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The Psychology and Philosophy of Pity, Sympathy, Empathy, and Compassion

A doctor or nurse empathizing with a patient
Empathy begins with the simple but profound attempt to see the world through another person’s eyes.

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 22 July 2026.

Article summary: Empathy and sympathy are often confused, but they are not the same. This article explores the psychology and philosophy of pity, sympathy, empathy, and compassion, explaining how they differ, why they matter, and what they reveal about human nature.

The terms empathy and sympathy are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Sympathy is care or concern for another person’s suffering. Empathy goes a step further: it involves understanding and, to some extent, sharing in that person’s emotional experience. Compassion, which involves the desire to relieve suffering, builds upon empathy. These distinctions matter—not only in psychology and medicine, but also in friendship, parenting, education, and everyday life.

Suppose a friend has just lost a parent. If I say, ‘I’m so sorry this has happened to you,’ I’m expressing sympathy. If I can also imagine, however imperfectly, what this loss feels like from within their own world, I begin to empathise. If that empathy inspires me to support them through their grief, it becomes compassion.

Before examining these concepts, it is worth asking where the modern idea of empathy came from.

What Is Empathy?

In 1909, the psychologist Edward Titchener translated the German Einfühlung (‘feeling into’) as empathy. At that time, German philosophers discussed empathy in the context of artistic or aesthetic evaluation, but Titchener proposed that empathy can also help us to recognise one another as minded beings.

Today, empathy might be defined as a person’s ability to understand and, to a greater or lesser extent, share in the emotions of another person, fictional character, or sentient being. Empathy involves two closely related capacities: (1) seeing another person’s situation from their embodied perspective, and (2) resonating with, or sharing in, the emotions that they are feeling.

For me to share another person’s point of view, it is not enough merely to put myself into their position or situation. Instead, I must go further still and imagine myself as them, and, more than that, imagine myself as them in the situation in which they find themself. One cannot empathise with an abstract or detached feeling, only with a particular person. To empathise with them, I need to have some understanding of who they are and what they are doing, or trying to do. I need to have some idea of where they came from and where they want to go. As John Steinbeck famously wrote:

It means very little to know that a million Chinese are starving unless you know one Chinese who is starving.

Pity, Sympathy, Empathy, and Compassion

Empathy is easily confused with pity, sympathy, and compassion, which are all prosocial reactions to the plights of others. Let us look at each one in turn.

Pity is a feeling of discomfort at the distress of one or more sentient beings and usually carries paternalistic overtones. Inherent in the notion of pity is that its object does not deserve its plight, and is incapable of preventing or overturning it. Pity is less engaged than sympathy, empathy, or compassion, often amounting to little more than a conscious acknowledgement of another’s suffering.

Sympathy (Greek, ‘fellow feeling’ or ‘community of feeling’) is care or concern for someone, often someone close or relatable, accompanied by a wish to see them better off. Compared with pity, sympathy implies a greater sense of shared similarities and deeper personal engagement. But unlike empathy, sympathy need not involve a shared perspective or shared emotions, and while the facial expressions of sympathy convey caring and concern, they do not ordinarily convey shared distress.

Sympathy and empathy often lead to one another, but not invariably. For instance, it is possible to sympathise with a hedgehog but not, strictly speaking, to empathise with it, since our access to its subjective experience is necessarily limited. Conversely, psychopaths with little or no sympathy for their victims may nonetheless possess sufficient understanding of another person’s thoughts and motivations to ensnare and manipulate them.

Sympathy might also be distinguished from benevolence, which is a more detached and impersonal attitude—akin to the attitude that I might have towards my students or neighbours, or that a monarch might have towards his or her subjects.

Compassion (Latin, ‘suffering alongside’) is more engaged than empathy and is associated with an active desire to alleviate the suffering of its object. With empathy, I share your emotions; with compassion I not only share your emotions but also elevate them into a universal and transcending experience. Compassion, which builds upon empathy, is one of the principal motivators of altruism.

Researcher Brené Brown has done much to popularise the distinction between sympathy and empathy, arguing that sympathy creates distance while empathy creates connection. Her work has helped bring empathy to a much wider audience. Even so, sympathy need not be distant or dismissive. Properly understood, it is often the beginning of empathy rather than its opposite.

