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What Kissing Reveals About Us

Gustav Klimt: The Kiss
Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1907–08). Few human gestures have carried more meanings than a kiss.

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

Kissing is not universal among human beings and, even today, there are some cultures that have no place for it. This suggests that the behaviour is not purely innate or intuitive, as it may seem to us, but culturally shaped and historically variable—one of the ways in which human beings negotiate the boundary between self and other.

It could be that kissing is a learnt behaviour that developed from ‘kiss feeding’, the process by which mothers in some cultures feed their infants by passing masticated food from mouth to mouth. Yet, there are some present-day indigenous cultures that practise kiss feeding but not social kissing. Another possibility is that kissing is a culturally determined form of grooming behaviour, or, in the case of deep or erotic kissing, a representation of, substitute for, and complement to penetrative intercourse.

Whatever the case, kissing behaviour is not specific or unique to human beings. Primates such as Bonobo apes frequently kiss one another; dogs and cats lick and nuzzle one another and members of other species; even snails and insects engage in antennal play. It could be that, rather than kissing, these animals are in fact grooming, smelling, or communicating with one another, but even so, their behaviour implies and strengthens trust and bonding.

Ancient Kisses

Vedic texts from Ancient India seem to talk about kissing, and the Kama Sutra, which probably dates back to the second century CE, devotes an entire chapter to modes of kissing. Certain anthropologists have suggested that the Greeks learnt about erotic kissing from the Indians after Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 BCE. But even if true, this need not mean that erotic kissing originated in India, or that it does not predate the oral roots of the Vedas.

In Homer’s Iliad, which dates back to the ninth century BCE, King Priam of Troy memorably kisses the hand of Achilles in pleading for the return of Hector’s defiled corpse:

Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable, for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me, and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son.

In the Histories (fifth century BCE), Herodotus speaks of kissing among the Persians, who greeted men of equal rank with a kiss on the mouth and those of slightly lower rank with a kiss on the cheek. Herodotus reports that, because the Greeks ate of the cow, which was sacred to the Egyptians, the Egyptians objected to kissing them on the mouth.

Biblical Kisses

Kissing also features in the Old Testament. Disguised as Esau, Jacob deceives his blind father Isaac and steals his brother Esau’s blessing, sealing the deception with a kiss. When Jacob returns after years of exile, Esau runs to him, embraces him, falls on his neck, kisses him, and they weep. Naomi, insisting that her Moabite daughters-in-law Ruth and Orpah remain in Moab to make new lives for themselves, kisses them farewell, and they weep. Absalom wins the hearts of Israel by kissing all who come to him seeking justice. In the Song of Songs, which celebrates sexual love, a lover implores, ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine.’

The Roman Art of Kissing

Under the Romans, kissing became much more commonplace. Romans kissed their partners or lovers, family and friends, and rulers. They distinguished a kiss on the hand or cheek (osculum) from a kiss on the lips (basium) and a deep or passionate kiss (suavium).

Roman kisses fulfilled a range of purposes, from the political and legal to the social and sexual. The status of a Roman citizen determined the part of the body—ranging from cheek to foot—on which he or she would be allowed to kiss the emperor. In an age of widespread illiteracy, kisses served to seal agreements—hence the ‘X’ on the dotted line, and the expression ‘to seal with a kiss.’ Couples were wed by kissing before a gathering, a practice that carries on to this day.

Kissing and Desire

Roman poets such as Catullus and Martial treat erotic kissing as something far removed from sentimental delicacy. Kissing is intensely physical, emotionally charged, and often unsettling in its implications.

In Catullus, kisses emerge within the turbulence of erotic attachment and jealousy, where intimacy is inseparable from fear of loss and replacement. ‘Who will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?’ is not celebratory, but a bitter imagining of desire redirected elsewhere.

In Martial, kissing becomes more explicitly corporeal and public in character, sometimes figured as excessive or intrusive—an act that overwhelms the boundaries of the self and edges into domination or comic excess.

Across both poets, kissing is less a gentle emblem of love than an occasion in which desire becomes unstable, contested, and materially insistent. In short, in Roman poetry, kissing is not a symbol of love so much as one of its problems.

