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And Why Ataraxia Is the Ultimate Cool

Life in Epicurus' garden
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.

Ataraxia—literally, ‘lack of disturbance or trouble’—was the Holy Grail of ancient philosophy: a state of profound mental tranquillity in which a person was no longer tossed around by anxiety, anger, desire, and the vicissitudes of fortune. For what is the point of wealth, power, pleasure, or even freedom if we ourselves remain in a state of inner turmoil?

Prior to the advent of Christianity, there were, of course, the pagan gods, but, especially for the high-minded, there were also a number of philosophical schools.

Aside from the more academic Platonism and Aristotelianism, the four major philosophical schools of Western antiquity were Cynicism, Stoicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism.

Despite each having their own outlook and approach, all four schools emphasised the attainment of mental tranquillity and mastery, or ataraxia—making them, in my view, much more similar than different. If you like, ataraxia was to the Western schools what liberation was to the Indian schools.

The best way to grasp the concept of ataraxia is to look at how it fitted into each of the four schools, starting with Cynicism.

Cynicism

The first Cynic appears to have been the Athenian philosopher Antisthenes (d. 365 BCE), who had been an ardent disciple of Socrates. Then came Diogenes (d. 323 BCE), the paradigm of the Cynic, who took the simple life of Socrates to such an extreme that Plato called him ‘a Socrates gone mad’.

Diogenes held that human beings had much to learn from the simplicity and artlessness of dogs, which, unlike human beings, had not ‘complicated every simple gift of the gods’. In fact, the term ‘Cynic’ derives from the Greek kynikos, which is the adjective of kyon, or ‘dog’.

Diogenes placed reason and nature firmly above custom and convention, which he held to be incompatible with happiness. Rather than pursuing wealth, renown, and other worthless things, people should have the courage to live like animals or gods, partaking in life’s simplest pleasures—which are also its greatest—without bond or fear.

The stories surrounding Diogenes, though embellished, or because embellished, help to convey his spirit. Diogenes wore a simple cloak which he doubled up in winter, begged for food, and sheltered in a tub. He made it his mission to challenge custom and convention, famously ‘defacing the currency’—that is, overturning the false values that governed society. Upon being challenged for masturbating in the marketplace, he mused, ‘If only it were so easy to soothe hunger by rubbing an empty belly.’ He used to stroll about in broad daylight brandishing a lit lamp. Whenever people gathered around to gawk at him, he would explain, ‘I am just looking for a human being.’

His fame spread far beyond Athens. One day, Alexander the Great came to meet him. When Alexander asked whether he could do anything for him, he replied, ‘Yes, stand out of my sunlight.’

For Diogenes and the Cynics, much of our disturbance is self-inflicted. We surrender our peace of mind to things we do not need: money, possessions, and the good opinion of others. The less we depend upon such things, the less power they have to disturb us.

Stoicism

Diogenes was followed by Crates of Thebes (d. 285 BCE), who renounced a large fortune to live the Cynical life of poverty. Crates married Hipparchia of Maroneia, who, uniquely, adopted male dress and lived on equal terms with her husband.

By the first century, Cynics could be found in cities throughout the Roman Empire. At that time, Cynicism vied with Stoicism, a broader philosophical system that emphasised perspective and clear thinking. Stoicism was popular with leading Romans such as the senator Cato the Younger and the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Zeno of Citium (d. 262 BCE), the founder of Stoicism, had been a pupil of Crates, and Cynicism came to be seen as an idealised form of Stoicism.

Like their ancestors the Cynics, the Stoics sought freedom by reducing our dependence upon things outside our control. But whereas Diogenes had dramatised this freedom by living in radical simplicity, the Stoics developed a more nuanced, and moderate, psychology of judgement and emotion.

Events do not simply make us angry, anxious, envious, or miserable. Between the event and the emotion lies our interpretation of the event. If we can catch and work on that interpretation, we can alter our emotional response. Thus, Stoics such as Epictetus drew a line between things that are ‘up to us’ and those that are not. Our possessions, reputation, and body are vulnerable to fortune. But our mind is more properly our own. Marcus Aurelius often returns to Epictetus in his Meditations, for example, when he says, ‘If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.’

