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Fables, cartoons, and viral videos often favour animal over human protagonists. Here’s why.

A fable is a short tale that features animals or other non-human entities (the sun, the wind, trees…), and concludes with an explicit moral lesson, often expressed in the form of a pithy maxim or saying.

Animals that feature in fables are anthropomorphized, that is, attributed human qualities, especially speech and reason, and sometimes a vice or two. But other than that, the fable is fairly realist or true to life, with much more humble characters and commonplace events than the legend and certainly the myth.

According to his student Plato, Socrates spent the days leading up to his execution putting Aesop’s Fables into verse—which is all the more surprising when one considers that Socrates never wrote anything down. Other famous collections of fables include the Buddhist Jataka Tales and the Hindu Panchatantra, and there is likely to have been some crossover between the fabulary of Greece and that of India. For instance, there are both Greek and Indian declensions of The Tortoise and the Birds, not to mention a number of African variants. Fables travel well, in both space and time: because they feature animals, they are timeless and universal. George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) might be considered a modern and extended adaptation of the fable form.

Here is Aesop’s version of The Tortoise and the Birds, entitled The Tortoise and the Eagle:

A tortoise, unhappy with his lowly station, begged an eagle to teach him to fly. At last, the eagle put his reservations to one side and consented. He picked the tortoise up in his talons, carried him up to a great height, and released his grip. But instead of flying or gliding, the tortoise fell headlong to the ground and was dashed to pieces on a rock. Moral: After vanity comes a downfall.

Similar to the fable in extrapolating from the particular to the general to extract a moral lesson is the parable, the difference between the two forms being that the parable relies on human rather than animal actors—although many fables, particularly in India, also feature humans: a brahmin, a prince, a storyteller, a merchant, an unfaithful or ungrateful wife…

The parable is especially associated with the 37 or so related by Jesus in the Gospels of Luke, Matthew, and Mark. Curiously, the Gospel of John, although it contains allegories, is not held to contain any parables. In Matthew 13, the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks in parables to the multitudes. Jesus replies, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.”

Why Fables Use Animals

So, why does the fable favour animal over human protagonists?

Consider this short fable by Aesop, The Fox and the Mask:

A fox broke into the house of an actor and noticed a mask in the midst of a pile of stage accessories. The fox dragged out the mask and nuzzled and swatted it for a few moments, before saying, “What a handsome face, pity he has no brains.”

What are the advantages here and elsewhere of preferring animal over man?

The use of animals creates new and striking possibilities. This stokes the imagination, making the tale seem more original and entertaining, even charming, without which it might fall flat as moralizing or patronizing.

The use of animals also enables the fabulist to isolate the vice and to caricature it, while at the same time providing a fresh perspective on it.

On a deeper level, it creates a continuum between human and animal, revealing us as a part of nature and at one with it, while also highlighting that which sets us apart from the rest of creation, namely, speech and reason (Greek, logos) and the ethical faculty (Greek, sophrosyne).

Talking animals appeal most to children, possibly because blurring the lines between human and animal is a form of pre-logical, magical thinking.

Finally, the use of animals can serve as a cover, a means of escaping censorship, or of generalizing or universalizing. For instance, Jean de la Fontaine (d. 1695) used the fable form to satirize French society, and Orwell to satirize communism and other forms of totalitarianism.

Animals delight us still today, every day, if only in cartoons and viral videos, because, as the fabulist might say, “So it is with men, too.” 

Read more in The Meaning of Myth.

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Shutterstock/Amnat Phuthamrong

The Stoic revival has picked up pace in recent years, with people looking for something more substantial than the material hedonism that has come to fill the space vacated by the retreat of organised religion. Indeed, although more expressly rational, Stoicism has been compared to Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, for being based on fluids concepts and flexible principles rather than blind faith and rigid dogma. But the similarities do not end there.

Desire and Attachment

According to the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, the cause of all suffering is desire, and the natural way to eliminate this suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path. The first division of the Noble Eightfold Path is “right view”, or maintaining perspective on reality.

Similarly, the Stoics taught that we ought at every moment to be rational. Unfortunately, we are too readily waylaid from reason by unwise attachments and the destructive emotions to which they give rise. These attachments dangle the promise of pleasure or happiness but really offer only slavery—whereas, if only we could see it, nothing leads to pleasure and happiness as surely as reason and self-control.

In the words of Marcus Aurelius, which are all the more remarkable for coming from an emperor:

Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river… Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.