The Holy Kiss

Customs changed with the decline of Rome. Early Christians often greeted one another with a ‘holy kiss’, which was believed to lead to a transfer of spirit. The Latin anima means both ‘breath of air’ and ‘soul’, and, like animus [mind], comes down from the Proto-Indo-European root ane- [to breathe, blow]. Although St Peter had spoken of the ‘kiss of charity’, and St Paul of the ‘holy kiss’, early Christian sects omitted kissing on Maundy Thursday, the day of the year on which Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Outside of the Church, kissing was used to cement rank and social order, for instance, subjects and vassals kissed the robe of the king, or the slippers or ring of the pope.

The Rise of Romantic Love

After the fall of Rome, the romantic kiss (as distinct from other types of kiss) becomes less prominent in surviving literature for several centuries, before re-emerging in new forms with the rise of courtly love from the late eleventh century. The kiss in Romeo and Juliet is emblematic of this long cultural trajectory, which sought to remove courtship from the purview of family and broader society and celebrate romantic love as a liberating, self-determining, and potentially subversive force.

The fate of the star-crossed lovers reminds us that such carefree abandon is not without risk, and it may be that vampirism evolved as a representation of the dangers—to health, rank, reputation, prospects, and happiness—of crossing too easily between selves.

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If this essay spoke to you, you might look into Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.

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You Will Laugh and Cry

Schopenhauer portrait
Arthur Schopenhauer in 1852, possibly the earliest philosopher to be photographed.

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

Whereas Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel could all count as optimists, believing that human life could improve, Schopenhauer is the first—and perhaps the last—thinker in the Western tradition to have constructed a complete and systematic philosophy of pessimism.

Despite, or because of, this, he may also have been its funniest philosopher.

He is interesting for other reasons too—some of which are close to my heart. For his Great Philosophers series (1987), Bryan Magee, who wrote a thick book on Schopenhauer, introduced him as ‘the only major Western philosopher to draw serious and interesting parallels between Western and Eastern thought’.

Magee continued: ‘He was the first major Western philosopher to be openly and explicitly atheist. He placed the arts higher in the scheme of things and had more to say about them than any other important philosopher … He was himself among the supreme writers of German prose. Many of his sentences are so brilliantly aphoristic that they’ve been torn out of context and published separately in little books of epigrams.

Schopenhauer’s Epigrams

To give you a flavour, here are a few of Schopenhauer’s many epigrams:

  • Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
  • Life is a business that does not cover its costs.
  • The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain… If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.
  • What everyone most aims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove them inferior to himself.
  • Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.
  • It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

Probably, you chuckled while reading these aphorisms. But why did you chuckle?

Why You Laughed

Schopenhauer had his own theory of laughter, which is a version of the incongruence theory, according to which laughter arises from a contradiction between a concept (what people think is happening) and the reality (what is in fact happening)—highlighting a failure of reason over perception. Thus, when people laugh at us (rather than along with us) they are filling the gap between our idea of ourself, or people’s general idea of us, and the sad reality.

Many people who read Schopenhauer’s aphorisms laugh only half-heartedly because they feel threatened by them. But the few who laugh full-throatedly feel liberated by their insight. In this moment of pure perception, while they laugh, they escape, if only for a few seconds, from the tyranny of the Will—the blind, irrational force that, in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, underlies all reality, and drives us to exist and strive and suffer without purpose.

Schopenhauer’s Theory of Weeping

Schopenhauer also had a theory of weeping.

Weeping, which is a physical expression of mental misery, is a form of self-compassion. As such, it requires an outside perspective on the self, which is why animals don’t cry, and children don’t cry if no one is watching. Schopenhauer cites the example of a person who did not think to weep over their misery until their case was summarised to them in court and they were brought to reflect upon their suffering—when they suddenly broke into a stream of tears.

When we weep, we become ‘both the sufferer and the compassionate onlooker’. Because weeping originates from self-compassion, it suggests to others that the crier is capable of compassion, and thus worthy of compassion.

