Why the Best Friends Tell us What We Least Want to Hear
‘Plato is dear, but dearer still is truth’—a saying that captures Aristotle’s willingness to disagree with his teacher in the pursuit of truth, and his conviction that genuine friendship need never fear honest disagreement.
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
What makes a true friend? Aristotle distinguishes friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue—and explains why the finest friends are so rare.
Today, everyone is obsessed with romantic love. Aristotle, however, conceived of the highest human relationship in terms of friendship—the bond through which we learn to value another person for their own sake.
For the Greeks, true friendship was a rare and precious thing. In Plato’s Lysis, Socrates says, “I would rather have a real friend than all the gold of Darius [the Persian emperor], or even Darius himself.” But today, on social media, we call hundreds of people our friends.
By putting romantic love on a pedestal, we have devalued friendship. Our romantic partner is also expected to be our best friend, confidant, counsellor… As a result, other friendships may be neglected or even treated as threats.
Aristotle’s Three Kinds of Friendship
Friendship is so important to Aristotle’s account of the good life that he devotes two of the ten books of the Nicomachean Ethics to it.
Aristotle famously distinguishes between three kinds of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of virtue. In a friendship of utility, we value them for what they can bring us. In a friendship of pleasure, we value them for the enjoyment they provide. These relationships are not necessarily base: colleagues, neighbours, and tennis partners may genuinely like and help one another.
But the limitation of these first two kinds of friendship lies in their reason for being: when the advantage or pleasure fades, the friendship fades with it.
Why Perfect Friends Are Rare
Lasting friendships, on the other hand, are based on character or virtue: each friend values the other, not for what he brings, but for who he is. The friend’s wellbeing and flourishing become part of our own.
Because we are invested in the wellbeing and flourishing of our friend, we owe them the hard truth—and expect the same thing in return. A real friend does not simply accept us as we are, but recognises our potential and helps us become what we could be.
That’s why “perfect friendship”, as Aristotle calls it, is not for everyone. Most people would sooner ghost us than listen to the truth about themselves—particularly now, when there are so many less demanding distractions around. Whereas social media affirms our public image, true friends challenge the person underneath.
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
When worldly ambition fails to validate us, we often turn to romantic love. We rely on another person to lend our life weight and meaning. First, we ask the crowd; then, we ask one person.
The Greeks had several words for love: eros, philia, storge, and agape. Eros is passionate love, philia friendship, storge familial love, and agape universal love. But we reduce all these types of love into just one word, which we associate with romantic love.
The Rise of Romantic Love
What we don’t realise is that romantic love, unlike passionate love, is a fairly modern concept. If you think about it, romantic love barely features in the 73 books of the Bible. The Bible’s greatest love stories are David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and, above all the love of man for God. In the ancient world, passionate love was not seen as ennobling but as a dangerous affliction: think only of Helen and Paris, Dido and Aeneas, Antony and Cleopatra.
How, then, did this dangerous affliction become our highest ideal? As religion retreated, our need for religion remained. We still longed for meaning and transcendence. Gradually, the sacred seeped out of God and into romantic love. We stopped loving God and began loving love.
That’s why love speaks the language of religion: adoration, devotion, eternal union… We expect one person to provide us with everything: intimacy, friendship, intellectual stimulation—until death do us part.
What Love Really Is
But once a person is given the role of God, disappointment becomes inevitable. When things go wrong, we conclude that we chose the wrong person, or that love has died—not that we are asking far too much.
This brings us back to the original question: what is love? Beneath all its forms—philia, eros, storge, agape—love is a reaching out beyond ourselves towards someone or something that lends weight and meaning to our life. It is the force that enables us to cross the boundary between ourselves and the world—to shed our shell, like a lobster, and grow beyond it. That’s why people of little love are so small.
This definition of love is useful, in that it gives us a litmus test by which to distinguish love from mere dependency. We can ask: Is this person enlarging my world, or am I merely asking them to save me from myself? Are we growing together, or merely leaning against one another?
Continue Exploring
If this essay spoke to you, you might also look into For Better For Worse, an unconventional exploration of romantic love, marriage, and lasting relationships. For a broader exploration of love, desire, jealousy, and the emotions that shape our lives, see Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Lou Salomé, and Paul Rée in Lucerne, 1882.