God, Fate and Evil

Stoic physics is indebted to Plato’s Timaeus, in which the philosopher Timaeus claims that God’s creation is itself a god. Human souls, being fashioned from the inferior residue of the world soul, are aligned with the will of God. But once implanted into a body, they are overwhelmed by sensations and affections, which they can only overcome through appropriate nurture and education.

Like Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, Stoicism rejects a separate divine sphere, arguing instead that God is infused in all things, including in us, who therefore share in His nature. We are, as Epictetus often reminds us, a part or extension of God:

In conversation, exercise, discourse—do you remember that it is God you are feeding, God you are exercising? You carry God around with you and don’t know it, poor fool.

The Stoics were essentially pantheists, like Baruch Spinoza, who thought of God and creation as one and the same thing. And like that other great 17th century philosopher, GW Leibniz, they believed that the universe is a rationally ordered whole, and that everything that happens within it, if only we could see it, happens for the best of possible reasons.

Hence, our fate has already been determined: instead of rebelling against it, we should be content to play the role that has been assigned to us. We are, said Zeno [the founder of Stoicism], like a dog tethered to a cart: the wise person runs smoothly alongside, whereas the fool struggles and strains but is dragged along anyway.

This echoes the Hindu concept of dharma, which can be translated, loosely, as “duty”. When Krishna addresses Prince Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, he is not persuading him to fight so much as telling him that he is going to have to fight regardless:

Fettered by your own task, which springs from your nature, you will inevitably do what you in your folly do not want to do.

Chrysippus, who succeeded Zeno and Cleanthes at the head of the Stoa, argued that evil is the inevitable consequence of nature’s goodness. For instance, many of the bones in the human skull are light and thin, improving it overall but by the same token leaving it vulnerable to blows. Evil presents us, as it did the hero Hercules, with opportunities to test and hone ourselves—and also a motive, for what would it mean to be good in a world without evil?

In Samkyha-Yoga, the world was created to purify souls by providing them with experience, and, in time, with liberation. To put this more poetically, the world was created to show consciousness to itself. The doctrines of karma and moksha[liberation] could not hold in a world without evil.

Salvation, for the Stoic as for the Hindu, is to embrace life to the point of accepting fate, and so to become as one with the world. In Indian terms, it is to achieve moksha, that is, liberation from maya [illusion], dukkha [suffering], and samsara [the cycle of death and rebirth].

In the Encheiridion, the Stoic Epictetus compares life to a landfall during a much longer sea voyage back to our homeland, and warns us not to get so caught up by the fruits and flowers as to forget about the ship.

Cosmopolitanism

Philosophers debate whether karma theory is a firm basis for morality, or just an appeal to naked self-interest.

One way around this problem is to broaden the scope of karma to include thoughts as well as actions, so that the system becomes impossible to game. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not the same, and does not feel the same, as doing it for the right reason. According to the Great Forest Upanishad, the truly virtuous act is the one that is desire-less. Like the Stoic archer, one must concentrate on doing the right thing, to the best of one’s ability, without being attached to the outcome. For it is from attachment that life and misery arise.

The Buddha had another way around the problem, which is to deny the metaphysical distinction between the self and others so that helping others is the same as helping oneself. The Stoics, too, believed that all human beings form part of a single organism. Just as our eyes, ears, and teeth each have a role to play in our body, so we too each have a role to play in society, even if it is only to serve as a warning to others. “Remember” says Seneca, “that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies.”

To live selfishly is fundamentally self-defeating. To feel alive and happy, we need to have a sense of working with others, for others—because, like ants and bees, that is the kind of creature that we are. If we do not contribute to our community, we will feel disconnected and depressed. In a word, we will feel dead—and, in truth, might as well be.

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories and Indian Mythology and Philosophy.

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Plato’s Forms are at the root of Western psychology, philosophy, and theology.

In the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Nietzsche calls Plato ‘the sincerest advocate of the beyond, the great slanderer of life.’

The dichotomy between truth and appearance, and the devaluation of appearance, is rooted in pre-Socratic philosophy. Just as Plato leant upon Heraclitus’ flux for his conception of the sensible world of appearance (the world as we see it), so he leant upon Parmenides’ unity for his conception of the intelligible world (the world when we think it), which he rendered as the ideal, immutable realm of the Forms.

The Genesis of the Forms

Plato’s authorship spanned some fifty years, from the death of Socrates in 399 BCE to his own death in c. 348. He is traditionally ascribed with 35 dialogues, although around ten of these are or may be spurious. Today, the dialogues are often classified into three periods, ‘early’, ‘middle’, and ‘late’, based on their presumed order of composition.