Skepticism

Skepticism and Epicureanism also took off around the time of Alexander. Unlike the sophists whom he opposed, Socrates had skeptical tendencies, claiming that he knew little or nothing and cultivating a state of non-knowledge, or aporia.

Pyrrho of Elis (d. 270 BCE) travelled with Alexander across Persia and into India, where he encountered various schools of thought and ascetics, including the ‘naked wise men’ or gymnosophists (probably Jain monks), with their emphasis on detachment and inner peace.

Blending East and West, Pyrrho came to believe that certain knowledge is impossible and urged suspension of judgement with the aim of exchanging anxiety and dogmatism for ataraxia. After all, if we cannot know what is true or false, or good or bad, why attach so much importance to our opinions? For example, most people are convinced that death is a terrible thing, when it might in fact be the best thing for us.

The Pyrrhonian Skeptic Sextus Empiricus (d. 210 CE) compared Pyrrho’s prescription for ataraxia to a real or fabled episode in the life of the painter Apelles of Kos. One day, Apelles was painting a horse but failed so completely to depict its froth that he gave up and flung his sponge at the picture—thereby accidentally achieving the desired effect. When we stop straining and let go of our judgement, as Apelles did, tranquillity may arrive as if by accident.

In the sixteenth century, the translation of the complete works of Sextus Empiricus led to a resurgence of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, and the work of Descartes—‘I think therefore I am’—can be read as a response to a Skeptical crisis… with roots in Ancient Athens and Ancient India.

Epicureanism

Epicurus of Samos (341–270 BCE) and Zeno of Citium (the founder of Stoicism) were almost exact contemporaries in Athens but may never have met. 

A few years before Zeno began teaching, Epicurus founded a school of philosophy in a garden outside the city’s Dipylon gates. This school, called ‘the Garden’, dedicated itself to attaining happiness through the exercise of reason, and, in a highly sexist and stratified society, admitted both women and slaves.

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.’

Like Zeno, Epicurus dedicated himself to attaining happiness through the exercise of reason: reason teaches that pleasure is good and pain bad, and that pleasure and pain are the ultimate good and bad. This has often been misconstrued as a call for rampant hedonism, but actually involves a kind of hedonic calculus to determine which things, over time, are likely to result in the most pleasure and least pain. Epicurus explicitly warned against overindulgence, because overindulgence so often leads to pain; and, rather than pleasure, emphasised the avoidance of pain, the elimination of unnecessary desire, and ataraxia. ‘If thou wilt make a man happy,’ said Epicurus, ‘add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.’

Epicurus divided pleasures and pains into physical and mental, and argued that fear of the future, especially fear of the gods and fear of death, is the greatest obstacles to happiness.

Although the gods exist, they have absolutely no concern for, or even awareness of, humankind. Indeed, for the gods to involve themselves in the menial matters of men would be to perturb the supreme happiness and tranquillity that characterises and defines them. Instead of fearing the gods, we would do better to emulate them in their supreme removal and detachment.

Neither should we fear death, and this for two main reasons. First, Epicurus, drawing on Democritus, held that everything in the universe, including the human body and mind, is ultimately composed of atoms. Our death entails the disintegration of both body and mind and the re-dispersion of their atoms. As there is no longer any person to be troubled, death cannot trouble us after we are dead. And if death cannot trouble us after we are dead, neither should it trouble us while we are still alive. Second, the eternity that comes before our birth is not regarded as an evil; therefore, neither should the eternity that comes after our death. These two arguments are early formulations, respectively, of the ‘no subject of harm’ argument and the ‘symmetry’ argument, which have both, more or less, withstood the test of time.