Psychopaths don’t cry, or only crocodile tears.

Why Schopenhauer Matters

To me, Schopenhauer is important because he is the first philosopher since antiquity to offer a comprehensive solution to the problem of living and suffering.

As well as a great philosopher, Schopenhauer was a fine psychologist, so that we often find ourselves laughing along with him. But almost as often, we find ourselves laughing at him, owing, I think, to the incongruence between his lofty philosophy of temperance and compassion and his own bad-boy ways.

Had Schopenhauer met himself, he would have laughed.

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Schopenhauer was the first major Western philosopher to engage seriously with Indian thought. The German Greeks explores his philosophy alongside those of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, tracing the remarkable development of German philosophy from the Enlightenment to modernity.

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What’s the Difference Between a Painting and a Sunset?

A beautiful painting of a sunset in a beautiful frame
Is this beautiful or sublime?

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

Essay substantially revised on 24 July 2026.

Why does a flower delight us, while a thunderstorm leaves us awestruck? Why are we drawn to mountains, waterfalls, and stormy seas, yet recoil from real danger? Philosophers have sought to explain this by distinguishing between the beautiful and the sublime.

Longinus and Literary Sublimity

The distinction goes back at least to Longinus (first century CE), who saw the sublime as an overwhelming, ecstatic force that uplifts the soul with grandeur. A flower is beautiful, and so is a great oak, but the great oak is also sublime—and it is its sublimity rather than its beauty that we retain.

At the heart of our attraction to grandeur is the desire for transcendence, which we express in sublime art and language. In On the Sublime, Longinus laid out five sources of literary sublimity: noble concepts; passionate feeling; figures of speech; noble diction; and dignified composition. The first two, he argued, are innate, while the last three can be cultivated.

Although Longinus was writing about literature rather than nature, he established the enduring idea that the sublime overwhelms rather than merely pleases.

Edmund Burke on the Sublime—Or Why We Ride Rollercoasters

Later thinkers like Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant drew a sharper distinction between beauty and sublimity, which they presented as antithetical. In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1757), Burke associated beauty with smallness, smoothness, and delicate form; the sublime, by contrast, with power, vastness, and obscurity.

Whereas the beautiful—a flower or a gentle landscape—gives rise to feelings of love, pleasure, and relaxation, the sublime—a storm-tossed sea or towering mountain—awakens awe, terror, and what Burke called ‘delightful horror’.

The sublime is only delightful, however, when experienced from a certain distance or place of safety. If the danger is real and immediate, it ceases to be aesthetic and becomes simply terrible.

Many people who bungee jump, ride rollercoasters, or watch horror films are seeking precisely this experience: the thrill of confronting death while knowing themselves to be safe.

The sublime is more powerful than beauty because the instinct for self-preservation is more powerful than the desire for pleasure. Who, asked Burke, would choose a life of great pleasure if it were fated to end in slow torture?

Kant on the Sublime: A Bridge Between Two Worlds

Kant read Burke and elaborated upon his ideas. He distinguished between two forms of the sublime: the mathematical sublime, which arises from the contemplation of immensity—like the starry heavens or the pyramids—and overwhelms our cognitive capacities; and the dynamical sublime, which arises from the contemplation of great power—like a violent thunderstorm or raging waterfall—and overwhelms our practical capacities.

With the mathematical sublime, the failure of our senses awakens our divine reason, which can readily grasp the idea of infinity or absolute totality, even when our senses cannot. With the dynamical sublime, our feeling of physical helplessness and insignificance awakens our moral vocation, which is immune to natural forces, as well as the noumenal world (the world as it really is, beyond mere appearances), in which we too are powerful, majestic, and free.

In sum, the feeling of the sublime reminds us of the superiority of our rational, moral noumenal selves over the phenomenal world and our mortal, phenomenal selves. Whereas the beautiful makes the phenomenal world feel like a better place, the sublime reminds us that we belong to an altogether different world.

Both beauty and sublimity bridge the divide between the two worlds, the one through harmony, the other through disruption, or disjunction.