The relationship between pity, sympathy, empathy, and compassion can be summarised as follows:

Can We Ever Know Another Mind?

My friend tearfully confides that, as a child, she was sexually abused by her father. Moved by her plight, I try to comfort her:

‘I know just how you feel.’

To my surprise and alarm, she snaps back:

‘No, you don’t know how I feel! How could you?’

Notice that, in claiming that I cannot know how she feels, my friend is implying that she knows how I feel—or, at least, that however I might be feeling, it is not how she feels. But if she is correct in asserting that I cannot know how she feels, how can she know how I feel, or that how I feel is not how she feels?

A similar paradox is raised in the Zhuangzi (c. third century BCE), one of the two foundational texts of Taoism:

Zhuangzi and Hui Shi were strolling on the bridge above the Hao River. Zhuangzi said, ‘Out swim the minnows so free and easy; this is the happiness of fish.’ Hui Shi said, ‘You are not a fish. Whence do you know the happiness of fish?’ Zhuangzi said, ‘You are not me. Whence do you know I don’t know the happiness of fish?’ Hui Shi said, ‘Granted that I am not you, I don’t know about you. Then granted that you are not a fish, the case for your not knowing the happiness of fish is complete.’ Zhuangzi said, ‘Let’s trace back to the root of the issue. When you said, ‘Whence do you know the fish are happy?’, you asked me already knowing I knew it. I knew it from up above the Hao.’

The exchange captures an enduring philosophical puzzle. We can never inhabit another person’s consciousness. Yet, in everyday life, we routinely understand enough of one another’s inner worlds to communicate, cooperate, comfort, teach, love, and forgive. How is this possible?

Theory of Mind and Mirror Neurons

Empathy rests upon what psychologists call theory of mind: the ability to understand that different people see the world from different perspectives and possess different beliefs, desires, sensitivities, commitments, and forms of understanding.

Some writers distinguish between cognitive empathy and affective empathy. From a philosophical point of view, however, it is preferable to distinguish theory of mind from empathy, rather than to divide empathy into ‘cognitive’ and ‘affective’ forms, thereby obscuring the distinct role of theory of mind. On this view, theory of mind forms the cognitive basis for empathy, while empathy itself also involves emotional resonance.

Theory of mind is innate (‘from up above the Hao’), first appearing at about four years of age. Thereafter, it continues to develop, and can be trained in both reach and accuracy. Crucially, theory of mind enables us to posit the intentions of others and to explain and predict their actions.

Researchers have proposed that mirror neurons contribute to this capacity. These neurons fire both when we carry out a particular action and when we witness that same action in someone else. By internally modelling the actions of others, they may help us infer some of the thoughts, emotions, and desires that gave rise to them. Although empathy and theory of mind involve a broader network of cognitive processes, mirror neurons offer one suggestive illustration of how we may come to understand the experiences of others.

Why Did Empathy Evolve?

From an evolutionary standpoint, empathy has been selected for because it promotes parental care, prosocial behaviour, and non-verbal communication, and, by extension, the survival of the proximal gene pool. By supporting social interaction, collective enterprise, resource sharing, teaching and learning, and storytelling and other art forms, empathy increases the strength, stability, and resilience of a society and its members.

Empathy enables us to anticipate the actions and reactions of others and to respond effectively to their ever-changing needs and expectations. At the same time, to empathise is not to merge. Because empathy remains at one remove, it provides a degree of distance in which to make normative judgements about the person or people being empathised with and to weigh up their best interests.

The Limits of Empathy

That said, empathy can also skew our judgement, leading us to violate moral principles to favour the one or the few over the many. It can be distressing or exhausting. Doctors and nurses who are surrounded by human suffering often constrain or regulate their empathetic faculty, not out of callousness or unconcern but to guard against compassion fatigue and burnout.

Yet in less pressured environments, the exercise of empathy is often rewarding and even revitalising. Doctors and nurses who are able to empathise with their patients—though not so much that it prevents them from resting and recuperating—are more likely to feel fulfilled in their work, to say nothing of the benefit to the patients themselves.

Empathy does not grant direct access to another person’s inner world. Rather, it is our best means of approaching that world while respecting its separateness. It allows us to understand without possessing, to care without collapsing distinctions, and to recognise that every human being lives a life that is uniquely their own.