Where the Cynic says, ‘free yourself from convention and artificial wants,’ the Stoic says, ‘stop trying to control what you cannot control,’ the Skeptic says, ‘stop demanding certainty where certainty is unavailable,’ and the Epicurean says, ‘simplify your desires and free yourself from unnecessary fears.’ Different diagnoses, different methods, but a remarkably similar destination: ataraxia, freedom from disturbance.

The Ultimate Cool

As a psychiatrist, I find the concept of ataraxia especially appealing. Psychiatry is chiefly concerned with the treatment of mental disorder, as of course it ought to be. Once a person has stopped taking the tablets, surely, that cannot be the end of their journey. I believe that there is much more to mental health than the mere absence of mental disorder. Mental health is not just about surviving, but about thriving, about developing and expressing our highest, fullest potential as human beings.

The concept of ataraxia is so important to me that I named my six-book Ataraxia series after it. Like each of the ancient philosophical schools, each book in the series adopts a distinct but complementary approach to peace of mind: exploring the deep origins of our distress in The Meaning of Madness; defending against the demons of self-deception in Hide and Seek; understanding and refining our emotions in Heaven and Hell; regulating our relations with others in For Better For Worse; developing our cognitive capacities in Hypersanity; and, finally, rethinking success and failure in The Art of Failure.

These books are not only about achieving tranquillity but also about expressing our full potential as human beings. Ataraxia is closely linked with eudaimonia, which is often translated as ‘happiness’ but which is, in fact, a much deeper, fuller, and richer concept, sometimes articulated in terms of flourishing, or living a life that is both fulfilling and fully realised.

Ataraxia may be more difficult to attain today than it was in Ancient Athens. In our economy of disturbance, the danger is not merely that we become more restless, but that we have become so accustomed to disturbance that we cease even to notice it. Younger people in particular, who may have spent their whole lives answering, reacting, worrying, scrolling, and striving, may not even know what it is like to enjoy an undisturbed mind.

Ataraxia is not indifference or disengagement. Diogenes was anything but disengaged, and Marcus Aurelius led armies and governed an empire. It is the ability to engage fully with the world without being continually thrown off balance by it.

The person who needs less, fears less, and is less easily manipulated has achieved a rare kind of freedom.

And that, surely, is the ultimate cool.

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Why Eudaimonia Is Better Than Happiness

A concert pianist performs rapturously
It’s about what we do, not what we feel.

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

We all say we want to be happy, yet the pursuit of happiness often seems like a wild goose chase.

Perhaps the problem is not so much with us, or the world we live in, but with the very concept of happiness.

The ancient Greeks had a better idea. They called it eudaimonia, literally, ‘good soul’, ‘good spirit’, or ‘good god’. Although Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle each understood eudaimonia in somewhat different ways, they all regarded it as the highest good, often even as the very aim and purpose of philosophy.

What Is Eudaimonia?

Eudaimonia is often translated simply as ‘happiness’—but that can be misleading.

The word happy, which is related to happen and perhaps, derives from the Norse happ for ‘chance’, ‘fortune’, or ‘luck’. From Irish to Greek, most European words for ‘happy’ originally meant something like ‘lucky’—one exception being Welsh, in which it originally meant ‘wise’. Another Old English word for ‘happy’ or ‘fortunate’ was gesælig, which, over the centuries, morphed into our ‘silly’.

Eudaimonia, by contrast, is anything but silly. It has nothing to do with chance or fortune and everything to do with thought and design—with how we choose to live. Compared with happiness, it is a much deeper, fuller, and richer idea, often articulated in terms of flourishing or living a life that is worthwhile, fulfilling, and elevating.

All the major philosophical schools of antiquity, including even the Epicureans, regarded eudaimonia as the highest good. Like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, they differed over how it was to be achieved, but they all agreed that the aim of human life must be something higher or fuller than simple happiness.

Unlike happiness, eudaimonia is not an emotion but a state of being—or, especially for Aristotle, a state of doing. As such, it is more deeply rooted than happiness, and more stable and reliable. Although it leads to pleasure or satisfaction of the highest kind, it does not arise from pleasure, but from higher values and principles that transcend the here and now. The people of Athens put Socrates in prison, they even put him to death, but they did not and could not take away his eudaimonia.