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche, Lou Salomé, and Paul Rée had themselves photographed in a studio in Lucerne. Salomé stands behind a small cart, brandishing a whip, while the two philosophers are harnessed in front of her. It is the most famous photograph in all philosophy.
The photograph arose out of an extraordinary love triangle. Nietzsche and Rée had both proposed marriage to the 21-year-old Salomé, who rejected them both. Instead, she suggested that the three form a platonic ‘intellectual trinity’ and wander in search of a place in which to establish a commune of free spirits.
It did not end well. Within months, Salomé and Rée had vanished from Nietzsche’s life, leaving him devastated. But perhaps the most interesting thing about their failed experiment is not that it failed. It is that the arrangement Salomé proposed still strikes us as so strange.
We readily accept that a person can love several friends, several siblings, and several children. Why, when it comes to romantic love, must there be only one?
Why Romantic Love Is Exclusive
The answer has much more to do with paternity than with love. A man who wished to pass his name, status, and property to his own children needed some assurance that those children were indeed his. This created a powerful incentive to control female sexuality, and helps to explain two things: why polygamy is almost always polygyny, and why, historically, adultery and promiscuity have been judged much more severely in women than in men.
Romantic love, when it eventually arrived, became entangled in an older system of marriage and monogamy established to regulate sex and reproduction. This chronology raises the intriguing possibility that we have confused a precondition of marriage, exclusivity, with a precondition of love.
Can Love Be Divided?
To love more than one person is not necessarily to love each person less, just as to love two children is not necessarily to love each child less. ‘True love’, wrote PB Shelley (d. 1822), ‘in this differs from gold and clay / That to divide is not to take away.’ Love is not finite like money or time, or gold and clay, but grows in the giving.
If having a second child is not to betray the first, and taking on a new friendship is not to diminish our old friendships, why should romantic love alone obey a different arithmetic?
Love may not be finite, but time and attention are. Having a second child need not diminish our love for the first child, but it inevitably changes the distribution of our time and attention. And, you know what, maybe it does diminish our love for the first child. Maybe taking on a new friendship does diminish our old friendships. After all, firstborns and old friends often feel this way. Maybe things are more complicated than the binary truths we tell ourselves to simplify our lives.
Polyamory as an Experiment in Love
In 2006, the term polyamory (‘many loves’) made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. Polyamory is the philosophy or state of being romantically involved with more than one person at a time, with the knowledge and consent of all parties involved. The focus of polyamory is more on intimacy than on sex, and polyamorous relationships, while being romantic, need not be sexual.
Polyamory is not the same as polygamy, which, unlike polyamory, is culturally sanctioned and codified. And it is not the same as cheating, swinging, or free loving, since the focus is on intimacy and relationship building, with the knowledge and consent of all parties involved. While some people see their polyamory as an identity or orientation, others see it more in terms of an ethical alternative to infidelity.
Despite its ethical dimensions, polyamory is more heavily stigmatised than cheating: cheating may threaten the system, but at least operates from within it, whereas polyamory outright does away with it. Like a lie, which is defined in relation to the truth, cheating accepts the principle of romantic exclusivity even as it violates it.
Polyamory in Practice
Polyamory has long been recognised as an alternative lifestyle in gay subculture, and is becoming more and more mainstream, driven, among others, by feminism, gay emancipation, and the fragmentation of families and communities.
Polyamorous relationships can take many forms. They are often triads, or quads—maybe one couple with another. ‘Polyfidelity’ refers to a closed polyamorous relationship in which the parties agree to restrict themselves to one another, rather than take outside lovers. In some cases there may be a primary couple with one or more ‘secondary’ partners who are perhaps more distant or occasional. In other cases, one partner may have, or wish for, outside relationships, while the other may be content with just the primary relationship.
The partners of one partner, who are not also one’s partners, are referred to in the jargon as ‘metamours’, and it is in the spirit of polyamory that one treats them with courtesy and respect, as potential friends rather than rivals.
For some people, polyamory is experienced less as a lifestyle choice than as an orientation, leading to demands for legal recognition and protection for at least some forms of polyamorous relationships.