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The Psychology and Philosophy of Wonder

The architecture of wonder
The architecture of wonder

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.

In Plato’s Theætetus, written some 2,400 years ago, Socrates presents the sixteen-year-old Theætetus with a series of difficult contradictions. This is the exchange that follows:

Socrates: I believe that you follow me, Theætetus; for I suspect that you have thought of these questions before now.

Theætetus: Yes, Socrates, and I am amazed when I think of them; by the Gods I am! And I want to know what on earth they mean; and there are times when my head quite swims with the contemplation of them.

Socrates: I see, dear Theætetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris [the messenger of heaven] is the child of Thaumas [Wonder].

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle surmises that it must have been wonder that led the first philosophers to philosophy, since puzzled people think of themselves as ignorant and turn to philosophy to escape from their ignorance. St Thomas Aquinas concurred, adding in his commentary on the Metaphysics that, ‘Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.’

If Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas are right in tracing philosophy—and, by extension, science, religion, art, and all else that transcends the mundane—to wonder, then it behoves us to ask: What exactly is wonder?

What is Wonder?

Wonder is a complex emotion involving surprise, curiosity, contemplation, and joy. It can be thought of as a heightened state of consciousness and emotion brought about by something unusually beautiful, rare, or unexpected—that is, by a marvel. ‘Marvel’ derives from the Latin mirus [wonder] via mirabilia [‘wonderful things’]. ‘Admire’ shares the same root and originally meant ‘to wonder at’, although, since the sixteenth century, this sense has been steadily eroded—along, some might say, with wonder itself. Aquinas spoke of philosophers and poets in the same breath because both are moved by marvels, with the purpose of poetry being, broadly, to record and, in some sense, recreate marvels, to inspire wonder.

Wonder is most similar to awe. But compared to wonder, awe is more explicitly directed at something that is much greater or stronger than ourselves. As such, it is more closely associated with fear, reverence, or veneration than with joy. Without this element of respect and reverence, all that remains of awe is fear, that is, no longer awe but terror or horror. Awe is also less detached than wonder, which allows for much greater and freer contemplation of its object.

Wonder may be stirred by grand landscapes, natural phenomena, extraordinary achievements, or astonishing facts. It is expressed by a bright-eyed stare, sometimes accompanied by an opening of the mouth and a suspension of the breath. By drawing us out of ourselves, wonder reconnects us with something greater than our everyday. It is the ultimate homecoming, returning us to the world that we came from and were in danger of losing to our narrow selves.

But notice how this kind of wonder is not the same as the more abstract wonder that moved Theætetus to philosophy.

Socratic Wonder

The wonder of the philosopher, also known as Socratic wonder, is not so much wonder in the sense of awe as wonder in the sense of puzzlement or perplexity. Rather than grand vistas and the like, Socratic wonder arises from contradictions in thought and language, and impels us to investigate these contradictions in the hope of resolving them into some higher truth.

Theætetus: Yes, Socrates, and I am amazed when I think of them; by the Gods I am! And I want to know what on earth they mean; and there are times when my head quite swims with the contemplation of them.

Socrates himself came to philosophy—and to his revolutionary method of doing philosophy—after being bewildered by the Delphic oracle, which, despite his professed ignorance, pronounced him the wisest of all men. To get to the bottom of this apparent contradiction, he questioned several supposedly wise men—first the politicians, then the poets, and finally the artisans—and in each case concluded: ‘I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.’

Wonder in the sense approaching awe is a universal experience found also in little children (picture a child at the circus or zoo) and even in higher-order primates and some other animals. Socratic wonder, by contrast, is much more rarefied, and, as Socrates implies by calling it ‘the feeling of a philosopher’, not given to all and sundry.

In his Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon called this kind of Socratic wonder ‘broken knowledge’, and there is a sense in which wonder, which may be cognate to the German Wunde [wound], breaches us and draws us out of ourselves. That breach yearns to be filled, not only by philosophy but also by science, religion, and art, giving rise to a third kind of wonder: the wonder of insight and creation.