Socrates on Eudaimonia

Socrates, it seems, equated eudaimonia with wisdom and virtue. In the Greater Alcibiades, he says that he who is not wise cannot be happy; in the Gorgias, that nothing truly bad can ever happen to a good man; and in the Meno, that everything the soul endeavours or endures under the guidance of wisdom ends in happiness.

At his trial, Socrates gave a defiant defence, telling the jurors that they ought to be ashamed of their eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honour as possible, while not caring for or giving thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of their soul. ‘Wealth,’ he said, ‘does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.’

Socrates supplied the supreme proof that nothing truly bad can ever happen to a good man, for when the jurors condemned him to death, they only made him and his ideas as immortal as can be—and rather than appease them, which he could easily have done, he chose instead, very cannily, to abet them.

Plato on Eudaimonia

Plato broadly agreed with his teacher Socrates, and sought to answer an obvious objection: If virtue is the path to a flourishing life, why does injustice so often seem the easy shortcut?

In the Republic, Plato’s brother Glaucon argues that most people are venal, but maintain a reputation for virtue and justice to evade the social costs of being or seeming unjust. But if a man could get hold of the fabled Ring of Gyges and make himself invisible, he would behave without restraint:

No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men.

According to Glaucon, we behave justly not because we value justice, but because we are weak and fearful; while the unjust man who is cunning enough to seem just will get the better of everyone and everything.

In his magisterial reply to Glaucon, Plato famously conjures an idealised Republic to help him ‘locate’ (define) justice, first in the state, where it is larger and easier to pin down, and then in the individual. He argues that justice and injustice are to the soul as health and disease are to the body: if health in the body is intrinsically desirable, then so too is justice in the soul. For Plato, an unjust man cannot be happy because he is not in rational and ordered control of himself.

Aristotle on Eudaimonia

It is with Plato’s one-time student Aristotle, and his Nicomachean Ethics, that the concept of eudaimonia is most closely associated.

For Aristotle, a thing is best understood by looking at its end, purpose, or goal (Greek, telos—as in ‘teleology’ and ‘telomere’). The purpose of a knife is to cut, and it is by seeing this that one best understands what a knife is. The goal of medicine is good health, and it is by seeing this that one best understands what medicine is, or should be. If this is true of knives and medicine, might it also be true of us? Might we also have an ergon, or ‘distinctive function’?

Maybe we’ll come back to that.

If one follows Aristotle’s line of thought, it soon becomes apparent that some goals are subordinate to other goals, which are themselves subordinate to yet other goals. A medical student’s goal may be to qualify as a doctor, but this is subordinate to her goal of healing the sick, which is itself subordinate to her goal of making a living by doing something useful. This could go on and on, but unless the medical student has a goal that is an end-in-itself, nothing that she does is actually worth doing.

What, asks Aristotle, is this end-in-itself? This ‘supreme good’, he replies, is eudaimonia, and eudaimonia alone.

Eudaimonia, notice, is not just ‘happiness’, it’s salvation—the thing that prevents life from being an infinite regress of ends, as it so often seems. Only in eudaimonia does life become worth living in and of itself.

So, given its importance, what exactly did Aristotle understand by eudaimonia?

Whereas human beings need nourishment like plants, and have sentience like animals, our ergon—the thing that most makes us not something else, like an oak, a dolphin, or a baboon—says Aristotle, is our unique and god-like capacity to reason. Aristippus of Cyrene made much the same point when he chided a champion swimmer: ‘Aren’t you ashamed of boasting about what a fish or dolphin could better do?’ Thus, our supreme good is to lead a life that enables us to use and develop our reason, and that is in accordance with rational principles.

By living our life to the full according to our essential nature as rational beings, we are bound to flourish, that is, to develop and express our full human potential, regardless of the ebb and flow of our good or bad fortune.