Now the reader will understand what Kant meant in The Critique of Practical Reason when he wrote:

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

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To explore these ideas further, see my books The German Greeks, on Leibniz to Nietzsche, and Heaven and Hell, on the psychology of the emotions.

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The Stoic Seneca on Anger

A study of anger, after Lebrun.
Ira furor brevis est.

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

Essay substantially revised on 17 August 2026.

After his brother Novatus asked him ‘how anger may be soothed’, the Stoic philosopher Seneca penned his famous treatise, On Anger (c. 45 CE).

Anger, says Seneca, is a bad habit that people tend to pick up from their parents. When a child who was raised at Plato’s house was returned to his parents and witnessed his father shouting, he said, ‘I never saw this at Plato’s house.’

Anger is like a virus. If we are around angry people, it is hard not to lose our temper, however temperate we may normally be. For this reason alone, we ought to prefer the company of mild, level-headed people. For my urban readers, even wild animals become gentle in the company of the calm (though I wouldn’t rely on it).

Anger Is a Loss of Perspective

We should also resist our egocentric tendency to believe the worst about others. Often, the people at whom we are most liable to get angry are those who are in fact trying to help us—although, of course, not as much as we would like. In their minds, they are only trying to do what they think is best for them, and we, by our anger, are trying to thwart them—which is why they tend to return our anger. If what they are doing is not in their best interests, then we should calmly explain this to them, rather than losing our temper and, with it, their ear.

As for the things that anger us, they are often mere slights or annoyances that do not do us any real harm. Luxury debilitates the mind and undermines our sense of perspective, so that pampered people (like us) are more prone to anger over trivial things.

Events are events. It is we who attach emotion to them. And it is far easier to adjust our expectation of the world than to change the world itself.

Anger Does Us More Harm than Good

Even if someone murders our father or child, anger is not required to honour their memory, obtain justice, and, more generally, do the right and honourable thing. Recognising an injustice and becoming angry about it need not be one and the same thing—and, in fact, superadded anger may impair our ability to address the injustice. Many people think that anger is a show of virtue or, at least, a spur to virtue; at most, it can substitute for virtue in those who are lacking it.

Anger and grief only add to our existing pain, and often do more harm than the things out of which they arise. It is out of anger that Alexander the Great killed the friend who had saved his life—that great conqueror of kings, himself brought down by anger. And it is also out of anger that Medea slaughtered her innocent children. Will you suffer a stroke or die from a heart attack because someone said something out of place?

As Horace put it, anger is a short-lived madness (ira furor brevis est). Whereas other vices bend the mind, anger overthrows it. The angry person is like a collapsing building that destroys itself in the very act of bearing down upon others.

Anger Is Contrary to Our Nature

Being social animals, like ants, bees, and wolves, human beings are born to provide and receive assistance. Anger, which, on the contrary, seeks to arrogate and annihilate, is so inimical to our nature that some angry people have benefited simply from looking in a mirror. 

Those who are unwilling to check their anger and work with others for the common good are like wasps in a beehive, gorging on the honey of others without contributing any of their own.

For all these reasons, we should never get angry. We might feel the beginnings of anger, but then reject this passionate impression that threatens to overthrow our reason and the tranquillity and dignity that follows in its train. We may not be able to prevent the first flash of irritation, any more than we can prevent ourselves from flinching at a sudden noise. Our freedom begins with what we do next, as we recognise anger for what it is: irrational and, often, unfair.

Now Here’s Your Answer

To regain perspective when angry, to reclaim our sanity, we might ask ourselves:

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

But the surest cure for anger is delay, because it gives us a much better chance of rejecting our passionate impression.

Before rising into the first emperor of Rome, Augustus—then Octavian—was taught by the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus Cananites at Apollonia, in modern-day Albania, where he received the news of Julius Caesar’s demise. Athenodorus followed Octavian back to Rome and remained by his side as he deftly achieved that which his great uncle Caesar could or did not. When, on account of his old age, Athenodorus begged to be dismissed and was at last taking leave of Augustus, he reminded him, ‘Whenever you get angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything before repeating to yourself the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.’