Like Plato and Aristotle before him, the philosopher AN Whitehead (d. 1947) observed that ‘philosophy begins in wonder’, adding that, ‘at the end, when the philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.’ More than remain, the wonder grows. Scientific breakthroughs such as Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, Newton’s theory of gravitation, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the periodic table of the elements, and Einstein’s theory of relativity are often more wondrous than the mysteries they were intended to solve. Wonder begets culture, which begets yet more wonder, and the end of wonder is wisdom—not the extinction of wonder, but its perfection.

The Loss of Wonder

Unfortunately, many people do not open themselves up to wonder for fear that it may distract or derail them. After all, wonder is wounding, and thauma is only one letter removed from ‘trauma’. To wonder is also to wander, to stray from society and its norms and constructs, to stand alone, to be free—which is, of course, deeply subversive, and why even organised religions need to tread a fine line with wonder.

To rationalise the fear of it, wonder is dismissed as a childish emotion that ought to be outgrown rather than invited and cultivated. So much is true, that children brim with wonder, before it is leached out of them by need and neurosis.

Today, many young people who go to university do so not for the sake of marvelling or even learning, but of obtaining a piece of paper by which to advance careers that they have scarcely had the freedom to question—entirely bypassing the wonder and wisdom that might have saved them from needing a career in the first place. For the child is not merely innocent but a natural philosopher, still open to wonder before the world.

Jesus said:

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

And again:

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven… whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

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Self-Esteem vs Self-Confidence: Why Confidence Isn’t Enough

Woman 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.

Essay substantially revised on 25 July 2026.

Many people spend their lives trying to become more confident. They collect qualifications, promotions, possessions, and achievements, hoping that one more success will finally make them feel good about themselves.

But self-confidence and self-esteem are not the same thing.

Self-Esteem vs Self-Confidence

Confidence derives from the Latin fidere, ‘to trust’. To be self-confident is to trust in oneself and in one’s ability to engage successfully with the world. A self-confident person is able to act on opportunities, rise to challenges, engage with constructive criticism, and shoulder responsibility whenever things go wrong.

If the foundation of successful experience is self-confidence, the foundation of self-confidence is successful experience. However, it is possible to be highly confident in one area, such as dancing or horse riding, while being highly insecure in another, such as public speaking or dating.

In the absence of confidence, courage takes over. If confidence operates in the realm of the known, courage operates in that of the unknown, the uncertain, and the fearsome. I could not have become a confident swimmer had I not once had the courage to lose my footing in deep water.

Courage is more noble than confidence, because it requires greater strength and effort, and because a courageous person is one with limitless possibilities.

Self-confidence and self-esteem often go hand in hand, but are not one and the same thing. Confidence answers the question, ‘Can I do this?’ Self-esteem answers a different question: ‘What sort of person am I?’

It is perfectly possible to be highly self-confident and yet to have low self-esteem, as is the case with many performers and celebrities who are able to play to the gallery but then struggle behind the scenes.

Self-Esteem

Esteem derives from the Latin aestimare, ‘to appraise, value, or weigh’. Self-esteem is our cognitive and, above all, emotional appraisal of our own worth. More than that, it is the matrix through which we think, feel, and act, and reflects and determines our relation to ourself, to others, and to the world—enabling us, for example, to feel guilt over shame, or emulation over envy.

People with healthy self-esteem do not need to prop themselves up with externals such as income, status, or notoriety, or lean on crutches such as alcohol, drugs, or sex (when these things are a crutch). On the contrary, they treat themselves with respect and look after their health, community, and environment. They are able to invest themselves completely in projects and people because they have no irrational fear of failure or rejection. Of course, they suffer hurt and disappointment, but their setbacks neither damage nor diminish them. Owing to their resilience, they are open to people and possibilities, tolerant of risk, quick to joy and delight, and accepting and forgiving of others and themselves.

My own view is that we are all born with a healthy self-esteem, which is then either reinforced or undermined by our life experiences. No animal is born fundamentally doubting or disliking itself. Low self-esteem is often rooted in childhood traumas such as prolonged separation from parental figures, neglect, or abuse. In later life, self-esteem can be compromised by ill health, negative life events such as divorce or unemployment, dysfunctional relationships, social isolation or discrimination, and a sense of lack of control.

The relationship between low self-esteem and mental disorder is complex. Low self-esteem predisposes to mental disorder, which in turn knocks self-esteem. At the same time, low self-esteem can also be a symptom of mental disorder—giving rise to a chicken-and-egg situation.