The Burden of the One
The modern romantic couple, closed as it is on itself, carries an extraordinary burden. One quite unqualified person may be expected to be lover, best friend, confidant, amanuensis, domestic partner, financial partner, co-parent… for decades and into old age. And when it transpires that this person is unable to meet all our needs, we may come to regard this as a failure of love.
Polyamory acknowledges that some people’s relational needs are best met by more than one person, and, conversely, relieves the pressure of having to meet all of another person’s needs. By creating more space around a tired, claustrophobic relationship, it can breathe new love and new life into the relationship.
Because polyamory is non-exclusive, existing relationships and friendships are less likely to be abandoned or neglected in favour of ‘the one’, leading to a larger and stronger social network with more resources, skills, and perspectives to draw upon.
Unlike with serial monogamy, there is less incentive to write off an older relationship—and, by extension, a part of our history and who we are—simply because a more exciting or practical one has come along.
Indeed, there is something particularly brutal, even unnatural, about how someone with whom we have shared the best years of our life can suddenly become not merely a stranger but persona non grata. Surely, we can be better than this.
Love, Jealousy, and Possession
Of course, polyamory, too, has drawbacks. From a young age, we are taught that true love is the love of just one person, and that that person will be able to meet all our needs. The princess awaits her prince, and, when he finds her, they live happily ever after. There is no question of another prince, and still less of a squire or lady-in-waiting. Given this state of affairs, and the stigma of polyamory, it may be hard to find people, or enough people, with whom to conduct polyamorous relationships. But this is more a criticism of society than of polyamory proper.
People are naturally prone to possessiveness and jealousy, even when they insist they aren’t. The princess does not await some prince, but her prince. A new relationship is full of enthusiasm and excitement, or, to give it its proper name, ‘New Relationship Energy’—which can be tough on an existing partner. Jealousy can be even more of an issue if half of a couple is polyamorous, while the other half merely tolerates, rather than embraces, it. Having someone else’s smell on your partner’s skin and in your bedsheets is more than just a little confusing.
Jealousy is often treated as childish possessiveness. But it is more complicated than that. It may express fear of abandonment, helplessness, inadequacy, threatened status, or the perfectly rational recognition that our partner is committing precious time and attention to another and, all the while, comparing us.
Constraints do not always impoverish us. Sometimes, by closing off possibilities, they enable other possibilities to develop more fully. Romantic exclusivity may constrain love, but it may also preserve and concentrate it.
Triangles Needing to Be Squared
Polyamory demands time, energy, security, self-knowledge, emotional intelligence, and communication skills. Things can get pretty complicated, which can undermine the quality of the relationships and the very viability of the enterprise. Many people may not have the time, energy, or skills to manage much more than one relationship, and, of course, may not feel a need for more than one partner, if even that. For many people, the ideal number of partners is not one or two, but one-third or half.
This brings us back to Nietzsche, Salomé, and Rée. Their difficulty was not simply that three people were involved, but that the three did not want the same thing. Salomé envisaged an intellectual trinity; Nietzsche wanted Salomé; Rée had also proposed to her. While Nietzsche and Rée had been friends, neither had a romantic interest in the other, but merely tolerated the arrangement for the sake of Salomé. Although in a love triangle, their desires were not triangular.
The Measure of Love
Polyamory is neither the solution to love nor the end of monogamy. If anything, thinking seriously about polyamory reveals why monogamy has proved so enduring. Love may not be finite, but we are; jealousy is not simply a social convention to be unlearnt; and constraints, far from merely constraining us, can preserve and concentrate what we value most.
But polyamory also reveals how much unnecessary baggage we have loaded onto monogamy. To love one person need not mean possessing that person, expecting them to meet our every need, neglecting our other relationships, or banishing former lovers from our lives. Nor need we mistake exclusivity, inherited from the institution of marriage, for the essence or measure of love.
There may be a time in our lives for polyamory. But even if we decide to outright reject it, there is much to be gained from adopting a more fluid, flexible, and forbearing approach to relationships—and stealing a bit more life from the closing jaws of death.