The early dialogues are relatively short and accessible. They are sometimes referred to as the Socratic dialogues because they set forth more of the historical Socrates, typically debating ethical subjects such as temperance, courage, or friendship with youths, friends, or a supposed expert.

From these beginnings, Plato gradually developed distinct philosophical ideas, such as his Theory of Forms, which features in middle dialogues such as the Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic. In these long, literary dialogues, the character Socrates is less of the historical Socrates and more of a mouthpiece for Plato. He is accordingly more didactic, putting forth positive doctrines and no longer content merely to question and refute. Other middle dialogue doctrines that are unlikely to owe to Socrates include the Theory of Recollection, the Theory of Reincarnation, and the Theory of the Tripartite Soul—which are each connected to the Forms.

The FORMS IN THE Phaedo

The Phaedo is named for the young Phaedo of Ellis, whom Socrates had rescued from slavery. For the first time, Plato explicitly appeals to the Forms, although does not do much to explain them. He also assumes reader familiarity with the Meno and the Theory of Recollection, which the Phaedo builds upon.

In the Phaedo, which used to be called On the Soul, Socrates offers four arguments for the immortality of the soul, among which the Theory of Recollection and the Theory of Forms. The supposed immortality of the soul enables Socrates to remain sanguine in the face of his pending execution, and offers the ultimate justification for the life of virtue. The dialogue ends with a myth of the afterlife and, of course, the dramatic drinking of the hemlock.

Socrates argues that that which is compounded is dissoluble, but that which is uncompounded is indissoluble and therefore unchanging. The Forms (for instance, Beauty), which are unchanging, are uncompounded, but their particulars (for instance, a beautiful horse), which are in a constant state of composition and degradation, are compounded. Particulars are apprehended by the senses, but the Forms can only be apprehended by the mind. Since the soul cannot be apprehended by the senses, it must be immortal.

The embodied soul employs the body as an instrument of perception, but what the body perceives is in a perpetual state of flux, so that the soul is thrown into confusion. But when the soul is once again detached from the body, or when it turns inward to contemplate itself, it passes into the realm of the unchanging and approaches wisdom.

Upon death, not all souls suffer the same fate. The soul of the philosopher, being the most detached from the body, is able to reach the realm of the unchanging, where it ‘lives in bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills…’ But unphilosophical souls, which have been weighed down by worldly cares and bodily desires, remain earthbound and pass into another body.

Socrates affirms that the Theory of Forms is the most plausible theory of the deep causes of things. On this account, something is beautiful because it participates in the Form of Beauty, two is two because it participates in the Form of Duality, and so on. A thing that participates in a Form also participates in other closely connected Forms. For instance, three bundled pencils participate in the Form of Oddness as well as the Form of Threeness. However, opposite Forms such as Even and Odd cannot admit of each other. Whenever a soul is embodied, there is invariably life, indicating that the soul is closely connected with life, and thus that it cannot admit of its opposite, death.

The Symposium: Love as the engine of wisdom

In the Symposium, Socrates relates the time when the priestess Diotima taught him the proper way to learn to love beauty. A youth should first be taught to love one beautiful body so that he comes to realize that this beautiful body shares beauty with every other beautiful body, and thus that it is foolish to love just one beautiful body. In loving all beautiful bodies, the youth begins to appreciate that the beauty of the soul is superior to the beauty of the body and begins to love those who are beautiful in soul regardless of whether they are also beautiful in body. Having transcended the physical, he gradually finds that beautiful practices and customs and the various branches of knowledge also share in a common beauty. Finally, on the highest rung of the ladder of love, he is able to experience Beauty itself, rather than its various apparitions. By exchanging the various apparitions of virtue for Virtue herself, he gains immortality and the love of the gods.

The Republic: The Form of the Good

In Book 5 of the Republic, in discussing the ideal state and the education of its guardians, Plato introduces the elusive Form of the Good. It is by attaining the Form of the Good that the philosopher-king is made fit to rule. As the Form of the Good is impossible to describe, and difficult to imagine, Socrates tries to convey its essence through three interconnected metaphors: the famous sun, line, and cave, which I discuss in a separate article.

LEGACY of the Forms

In the Phaedo, the Theory of Forms is presented as ‘the most plausible theory’, without any backing or questioning. In later dialogues, Plato becomes more doubtful—and in the Parmenides, has Parmenides demolish his pet Theory of Forms.