The Secret to Self-Esteem

If self-esteem can be compromised, it can also be rebuilt. But many people go about it the wrong way. They conflate self-esteem with self-confidence and end up with a long list of talents and achievements. Rather than facing up to the real issues, they hide, often their whole life long, behind their certificates and prizes. But that is no substitute for a healthy self-esteem. While they work on their list in the hope that it might one day be long enough, they seek to fill the emptiness inside them with externals such as status, income, and notoriety.

Similarly, it is no use trying to pump up children with empty, undeserved praise. The kids are unlikely to be fooled, but may instead be held back from the sort of endeavour by which real self-esteem can grow.

Whenever we live up to our dreams and promises, we can feel ourselves growing. Whenever we fail but know that we have given it our best, we can feel ourselves growing. Whenever we stand up for our values and face the consequences, we can feel ourselves growing.

This is what growth depends on. Growth depends on living up to our ideals, not our parents’ aspirations, nor our employer’s values or targets, nor anything else that is not truly our own but, instead, a betrayal of ourselves.

The foundation of self-esteem is not success, but self-respect. In the end, each of us must become someone we can live with, someone whose own opinion matters most.

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The Psychology and Philosophy of Laziness

Lion rolling in grass
Masterful inactivity.

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 30 August 2026.

We are being lazy if we can do something that we ought to do but are reluctant to do it because of the effort involved. We do it badly, or do something else that is less strenuous or onerous, or simply remain idle. In other words, we are being lazy if our motivation to spare ourself effort trumps our motivation to do the right or best or expected thing—assuming, of course, we, someone else, or society have worked out what that is.

The word ‘laziness’ arose in the sixteenth century. Older terms for germane notions are indolence and sloth. Indolence derives from the Latin indolentia, ‘without pain’. Sloth has more moral and spiritual connotations. In the Christian tradition, sloth is one of the seven deadly sins because it invites evil-doing and undermines God’s plan for mankind. The six other deadly sins are lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, envy, and pride, and I’m proud to say that my writings cover them all.

The Bible inveighs against slothfulness in several places, including in Matthew (the Parable of the Talents), Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Here’s a snippet from Ecclesiastes, in its inimitable style:

By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.

Today, laziness is so closely connected to poverty and failure that a poor person is often presumed to be lazy, no matter how hard he or she actually works. But it could be that laziness is written into our genes. Our nomadic forebears had to conserve energy to compete for scarce resources, flee predators, and fight enemies. Expending effort on anything other than short-term advantage could jeopardise their very survival. In any case, in the absence of conveniences such as banks, insurance, roads, refrigeration, and antibiotics, it made much less sense to plan for the future. Today, mere survival has fallen off the agenda, and it is long-term vision and commitment that lead to the greatest rewards. Yet our instinct remains to conserve energy, making us averse to abstract undertakings with distant and uncertain payoffs.

Why Are People Lazy?

Even so, few people would choose all the time to be lazy.

Many so-called ‘lazy’ people haven’t yet found what they want to do, or, for some reason, are unable to do it. To make matters worse, the job that pays their bills and fills their best hours might have become so abstract and specialised that they can no longer grasp its purpose or product, and, by extension, their part in improving other people’s lives. Unlike a doctor, farmer, or builder, an assistant deputy financial controller in a large multinational corporation cannot be at all certain of the effect or end-product of his or her labour—so why bother? If a child is denied their passion, they may become ‘lazy’. Conversely, what a supposedly lazy child will work at without prompting—whether we approve of it or not—may tell us something important about where their passion lies.

Other psychological factors that can lead to ‘laziness’ are fear and hopelessness. Some people fear success, or don’t have the self-esteem to feel comfortable with success, and laziness is their way of sabotaging themself. Shakespeare conveyed this idea much more eloquently and succinctly in Antony and Cleopatra: ‘Fortune knows we scorn her most when most she offers blows.’ When Destiny knocks at the door, as it does in the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, many people run upstairs to hide—thinking, instead, to take their second chance. Destiny, however, only knocks once, and early.

Other people fear, not success, but failure, and laziness is preferable to failure because at one remove. ‘It’s not that I failed,’ they can tell themselves, ‘but that I never tried.’