Continue Exploring
If this essay spoke to you, you might look into For Better For Worse, an unconventional exploration of romantic love, marriage, and lasting relationships. For a broader exploration of love, desire, jealousy, and the emotions that shape our lives, see Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.
Why the Bachelor Party Is the Opposite of What It Appears
The bachelor in his last days of freedom. The Monarch of the Glen, by Edwin Landseer.
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
Ever attended a bachelor party and wondered what on earth was going on? Let’s investigate, like an alien might.
A bachelor party is an initiation into marriage, which, in modern times, is understood as a celebration, by the groom’s male friends, of the groom’s last days of ‘freedom’.
In the UK, the bachelor party tends to be called a stag (stag night, stag do, stag party…), and in Australia, a buck. The equivalent rite for the bride, attended by the bride’s female friends, is the bachelorette or hen party.
The original meaning of ‘bachelor’ in English is ‘a young knight who follows the banner of another’. ‘Stag’ and ‘hen’ used to be slang for ‘man’ and ‘woman’. The stag, standing proud and alone, has forever been a symbol of virility, with stags (and men with antlers) a common motif in cave paintings. Cernunnos, the Celtic god of life and fertility and a symbol of the masculine, featured the body of a warrior and the antlers of a stag. The stag’s antlers, which point to the heavens, serve to attract mates and fend off rivals. Mirroring the cycle of life and death, they grow and fall back each season, transmuting from soft, pulsing velvet into hard horn.
Although fairly recent in their modern incarnations, the stag and hen party descend from immemorial customs. In Ancient Greece, a bride joined her female relatives and friends in paying tribute to Artemis, goddess of childbirth and protector of young girls. In Sparta, friends marked the groom’s last night of bachelorhood with a banquet. By marrying six times at the cost of his wives, the party-loving Henry VIII (d. 1547) embedded the tradition into English society. For a long time in England, stags involved a formal dinner hosted by the groom’s father or best man, or, in more humble circles, a simple drink among friends.
‘Hen party’, initially ‘a gathering of women’, acquired its modern sense in the 1960s and 70s. The term first appeared in The Times of London in 1976, albeit in quotation marks, in the context of a male stripper fined by Leicester Crown Court for acting in ‘a lewd, obscene and disgusting manner’. Back then, the bride often celebrated with her co-workers, whom she would likely be abandoning for the life of a housewife and mother. In time, hen parties spilt out into nearby pubs and clubs, increasingly resembling stags in their raucousness.
Rites of Passage
A rite of passage marks a transition from one sphere to another, attended by a significant change in social status. According to the ethnographer and folklorist Arnold van Gennep (d. 1957), rites of passage have three ritual phases: separation, transition, and incorporation.
Separation rituals, such as the matriculation ceremony upon entering university or the crew cut upon entering the army, symbolise detachment from a former life. In French, a bachelor party is called, enterrement de vie de garçon, which means, ‘burial of the life of the boy’. In modern stags, the separation ritual often involves stripping or humiliating the groom.
Western culture lacks formal rites of passage for adulthood. In other cultures, these often feature tests of virility or maturity, which, in the West, tend to be subsumed informally into the stag or hen, often in the form of an alcohol endurance test or a two-fisted activity such as archery, hammer throwing, or bungee jumping. Bungee jumping also represents a leap and separation; it is, in effect, a symbolic suicide.
In many traditional societies, the separation ritual for marriage involves initiating the bride into the duties of marriage, including lovemaking and childbearing—a function which, in our culture, has largely been delegated to the stripper, or perhaps to a sex toy or pornography. This reveals an important function of the rite of passage, which is to guide and support us at a critical and challenging time in the cycle of life.
For the bride, another possible function of the separation ritual is purification. In Orthodox Judaism, the bride immerses herself in a ritual bath, or mikveh. In many Eastern traditions, the bride wears intricate henna tattoos, usually on her hands and feet, for decoration, purgation, and protection. In Germany, the bachelor party is called Junggesellenabschied (‘farewell to bachelorhood’), but there is another event called Polterabend on the night preceding the wedding at which guests break old crockery to drive out evil spirits. The modern heir to all of these traditions is, of course, the spa day. Purity, symbolised also by the white wedding dress, serves to reassure the groom and wider society that the seal on the milk bottle has not been tampered with.