At this, the emperor seized Athenodorus by the hand and said, ‘I still have need of your presence here.’

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Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories: Stoicism by Its Best Stories. Through the lives of Zeno, Cleanthes, Cato, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and many others, Stoic Stories introduces the philosophy not through abstract theory, but through the memorable stories that have kept it alive for more than two thousand years.

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Three ancient mind exercises for processing and subliming bad news.

Imagine: Your house has been burgled. You’ve been fired. Your partner cheated or walked out on you. You’ve been diagnosed with a life-changing condition…

Bad news can leave us in a state of dread and despair. It seems like our whole world is falling apart, almost as if we’re being driven into the ground. We fear the very worst and cannot get it out of our mind, or gut. Often, there are other emotions mangled in, like anger, guilt, despair, betrayal, and love.

Bad news: we’ve all had it, and the worst is yet to come.

So, how best to cope?

I’m going to give you three cognitive strategies, or mind exercises, that I picked up from the Stoic philosophers—who, in the second century, could count the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, among their followers.

All three strategies aim, in one way or another, at generating perspective. While reading, hold a recent piece of bad news in the front of your mind, and consider how the strategies might or might not apply to your bad news.

Contextualization

Try to frame the bad news, to put it into its proper context. Think about all the good things in your life, including those that have been and those that are yet to come. Remind yourself of all the strengths and resources—the friends, facilities, and faculties—that you can draw upon in your time of need. Imagine how things could be much, much worse—and how for some people they actually are. Your house may have been burgled. Yes, you lost some valuables and it’s all such a huge hassle. But you still have your health, your job, your partner… Bad things are bound to hit us now and then, and it can only be a matter of time before they hit us again. In many cases, they are just the flip side of the good things that we enjoy. You got burgled, because you had a house and valuables. You lost a great relationship, because you had one in the first place. In that much, many a bad thing is no more than the removal or reversal of a good one.

Negative visualization

Now focus on the bad news itself. What’s the worst that could happen, and is that really all that bad? Now that you’ve got the worst out of the way, what’s the best possible outcome? And what’s the most likely outcome? Imagine that someone is threatening to sue you. The worst possible outcome is that you lose the case and suffer all the entailing cost, stress, and emotional and reputational hurt. Though it’s unlikely, you might even do time in prison (it has happened to some, and a few, like Bertrand Russell, did rather well out of it). But the most likely outcome is that you reach some sort of out-of-court settlement. And the best possible outcome is that you win the case, or better still, it gets dropped.

Transformation

Finally, try to transform your bad news into something positive, or into something that has positive aspects. Your bad news may represent a learning or strengthening experience, or act as a wake-up call, or force you to reassess your priorities. At the very least, it offers a window into the human condition and an opportunity to exercise dignity and self-control. Maybe you lost your job: time for a holiday and a promotion, or a career change, or the freedom and fulfilment of self-employment. Maybe your partner cheated on you. Even so, you feel sure that he or she still loves you, that there is still something there. Perhaps you can even bring yourself to look at it from his or her perspective. Yes, of course it’s painful, but it may also be an opportunity to forgive, to build a closer intimacy, to re-launch your relationship—or to go out and find a more fulfilling one. You’ve been diagnosed with a serious medical condition. Though it’s terrible news, it’s also the chance to get the support and treatment that you need, to take control, to fight back, to look at life and your relationships from another, richer perspective.

A Taoist story for the road

There’s a Taoist story about an old farmer whose only horse ran away. “Such terrible news!” said a neighbour. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” replied the farmer. The next day, the horse returned with six wild horses. “Such wonderful news!” exclaimed the neighbour. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” replied the farmer. The day after that, the farmer’s son tried to tame one of the wild horses but got thrown off and broke a leg. “Such terrible news!” cried the neighbour. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” replied the farmer, biting into a peach. A week later, war broke out: thanks to his broken leg, the farmer’s son managed to escape military conscription. “It all worked out really well in the end,” said the neighbour, “such great luck!”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” replied the farmer, rolling his eyes.

Neel Burton is author of Growing from Depression, which is currently free to download from his website bookstore.