Yet other people are ‘lazy’ because their situation is so hopeless that they cannot even begin to think it through, let alone do something about it. As these people are unable to address their circumstances, it could be argued that they are not truly lazy—which could be said, more or less, of all ‘lazy’ people. The very concept of laziness presupposes the ability to choose not to be lazy, that is, presupposes the existence of free will.

Laziness may be a problem for the lazy person, but it only becomes a matter for concern when it becomes parasitic—when the lazy person, despite being able to contribute, lives off the efforts of others, or takes from the world more than they give back. This is when people start getting upset.

Laziness, Procrastination, and Idleness

Laziness is often confused with procrastination and especially with idleness. To procrastinate (Latin, literally, ‘to forward to tomorrow’) is to postpone a task in favour of other tasks that are less taxing but also less important or urgent. To postpone a task for strategic purposes does not amount to procrastination; for a postponement to amount to procrastination, it has to represent poor and ineffective planning, and result in a higher overall cost to the procrastinator. It’s one thing to delay a tax return until all the numbers are in, but quite another to delay it so that it ruins our holiday or lands us with a fine or tax inspection. Unlike the lazy person, the procrastinator intends to complete the task, and, moreover, eventually does, albeit at a higher overall cost to themself. Notice, it is not effort per se that the procrastinator is avoiding, but the uncomfortable feelings associated with the task (like boredom or resentment at filing their taxes).

To be idle is to be doing nothing. We could be idle because we have nothing to do, or, more exactly, because we can’t think of anything to do. If we clearly do have something to do, we could be idle because we are lazy, but also because we are unable to do that thing, or because we have already done it and are resting and recuperating. The Church grants a day of rest every Sunday, and a convincing argument could be mounted that rest and recuperation do not amount to idleness. Or I’d be idle every evening. To be properly idle, you need to be fully alert.

More radically, we might choose to remain idle because we value idleness and its products above whatever else we might be doing—which, again, is not the same as being lazy. Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s favourite prime minister, extolled the virtues of ‘masterful inactivity’. More recently, Jack Welch, as chairman and CEO of General Electric, spent an hour each day in what he called ‘looking out of the window time’. The German chemist August Kekulé claimed to have discovered the ring structure of the benzene molecule while daydreaming about a snake biting its own tail. Adepts of this kind of strategic idleness use their ‘idle’ moments, among others, to observe life, gather inspiration, maintain perspective, sidestep nonsense and pettiness, reduce inefficiency and half-living, and conserve health and stamina for truly important tasks and problems. Idleness can amount to laziness, but it can also be the most intelligent way of working—as I once told my boss.

More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle made idleness the mark of the great-souled, or great-minded, man (the megalopsychos):

Again, it is characteristic of the great-souled man not to aim at the things commonly held in honour, or the things in which others excel; to be sluggish and to hold back except where great honour or a great work is at stake, and to be a man of few deeds, but of great and notable ones.

That’s why I always say to people, read Aristotle.

The Art of Doing Nothing

Idleness is often romanticised, as epitomised by the Italian expression dolce far niente (‘it is sweet to do nothing’). We tell ourselves that we work hard from a desire for idleness. But in truth, we find even short periods of idleness hard to bear. Research suggests that we often make up justifications for keeping busy, and feel happier for keeping busy even when our busyness is forced upon us. Faced with a traffic jam, many people prefer to make a detour even if the alternative route is likely to take longer than sitting through the traffic. Those most able to be idle—think only of the King of England—are often among the least inclined to be.

There’s a paradox here. We are predisposed to laziness and dream of being idle; at the same time, we always want to be doing something, always need to be distracted. Unlike cats, we are unable to lie around all day long, occasionally moving to track the sun—and only in the evening getting up to toy with a mouse. Perhaps what we really want is the right kind of work, and the right balance. In an ideal world, we would do our own work on our own terms, not somebody else’s work on somebody else’s terms. We would work not because we needed to but because we wanted to, not for money or status but for personal fulfilment and (at the risk of sounding trite) for peace, justice, and love.

On the other side of the coin, it’s all too easy to take idleness for granted. Society prepares us for years and years to be useful as it sees it, but gives us no training in, and little opportunity for, idleness. But strategic idleness is a high art and hard to pull off—not least because we are programmed to panic the moment we step out of the rat race. If we cannot entertain idleness, it is also from fear that our thoughts might suddenly add up—which is why thinkers seek it out.