Arresting though it may be, the Theory of Forms is never definitive, and features less prominently in the late dialogues. Part of the pleasure and privilege, and seduction, of reading Plato is that he is thinking with us, rather than simply telling us what he thinks, or what to think.

In any case, our main interest in the Theory of Forms is not in its logic or coherence, but in its impact and influence. The Phaedo entrenched most of the divisions or dualities that mark the Western mind, including soul and body, mind and matter, reason and sense experience, reason and emotion, reality and appearance, good and evil, heaven and hell… In the Western tradition, since the Phaedo, the body is the source of all evil. But in the Eastern tradition, for instance, in yoga, we can take control of the mind through the body.

Although the Phaedo is at the root of Western psychology, philosophy, and theology, it is also deeply Eastern in advocating supreme detachment and ego suppression or disintegration as the route to salvation. Also, death is an illusion … we will be reincarnated … according to our deeds (karma). These, however, are not the aspects that the West has retained.

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

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I am just back from a pilgrimage to Athens, the city of Athena, Socrates, and Zeno.

Last time I visited, in 1996, I was a mere seventeen, and just out of school. So this time, I saw it with very different eyes—showing that we see not only with our eyes but also with our mind.

The ancient agora, the cradle of Western civilization. Back in the day, there were many more shops and stalls, and fewer trees.

Athens too has changed: many of the museums I visited, such as the Acropolis Museum, had not even been built. I spent two days in the amazing National Archaeological Museum, and I also recommend the much quieter Benaki Museum and Museum of Cycladic Art. In the Museum of Greek Technology, I was reminded that Plato, whom we do not normally think of as an inventor, designed the world’s first alarm clock. It was as tall as a man, and hydraulically operated. Hydraulics was also the basis of the world’s first robot, the automatic servant of Philon, designed to… serve wine.

A rare mature Augustus in the National Archaeological Museum. Augustus was quite vain, and would always have himself represented as young and handsome.

In the evenings, I turned to the city’s wine bars. Greek wine too has come a long way. Back in 1996, it was mostly about the horrid pine-infused Retsina—which is now nowhere to be seen. At Vintage Wine Bar, where they have hundreds of wines by the glass, I was so impressed by the mineral wines of Santorini that I have already booked a trip for next spring!

On volcanic Santorini, the vines are trained in an idiosyncratic basket shape [kouloura]. Their root systems may be several centuries old, accounting for the profound minerality of the wines.

For me, travel is not about relaxing, but about getting inspired—and, also, reminding myself how happy I am at home.

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A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. —Marcus Aurelius

Ambition might be defined as a striving for some kind of achievement or distinction, and involves, first, the desire for such, and, second, the willingness to work towards it even in the face of adversity or failure.

To be ambitious is to achieve first and foremost not for the sake of achievement itself (which is to be high-reaching) but for the sake of distinguishing oneself from others. Were we the last person on earth, it would make little or no sense to be ambitious.

Ambition is often confused with aspiration. But unlike mere aspiration, which has a particular goal for object, ambition is a trait or disposition, and, as such, is persistent and pervasive. Having achieved one goal, the truly ambitious person soon formulates another at which to keep on striving.

Ambition is often spoken of in the same breath as hope, as in ‘hopes and ambitions’. If hope is the desire for something to happen combined with an anticipation of it happening, ambition is the desire for achievement combined with the willingness to work towards it. The opposite of hope is fear, hopelessness, or despair; the opposite of ambition is ‘lack of ambition’, which is not in itself a negative state.

East and West

Perhaps it is even the preferable state. In the East, ambition is seen as a vice or evil that, by tying us down to worldly pursuits, holds us back from the spiritual life and its fruits of virtue, wisdom, and tranquillity. In contrast, in the West, ambition is lauded as a precondition of success, even though the Western canon broadly falls against it.

For instance, in the Republic, Plato says that, because they are devoid of ambition, good people shun politics, leaving us to be ruled by bad people and their petty ambitions. Even if invited, good people would refuse to rule, preferring instead to hide in their libraries and gardens. To force them out, Plato goes so far as to advocate a penalty for refusing to rule.

Healthy Ambition

Aristotle had a more nuanced take on ambition. In his Ethics, he defines virtue as a disposition to aim at the intermediate between the excess and the deficiency, which, unlike the excess or the deficiency, is a form of success and therefore worthy of praise. For example, those who run headlong into every danger are rash, while those who flee from every danger are cowards, but courage is indicated by the mean or intermediate.