To put this in modern terms, if we develop our thinking and imagining skills, if we guard against lies and self-deception, if we refine and master our emotions, we will, over the years, make better and better choices, do more and more meaningful things, and derive ever-increasing satisfaction from all that we have become and all that we have achieved, and are yet able to achieve.

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Plato’s Apology: Why the Father of Philosophy Refused to Save His Own Life

The Hemlock Cup
The Hemlock Cup

An outline and summary of Plato’s Apology, explaining why Socrates chose death rather than abandon philosophy.

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

At his famous trial, Socrates could almost certainly have saved his life.

He could have appealed to the jury’s emotions, begged for mercy, proposed exile, or simply promised to stop practising philosophy. Instead, he did none of these things. He was found guilty of impiety and corrupting the youth, and sentenced to death by hemlock.

His defence speech, preserved by his student Plato in the Apology, is one of the founding texts of Western philosophy—not because it saved Socrates’ life, but because it illuminates why he refused to save himself.

The Official Charges—and the Real Charge

Plato’s Apology consists of three speeches delivered by Socrates before the supreme court of Athens (heliaea): the first in reply to the charges, the second concerning the appropriate penalty, and the third in response to the passing of the death sentence.

Three Athenians, Meletus, Anythus, and Lycon, had charged Socrates with refusing to recognise the Olympian gods and introducing different gods, and, relatedly, with corrupting the youth. Seeming to associate or confuse him with Anaxagoras and the sophists, they accused him of ‘studying things in the sky and below the earth’, ‘making the worse into the stronger argument’, and ‘teaching those same things to others’.

Although Socrates had been charged with the crime of impiety (asebeia), the underlying reason for his indictment may have been his anti-democratic leanings and close association with aristocrats such as Charmides and especially Critias, the leader of the Thirty Tyrants. Both Critias and Charmides died in 403, fighting against the exiled democratic forces. Although Socrates had refused to be tainted by the tyranny, he had remained in the city throughout, and, for all his moralising, had done little to actively oppose the regime. To many democrats, Socrates no longer seemed like the harmless eccentric of old, but like a dangerous and corrupting influence, a breeder of tyrants and the enemy of the common man. In the febrile atmosphere that had taken hold over the city, any accusation, however false or fanciful, could be seized upon as a pretext to punish him and scapegoat him for sufferings of the tyranny.

At his trial, before replying to Meletus and the other prosecutors, Socrates first answered what he called his ‘older accusers’: the rumours and prejudices that had dogged him for decades. These anonymous but far more dangerous enemies had turned many Athenians against him. Even the comic playwright Aristophanes had mocked and misrepresented him on the stage. But as many of the jurors could attest, he had never pronounced himself on divine matters, nor, like the sophists, pretended to understand virtue or taken money from his students. What, then, had given rise to the accusations against him?

The Oracle of Delphi and Socrates’ Lifelong Mission

Over the years, he says, he acquired a certain reputation for wisdom—not the superhuman wisdom of the sophists, but the sort of wisdom which is within our ken. When he learnt that the Oracle of Delphi had pronounced him the wisest of all men, he did not know what to make of it. So he questioned a politician with a reputation for wisdom and cross-examined his words to reveal their inconsistencies and contradictions. But the result was that the politician, instead of thanking him, hated him. Whereas both he and the politician knew nothing, he at least knew that he knew nothing, and, in that much, was wiser than the politician.

After that, he went from one man to another, first the politicians, then the poets, and then the craftsmen, and found that those with the greatest reputation for wisdom were, in fact, the most foolish of them all. By this exercise, he came to understand the oracle’s meaning: that the wisdom of men is little or nothing, and those who know this are as wise as any man can be. Inspired by this revelation, he entered the service of the god of the oracle, seeking out anyone who laid claim to wisdom and putting his wisdom to the test. Over the years, he made many friends, but also made many enemies, people who got angry at him rather than at themselves and who, not knowing why they were angry, made up all sorts of charges against him.

Now, at the age of seventy, that lifelong mission had finally landed him before the courts of Athens.