‘To do nothing at all’ wrote Oscar Wilde (d. 1900), ‘is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.’

The world would be a much better place if we all had the strength to spend a year looking out of our window.

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The Psychology and Philosophy of Humiliation

Teddybear hanging out of a trouser pocket

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 31 August 2026.

Nemo congressu, nemo aditu, nemo suffragio, nemo civitate, nemo luce dignum putet.

Let no one deem him worthy of company, of admittance, of support, of citizenship, of the light of day.

— Cicero, In Vatinium

Embarrassment, shame, guilt, and humiliation all imply the existence of value systems. Shame and guilt arise primarily from self-appraisal, whereas embarrassment and humiliation arise from the perceived appraisal of others, even if those others exist only in imagination. The distinction between embarrassment and humiliation is that embarrassment often results from our own social missteps, whereas humiliation is imposed upon us through the degrading actions of others.

Jamie tells his teacher that he forgot to do his homework. He feels embarrassment. The teacher reveals this to the whole class. Now he feels even greater embarrassment. The teacher makes him sit in a corner facing the wall, and the whole class laughs at him. This time, he feels humiliation. Had the teacher discreetly given Jamie a failing grade, he would have felt not humiliated but offended. Offence arises primarily from the perception that we have been wronged, insulted, or treated contrary to our values or expectations. Humiliation, on the other hand, arises from the perception that we have been debased, degraded, or stripped of dignity in the eyes of others. Compared to embarrassment, humiliation tends to be more socially exposing and more threatening to one’s sense of status or self-worth.

The mediaeval motif of Aristotle and Phyllis depicts the great philosopher on all fours, bridled and ridden like a horse. Yet, according to the story, Aristotle consented to the arrangement out of lust for Phyllis. Consent can transform the meaning of an otherwise degrading act—which is why the philosopher Gilles Deleuze argued that a true masochist could never fulfil the fantasies of a true sadist.

The Latin root of ‘humiliation’ is humus, which means ‘earth’ or ‘dirt’. Humiliation involves abasement of honour and dignity and, with that, loss of status and standing. We all make certain status claims, however modest they may be, for example, ‘I am a competent doctor’, ‘I am a happily married mother’, or even, ‘I am a human being’. When we are merely embarrassed, our status claims are not seriously undermined—or if they are, they are easily recovered. But when we are humiliated, our status claims cannot so readily be recovered because, in this case, it is our very authority to make status claims that has been called into question. Usually, a person in the run of being humiliated is left stunned and speechless, and, more than that, voiceless. When criticising people, especially people with poor self-esteem, we must find the line between disputing their claims and denying their standing to make those claims.

In short, humiliation is the public failure (or severe undermining) of one’s status claims. It is the experience of having one’s dignity, status, or standing publicly diminished, especially in a way that invites contempt, ridicule, or loss of respect. Private failures may lead to shame, grief, or painful self-realisation, but they are humiliating only insofar as one sees them through the eyes of others.

Notice that humiliation need not be accompanied by shame. Jesus may have been crucified and humiliated, but he surely did not feel any shame. Secure people with the courage of their convictions rarely feel shame at their humiliation—which is, in essence, an attempt to discredit them and their claims.

The Uses of Humiliation

Still today, humiliation is a common form of punishment, abuse, and oppression. Conversely, the fear of humiliation is ordinarily thought to deter crime, and history has devised many forms of humiliating mob punishments. Pillories and stocks restrained victims in a degrading position while people gathered to taunt and torment them. The last recorded use in England of the pillory dates back to 1830, and of the stocks to 1872. Tarring and feathering, which emerged in feudal Europe, involved covering victims with scalding pine tar and feathers before parading them on a cart or wooden rail. In Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister is stripped and sheared and forced to walk through the streets of King’s Landing to jeers and cries of ‘Shame!’ The ordeal is aimed not merely at punishing her, but at destroying her status claims as a queen and, ultimately, as a person.