To this day, we speak of ambition after Aristotle, as ‘healthy ambition’, ‘unhealthy ambition’, and ‘lack of ambition’. Healthy ambition can be understood as the measured striving for achievement or distinction, and unhealthy ambition as the disordered striving for such. While healthy ambition is constructive and enabling, unhealthy ambition is destructive and inhibiting, and, thus, more akin to greed.

The Psychology of Ambition

The highly ambitious are sensitive to failure, and experience almost constant dissatisfaction or frustration. As with Sisyphus, their task is never accomplished, and, as with Tantalus, their prize is always out of reach. Just like Tantalus had a rock dangling over his head, so the ambitious have the noose of failure hanging about their neck.

The fear of failure checks the ambition of all but the most courageous, or rash, of people. For just as mania can lead into depression, so ambition can lead into anguish and despair. To live with ambition is to live in fear and anxiety, unless, that is, the weight of our ambition can be alleviated by gratitude, which is the feeling of appreciation for all that we already have. Although gratitude is especially lacking in future-focused people, ambition is much less toxic if even without it life can still seem worth living.

We are not ambitious unless we are willing to make sacrifices—even though the end of our ambition may not be worth our sacrifices, and not just because it may never be attained or approached. It could even be argued that with pure, naked ambition, the end is never worth the sacrifice. Fortunately, ambition is rarely pure but usually admixed with unselfish aims and motives, even if these may be more incidental than deliberate and determining; and it may be that our greatest achievements, that man’s greatest achievements, are all, or almost all, accidents of ambition.

In that much, ambition is like the carrot that goads the donkey that pulls the cart. Studies have found that, on average, the ambitious attain higher levels of education and income, build more prestigious careers, and, despite the nocuous effects of their ambition, report higher levels of overall life satisfaction. Owing to bad luck and poor judgement, most ambitious people sooner or later fall short of their ambitions, but that still lands them far ahead of their more unassuming peers.

Psychoanalytic theories

Why are some people more ambitious than others? To cut a long story short, ambition is a complex construct borne out of a host of factors including but not limited to: parental role models and expectations, birth order and sibling rivalries, fear of failure and rejection, feelings of inferiority or superiority, intelligence, past achievements, competitiveness, envy, anger, revenge, and the instinctual drives for life and sex.

From a purely psychoanalytical perspective, ambition can be thought of as an ego defence, which serves, like all ego defences, to enforce and uphold a certain idea of the self. Rather than ambition, which is a sophisticated defence, those who lack what it takes to put themselves out there are more likely to respond with less mature defences, for instance, by rationalizing that ‘life is unfair’ or that they are ‘less of a leader and more of a team-player’. If their ego is much bigger than their courage, they may become dismissive or even destructive, the latter also being a means of drawing attention or sabotaging themselves to provide a ready excuse for their lack of success: “It’s not that I failed, it’s that…”

A defence that merits exploration in the context of ambition is sublimation, which is among the most mature and successful of all defences. If a man is angry at his boss, he may go home and kick the dog, or he may instead take the dog out for a shared run. The first instance (kicking the dog) is an example of displacement, the redirection of uncomfortable feelings towards someone or something less important, which is an immature defence. The second instance (taking the dog out for a shared run) is an example of sublimation, the channelling of unproductive or destructive forces into socially condoned and often constructive activities, which is, of course, a much more mature defence.

Another example of sublimation, more pertinent to ambition, is the person with sadistic or even homicidal urges who joins the military to provide an outlet for these urges, or who, like Justice Wargrave in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (1939), becomes a judge who doles out the death penalty to murderers. In the novel’s postscript, a fishing trawler dredges up a bottle just off the Devon coast. The bottle contains the confession of the late Wargrave in which he reveals a lifelong sadistic temperament juxtaposed with a fierce sense of justice. Although he had longed to torture, terrify, and kill, he could not bring himself to harm innocent people: so instead he became a hanging judge and thrilled at the sight of convicted (and guilty) people trembling with fear.

Final thoughts

In life, few things are either good or bad. Rather, their good and bad depend on what we are able to make out of them. People with a high degree of healthy ambition are those with the insight and strength (strength that is often born out of insight) to control the blind forces of ambition, that is, to shape their ambition so that it matches their interests and ideals, and to harness it so that it fires them without also burning them or those around them. The highest understanding, born out of humility, is perhaps that it is not necessary to be ambitious to be high-reaching, or indeed to feel alive.

People shrink or expand into the degree and nature of their ambitions. Ambition needs to be cultivated and refined, and yet has no teachers.

Adapted from Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.

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