Other, more minor functions of the stag and hen may include:
Making a mockery of marriage to make it seem less threatening.
Confronting a loss of freedom by desperately reaffirming it.
Snatching the groom back from the bride’s grasp, and vice versa.
Punishing the bride and groom for forsaking their friends.
Saluting one’s friends.
Saying goodbye to one’s friends.
Tying in one’s friends.
Creating a pretext to spoil oneself or one’s friends.
Creating a pretext for socially sanctioned release and debauchery—not dissimilar to the ancient orgy.
Celebrating the life of the groom or bride.
Celebrating manhood or womanhood.
Inducing social conformity.
The Modern Stag and Hen
In the space of a generation, hens and stags have evolved into elaborate affairs involving various degrees of drunkenness and debauchery, often over several days in some faraway city of sin. Such gatherings have spawned an entire industry, with event planners organising activities such as paintballing and tank driving, and arranging everything from dare lists to drinking games, and stretch-limousines to strippers breaking out of tiered cakes.
Why have stags and hens become so big? From an economic standpoint, travel has become cheap and commonplace. People are marrying later and earning more, leaving them with more disposable income than ever before. From a sociocultural standpoint, our generation is more liberated, and perhaps more self-indulgent, than any that has gone before. The stag in particular may represent a frenetic attempt to reaffirm increasingly threatened notions of masculinity—and, indeed, of marriage itself.
For most of human history, marriage stood as an inescapable familial, social, and economic imperative. But in recent decades, with falling infant mortality and overpopulation, rising life expectancy, and female emancipation, it has become something of an optimistic and atavistic lifestyle choice. Already in the nineteenth century, the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: ‘If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or do not marry, you will regret both…’ Today more than ever, a part of the bride or groom remains unsure about tying the knot, and the stag or hen is, on some level, a manic defence against a loss of freedom and possibility; and, for the other revellers, against the loss of a friend to an increasingly arcane and remote institution.
There is an irony here. Whereas a rite of passage ought to help us confront and negotiate a difficult transition, the modern stag or hen, in its frantic excess, serves to prevent us from thinking about that transition at all—while making it seem that we have.
The purpose of the manic defence is to prevent feelings of doubt, fear, and sadness from rising into the conscious mind by distracting it with opposite feelings of euphoria and purposeful activity. In Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway (1925), one of several ways in which Clarissa Dalloway prevents herself from thinking about her life is by planning frivolous events and then preoccupying herself with their prerequisites—in the withering words of Woolf, ‘always giving parties to cover the silence.’
Monasteries Are Dying: Time to Bring Them Back in Some New Form?
Life in Epicurus’ Garden.
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
The monastic life, or monastic alternative, has become so unfashionable that most people no longer consider the possibility; but there is, at least to me, something profoundly appealing about living a life of learning and contemplation, sharing a palace in a remote beauty spot with a group of quiet, thoughtful people, and maybe even making my own honey, cheese, and wine.
More broadly, the monastery offers something that modern society is crying out for: a third way of living that is neither the disintegrating family nor social isolation.
Of course, the monastic life presupposes belief in God, or a particular idea of God, which is a large part of why it has become so unpopular. But many non-Christian religions also have a monastic tradition (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism…), making it possible to abstract the idea of monasticism from the idea of Christianity. Indeed, Christian monasticism is itself rooted in pre-Christian models of communal living for a higher purpose, such as Plato’s Academy and Epicurus’ Garden.
Pythagoras
It all began with Pythagoras.
Upon the advice of Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras travelled to Memphis to take instruction from Egyptian priests. At the age of forty, in around 530 BCE, he established a religious community in Croton, Southern Italy, which admitted both women and men. Those in the community’s inner circle adhered to a strict set of rules, forsaking personal belongings, adopting a vegetarian diet, and—since words are so often careless and misleading—observing the strictest silence. The Pythagoreans believed that ‘all is number’, and devoted themselves to philosophy, mathematics, and music.
Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus
Some 150 years later, in 387 BCE, Plato established a school (officially a thiasos, or religious confraternity) of mathematics and philosophy in a sacred garden called ‘Academia’ after the legendary Attic hero Akademos. Those with the means took up residence in neighbouring houses, and those without resided with others. The school became known as the Academy, and Plato remained its head or scholarch until his death in 348.
Aristotle spent twenty years at Plato’s Academy. When he returned to Athens, he founded the Lyceum, where he gathered Europe’s first great library and set up its first zoo and botanical garden.
Some thirty years later, Epicurus founded the Garden outside the city’s Dipylon gates. Life in the Garden was not as you might imagine. Epicurus was content with bread and water and famously asked a friend to send him a little cheese so that, when he wished, he might feast. Far more important than luxury was friendship. ‘Of all the things which wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole life,’ he wrote, ‘by far the most important is friendship.’
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that the life of contemplation is not only the highest but the happiest of all possible lives. In the Summa Theologiae (1485), St Thomas Aquinas reprises Aristotle, supplying nine reasons for the absolute superiority of the contemplative life:
It is according to that which is proper in man, namely the intellect.
It is according to the proper objects of the intellect.
It is according to higher, eternal things, transcending the contingent here and now.
It consists in leisure and rest.
It is more continuous.
It is more self-sufficient.
It is more delightful (‘Martha was troubled, but Mary feasted’).
It is loved more for its own sake, rather than for the sake of something else.
It, or its fruits, can never be taken from us.
For the ninth reason, Aquinas leans on Luke’s story of Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary. Martha busied herself playing the perfect hostess while Mary simply sat at Jesus’ feet, drinking in his wisdom. Vexed by her sister’s inactivity, Martha asked Jesus to tell Mary to help her.
But Jesus replied:
Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.
Plato’s Academy survived in one form or other for some nine hundred years (about as long as the University of Oxford has been around) before being closed down by the Christian emperor Justinian in 529 CE, a date that is often cited for the end of classical antiquity.
The Rise of Christian Monasticism
St Paul of Thebes (d. 342) is commonly regarded as the first Christian hermit. He fled into the desert of Egypt during the persecution of Decius and Valerianus, and lived for almost a century in a cave.
In the early period, many Christians fled into the wilderness to escape persecution or draw closer to God. In this, they followed the example of Old Testament prophets such as Elijah and John the Baptist, and of Jesus himself, who fasted for forty days in the Judaean Desert while being tempted by the devil.
As a young man, Anthony spent fifteen years in a tomb, resisting the temptations and torments of the devil. After that, he spent twenty years in an abandoned fort in the desert before other hermits coaxed him out to instruct and organise them, whence his epithet, ‘Father of All Monks’. The hermits still lived separately, but now came together on Sundays to worship and break bread.
But the decisive development came in around 323, when St Pachomius the Great brought some hermits together at Tabennisi in Upper Egypt, thereby creating the first coenobitic (Greek, koinos bios, ‘common life’) monastery. The hermits, or monks, each had their own hut or room, but shared a common space for eating, working, and praying, under the authority of an abbot or abbess (Aramaic, abba, ‘father’).
Pachomius founded several communities of this sort, including some for women, opening up the spiritual life to those who lacked the physical or mental constitution to thrive or survive in the desert.
Ora et Labora
After Constantine decriminalised Christianity in 313, it rose into the dominant religion, with violent persecution, now in short supply, ceding to ascetic deprivation as a mode of martyrdom.
In the West, Christian monasticism began by imitating the Egyptian model. Its defining form emerged with St Benedict of Nursia (d. 543/7), who is regarded as the father of Western monasticism.
Benedict lived for many years as a hermit in a cave at Subiaco, outside of Rome. He became abbot of a nearby monastery but proved unpopular with the monks, who may have tried to poison him! Later, he founded several monasteries in the region, including the great monastery of Monte Cassino.
The moderate Rule of St Benedict, with its almost equal emphasis on prayer and work (ora et labora), set the pattern for monastic rules across Europe, and, after 1,500 years, remains the most commonly adopted monastic rule.
Reform and Renewal
Early monasteries only had around a dozen members each. When a monastery grew, members were sent out to found a new monastery. But in later times, some monasteries became very large, landed, and lax.
