But even in the face of terrible injustice, anger is not required to obtain redress or do the right thing. Indeed, anger may impair our ability to act effectively. 

How Anger Defeats Us

If anger arises from an injury, it often inflicts a second injury of its own making. Whereas other vices impel the mind, anger overthrows it. Anger, said Horace, is a short-lived madness. It is from anger that Alexander the Great killed the friend who saved his life—the conqueror of kings, himself conquered by madness.

We get angry because we seek reparation. But often, we make things much worse than if we hadn’t got angry. If someone has wronged us, we would do much better to calmly explain this to them, rather than lose our temper, and, with it, their ear.

The Surest Cure for Anger

Anger begins with a judgement: someone has wronged me, and I must punish them. But it is easier to revise our judgement than to rage against the world, to rage against how things are.

Before that judgement carries us away, there is a little space. Maybe we can’t prevent the first flash of irritation. But we can refuse to go with it. In that little space that we have, we can ask ourselves three things:

  • Am I expecting too much of the world?
  • How is getting angry going to help me?
  • Who will remember this tomorrow, or in a year’s time, or in a hundred years’ time?

That’s why the surest cure for anger is delay.

When he retired from the imperial court, the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus advised the emperor Augustus: ‘Whenever you become angry, Caesar, say or do nothing until you have repeated the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet.’ At this, Augustus seized his departing teacher by the hand and replied, ‘I still have need of your presence here.’

Perhaps we all do. The surest way to prevent anger from ruling us is to refuse to act while it is on the throne.

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If this essay spoke to you, you might look into Stoic Stories: Stoicism by Its Best Stories and Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.

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Aim Higher, and Happiness May Follow

Alexandre Rey Colaço playing the piano, by Giovanni Boldini.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Happiness exists—but as a fleeting feeling, not a permanent state.

No one can remain cheerful all the time. Nor should they want to. A life without sadness would be shallow and dishonest, scarcely a human life at all. Our sadness is often the measure of what we value: we grieve because we have loved, worry because we care, and struggle because something matters.

Part of the problem with happiness is contained in the word itself. In English, happy is related to happen, which derives from the Old Norse happ, meaning fortune or luck. Like luck, happiness is something that happens to us. It comes and goes, often without asking our permission.

That is why happiness is such a poor goal. If we make a passing feeling our chief aim, we condemn ourselves to chasing it. Worse, we begin to monitor ourselves continually: Am I happy yet? Am I as happy as yesterday? Am I as happy as my friends appear to be?

The more we scrutinise our happiness, the more dissatisfied and self-absorbed we become. Happiness is turned into a performance indicator—and almost invariably found wanting.

From Happiness to Flourishing

The Spanish word for happiness points in a different direction. Feliz derives from the Latin felix, which originally meant fruitful, fertile, or productive. Whereas the English word points to fortune, the Spanish word points to fertility: not merely to how we feel, but to what we bring forth.

The Ancient Greeks aimed higher still. They called their ideal eudaimonia, which is often translated as “happiness” but is better understood as flourishing. Literally, eudaimonia means something like being possessed of a good spirit or divinity. It is not simply about feeling good, but about living well—leading a life that is worthwhile, fulfilling, and elevating.

Unlike happiness, flourishing can contain a great deal of unhappiness. Indeed, grief, struggle, and sacrifice may belong to our finest achievements and relationships. Raising a child, writing a book, caring for a dying parent, or standing up for a principle may bring anxiety, exhaustion, or pain. Yet we would not therefore wish these things out of our lives.

A pleasant life is not necessarily a good life, and a good life is not always pleasant. If we lived badly, what could it mean to be happy except to feel good about the wrong things?

What Cannot Be Taken Away

Socrates supplied the extreme test. The Athenians condemned him and made him drink the hemlock. But although they could put him to death, they could not take away who he was or how he had lived. They could take his life, but they could not make it a bad one.

Indeed, by killing him, they made him greater. His death became the final proof of his philosophy and transformed his life into an example for all humanity.

Aristotle, the intellectual grandson of Socrates, made flourishing an activity rather than a mood. Eudaimonia, he argued, consists in developing and exercising what is best in us—reason, judgement, and character—across the whole course of a life. It cannot be reduced to manufacturing a pleasant but insubstantial state of mind.

That’s why happiness often arrives when we are not looking for it: while absorbed in a friendship, a landscape, a piece of music, or some difficult and worthwhile work. At such moments, we are not standing apart from life to assess it. We are living it.

So, yes, happiness exists—but chiefly as a by-product, not an aim in itself.

Instead of asking, “Am I happy?” we should ask, “Am I living well?” and “What am I becoming?”

Happiness is the light cast by a life well lived.

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If this essay spoke to you, you might look into The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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