In traditional societies and American universities, ritual humiliation can serve to enforce a particular social order, or to reinforce that the group takes precedence over its individual members. Many tribal societies feature complex initiation rites designed to defuse the threat posed by fit, fertile, and often arrogant young men to the male gerontocracy. These rites sometimes include a painful circumcision, which is symbolic of castration.

In more complex, hierarchical societies, the elites go to great lengths to display and defend their social standing, while the lower orders submit to prescribed degrees of abasement. As a society becomes more egalitarian, such rituals are increasingly resented and resisted, which can give rise to violent outbursts and outright revolution. Thus Meghan Markle, who came from a more egalitarian society, famously mocked the practice of curtseying to Queen Elizabeth II, while her husband the duke squirmed by her side.

Because elites live by their pride, and because they embody their people and culture, their humiliation can be especially poignant and emblematic. In 260 CE, the Roman emperor Valerian, after losing the Battle of Edessa, arranged a meeting with Shapur I, the Shahanshah (King of Kings) of the Sassanid Empire. Shapur betrayed the truce and seized Valerian, holding him captive for the rest of his life. According to some accounts, Shapur used Valerian as a footstool when mounting his horse. After Valerian offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release, he was flayed alive or, by another account, made to swallow molten gold. His skin was then stuffed with straw and displayed as a trophy. Even if these accounts of humiliation are invented, or grossly exaggerated, they were invented for a reason.

Humiliation and Human Dignity

Humiliation need not involve aggression or coercion. People can readily be humiliated through more passive means such as being ignored or overlooked, taken for granted, or denied a right or privilege. They can also be humiliated by being rejected, abandoned, abused, betrayed, or used as a means to an end.

Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) argued that, by virtue of their reason and free will, human beings are not means to an end but ends in themselves, with a moral dimension that invests them with dignity and the right to ethical treatment. Therefore, to humiliate people, that is, to treat them as something less than ends-in-themselves, is to deny them their very humanity. Kant sought to ground human dignity in metaphysics; but even if this project must fail, civilisation requires us to behave as if it were a brute fact of nature.

Humiliation can befall anyone at any time—and this is all the more true in the age of social media. As British Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne was a credible contender for the leadership of the Liberal Democrat Party. But in February 2012, he was charged with perverting the course of justice over a 2003 speeding ticket. His ex-wife claimed that he had coerced her into accepting the penalty points on his behalf. Huhne resigned from the Cabinet while denying the charge. When the trial opened in February 2013, he changed his plea to ‘guilty’, resigned as a Member of Parliament, and left the Privy Council. By the end of this sorry saga, he had traded a seat in Cabinet for a mattress in a prison cell. Every twist and turn of his downfall had been chronicled in the media, which went so far as to publish highly personal text messages between him and his then 18-year-old son that laid bare their fractious relationship. In a video statement for the 2007 Liberal Democrat Party leadership election campaign, Huhne had stated: ‘Relationships, including particularly family relationships, are actually the most important things in making people happy and fulfilled.’ Although his misdemeanours had been mundane—Huhne was hardly Jack the Ripper—his humiliation could not have been more complete.

Why Humiliation Is Worse Than Death

When we are humiliated, we can almost feel our heart shrivelling. For many months, sometimes years, we may be preoccupied or obsessed by our humiliation and its real or imagined perpetrators. We may respond with anger, fantasies of revenge, sadism, delinquency, or terrorism, among others. We may also internalise the trauma, leading to emotional disturbances such as fear and anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares, sleeplessness, paranoia, social isolation, apathy, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Severe humiliation is, arguably, a fate worse than death itself, insofar as death merely destroys our life, whereas humiliation destroys our standing as well as our life—and leaves us standing, ghostlike, to survey the ruins. For this reason, prison inmates who have suffered severe humiliation are routinely placed on suicide watch.

It is in the nature of humiliation that it undermines the ability of victims to defend themselves against their aggressors. In any case, anger, violence, and revenge are ineffectual responses to humiliation because they do little to reverse or repair the damage done. Victims of humiliation have to find the strength and self-esteem to come to terms with their humiliation—or, if that proves too difficult, abandon the lives that they had made in the hope of starting in another.

I notice that, throughout this essay, I have subconsciously chosen to refer to the subjects of humiliation as ‘victims’, and to the perpetrators as ‘aggressors’. This suggests, along with Kant, that humiliation is rarely if ever a measured or justified response.

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