Cross-Examining his Principal Accuser

Having addressed his older accusers, Socrates turns to Meletus and reproaches him for being too eager to prosecute men for matters in which he takes no interest. To prove his point, he asks Meletus to name the improver of the youth. After some hesitation, Meletus replies, ‘the law’. ‘Who,’ asks Socrates, ‘knows the laws?’ ‘The judges, Socrates, who are present in court.’ Under questioning by Socrates, and forced to follow his own logic, Meletus blurts out that every enfranchised Athenian improves the youth except for Socrates.

Having proven his point out of Meletus’ own mouth and, by the same token, made a demonstration of the method which landed him in court, Socrates puts it to Meletus that, when it comes to horses, it is not the case that everyone does them good except for one man who does them harm, but rather that no one does them good except for one man, namely, the horse trainer.

Socrates now sets out to show that, if he did corrupt the youth, he could not have done so intentionally:

S: Do not the good do their neighbours good, and the bad do them evil?

M: Certainly.

S: And is there anyone who would rather be injured than benefited by those who live with him?

M: Certainly not.

S: And when you accuse me of corrupting and deteriorating the youth, do you allege that I corrupt them intentionally or unintentionally?

M: Intentionally I say.

Hereupon, Socrates argues that he could not have corrupted the youth intentionally because he would have known that doing so would have amounted to injuring himself. Thus, if he did corrupt the youth, he must have done so unintentionally, and ought to be educated rather than punished.

This argument reflects his general outlook that people only do wrong because, in the moment, they think that it is the right thing to do. To put this differently, all people incline towards goodness, but are waylaid by their foolishness or narrowness.

Finally, Socrates asks Meletus what he meant when he accused him of teaching the youth to acknowledge gods other than those acknowledged by the state: did he mean that he believed in some gods but not in the right ones, or that he did not believe in any gods at all? The latter, says Meletus, ‘since you believe the sun to be stone and the moon to be earth.’ Socrates points out that these are in fact the beliefs of Anaxagoras. But as for himself, he would not have introduced different gods, as charged, if he had not believed in at least some gods.

The Gadfly of Athens

Having done with Meletus, Socrates turns back to address the jurors.

Despite its dangers, he had chosen the life of a philosopher because it seemed like the right and best thing to do. Had he chosen safety over philosophy, he would have been pretending to a wisdom which he did not possess, for no one knows whether death is the greatest evil or, in fact, the greatest good. It is not death that Achilles feared, but living in dishonour by failing to avenge the death of Patroclus. ‘Let me die at once’ he said, ‘…rather than remain here, a laughingstock by the curved ships, a burden upon the earth.’

Just as he had not abandoned his post in battle, so he would not now abandon the life of philosophy.

Men of Athens, I am grateful and I am your friend, but I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practise philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet: Good Sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wealth and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honours as possible, whilst you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?

By exhorting men to excellence, he had brought the greatest good to the state. Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else that is good for men. Such is the core of his teaching: if it is held to corrupt the youth, then so be it. By condemning him to death, the jurors would be doing themselves a far greater harm than they would be doing him, since putting an innocent man to death is much worse than dying oneself. Besides, they would struggle to replace him. In homage to the god, he had attached himself to Athens like a gadfly to a noble but listless horse, and his poverty was proof enough that he had never taken payment for his service.

He had at one time considered going into politics but his daimonion (inner voice, or guardian spirit) had dissuaded him from doing so on the grounds that a dead man is of no use to anyone. Nevertheless, he had behaved in the private sphere with the same integrity as in the public sphere, and it is a matter of public record that he opposed the collective prosecution of the generals at the Battle of Arginusæ and disobeyed the Thirty Tyrants when they sought to implicate him in the execution of Leon of Salamis.

Although he had freely conversed with rich and poor alike, he had never taught anyone anything, and could be neither praised nor blamed for their subsequent actions. If he did indeed corrupt the youth, why had their fathers and brothers not come forth to accuse him? And why had Meletus not called upon them as witnesses?