In 1098, a group of Benedictine monks founded Cîteaux Abbey near Dijon, with the aim of returning to the literal observance of the Rule of St Benedict.
But, as is the way, many Cistercian monasteries progressively relaxed their rules. In the seventeenth century, another reform movement took hold at the Abbey of la Trappe in Normandy, giving rise to the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, or Trappists.
More austere still is the Carthusian Order, founded in 1084 by St Bruno of Cologne. Unlike the Cistercians and Trappists, the Carthusians are not a branch of the Benedictines but follow their own Rule, called the Statutes. Each charterhouse encloses a ‘community of hermits’, with each monk working, sleeping, eating, and praying in his or her own cell—much like the first monks in Egypt.
From Contemplation to Action
At the other end of the spectrum are the active orders, which seek to reach out rather than remain remote and cloistered. Because they do not aim at self-sufficiency, they usually live off the generosity of others, making them so-called mendicant (‘begging’) orders. Adherents of mendicant orders, such as the Franciscans (Greyfriars) and Dominicans (Blackfriars, Jacobins), and, later, the Jesuits, are called friars (Latin, frater, ‘brother’) rather than monks. Their involvement in education and charitable causes demonstrates that withdrawal from ordinary life need not amount to withdrawal from the world.
The Monastic Legacy
Aside from the more religious and spiritual dimensions, monasticism has served a number of important social functions.
After the fall of Rome, the monasteries helped to preserve invaluable texts, and education and culture more generally. They also became important patrons of art, music, and architecture. To this day, university life is modelled on the monastic ideal, with quadrangles and cloisters, chapels and gardens, dormitory residences, a common table, and elaborate robes and rituals.
In feudal societies, the monasteries provided a refuge from war, famine, and disease, and served as outlets for the younger sons of noble families, celibates, and other spares and misfits. In their drive for self-subsistence, they contributed in no small measure to the development of agriculture and manufacturing, for example, turning viticulture and winemaking into high arts. Only in modern times did the welfare state supersede them in the provision of services such as health and education.
Movements such as the Protestant Reformation, the English Reformation, the French Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War led to the dissolution and destruction of many monasteries.
But the decline of the monastery involved more than the disappearance of a religious institution. It also meant the disappearance of one of the few socially sanctioned alternatives to marriage, family life, and the pursuit of wealth and status.
Modern society offers enormous freedom in how we live, but surprisingly few models for how we might live together. For most adults, the default remains the couple or nuclear family in a private home. Those who do not marry or partner up are increasingly likely to live alone. We have gained independence, but often at the price of community.
The monastery offered another possibility: solitude without isolation, community without marriage, meaningful work without careerism, and contemplation without compromise. The cloister, garden, library, common table, daily rhythm, and surrounding silence answer to needs that did not disappear with the decline of religious belief.
Monasticism Today
Western monasticism is in long-term decline, with growth in Asia and Africa unable to offset reductions elsewhere. I visited a monastery in Spain where the few remaining monks were worried that they would not have enough young men to carry their enormous Bible. Eastern monasticism on the other hand has been undergoing a revival, especially in the territories of the former Soviet Union.
Monasticism as a whole continues to attract interest, even in Europe and America. The diverse New Monasticism movement seeks to translate monastic insights and practices into more modern, liveable forms. Communities are typically ecumenical, with a focus on charity, friendship, and contemplation, and without the traditional vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience.
Strip away the theology, celibacy, poverty, and obedience, and a surprisingly attractive structure remains: a community of quiet, thoughtful people sharing meals and resources while retaining a measure of privacy; working with their hands as well as their minds; caring for one another; and cultivating friendship, learning, silence, and contemplation.
Nor need such a community be cut off from society. As the active orders discovered, withdrawal can create the conditions for engagement. A modern monastery might teach, write, grow food, make wine, offer retreats, or simply provide its members with the conditions for what the Greeks called eudaimonia, or the good life.
This, it seems to me, offers a viable third way between family life and social isolation—if, that is, you are willing to wake up early.
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If this essay spoke to you, you might also look into For Better For Worse, an unconventional exploration of romantic love, marriage, and lasting relationships. For a broader exploration of love, desire, jealousy, and the emotions that shape our lives, see Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.
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