This is all the defence that he has to offer. Some of the jurors may take offence that he did not shed tears, resort to prayers and supplications, or bring forth his young children, but such bathetic scenes would hardly have been worthy of him, or them, or Athens, or philosophy.

The jury pronounced him guilty by a margin of sixty votes.

Proposing a Penalty

Under Athenian law, once a defendant had been convicted, both prosecution and defence proposed an appropriate penalty, and the jury chose between them. Socrates might have proposed exile. He might have asked for imprisonment. He might have offered to pay a substantial fine. Instead, he courted the death sentence by asking for what he truly deserved: free meals in the Prytaneion, or town hall.

He had never wronged anyone and was not going to start now by asking the jury for a penalty that he did not deserve. He could ill afford a fine, and imprisonment would turn him into a slave. Exile could be tolerable, but only if he were willing to hold his tongue:

For if I tell you this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living—that you are still less likely to believe.

Only upon the insistence of his friends did he reluctantly propose a fine of thirty minæ (half a talent, or around 13kg of pure silver). But it was too late. In the second ballot, eighty more jurors voted for the death sentence than had voted for the guilty verdict, a split, this time, of 360 to 141.

The Final Address

After the death sentence had been passed, Socrates addressed the jurors one last time.

To those who had voted to acquit him, he offered a remarkable reflection. Throughout his life, his daimonion had often intervened to restrain him from making some momentous mistake. Yet throughout the trial—even when he had refused to flatter the jury or propose a more acceptable punishment—it had remained completely silent. This could only mean that what had happened was not, after all, an evil. 

Death, he argued, must be one of two things. If it is a state of unconsciousness, there is nothing to be feared. But if it is a journey to a land inhabited by great men such as Homer and Hesiod, he would take infinite delight in conversing with them.

For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not… Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth—that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Having concluded that it would be better to die than to live, he was not in the least angry with those who had accused and condemned him. For although they had not meant to do him any good, neither had they done him any harm.

He asks only that his friends take good care of his three sons:

When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing… The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

Why Socrates Chose to Die

On the force of the arguments alone, Socrates had produced a brilliant defence. But instead of behaving with the customary humility and contrition, he turned the tables round and made himself judge and jury, cross-examining all of Athens before his court of philosophy. For the first and last time, he let drop his ironic mask, and his unapologetic apology turned many a juror against him. After being found guilty, his arrogance in suggesting a punishment of free meals and insolence in proposing a paltry one-mina fine only hardened hearts.

But this, from such a fine psychologist, may well have been the intention. Socrates knew that his best years lay behind him, and that a timely death could be a blessing as much as a curse. Moreover, by martyrizing him, the Athenians promised to preserve his memory, and, more importantly, the memory of his method and philosophy. Had the Athenians acquitted Socrates, you would not have read this book, and I would not have written it. 

For Socrates, the hemlock was never a deadly poison, but the very elixir of life.

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Plato’s Euthyphro, the Euthyphro Dilemma, and Why They’ll Never Leave You

Socrates in conversation with Euthyphro, with Meletus standing in the shadows.
Socrates questions Euthyphro outside the Stoa Basileios, or Porch of the King Archon, in Athens.

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

The Euthyphro is one of Plato’s shortest dialogues—and one of his finest. It is funny, dramatic, and unexpectedly modern. What begins as a chance encounter outside an Athenian courthouse turns into one of the most profound and celebrated conversations in the history of philosophy.

On his way to answer a charge of impiety, Socrates meets the self-professed religious expert Euthyphro, who has decided to prosecute his own father for the manslaghter of a servant. Intrigued by his resolve, Socrates asks him an apparently simple question: What is piety? The answer proves far more elusive than either man expects. The problem has exercised philosophers ever since—not least the ‘last universal genius’ Gottfried Leibniz.

The core of the dialogue is the so-called Euthyphro dilemma: is something pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious? In modern terms, are things like justice, virtue, and beauty merely matters of authority, or are they woven into the very fabric of reality? Does God, or anyone else, decide what is good, or is there an independent standard?

Outline and Summary of Plato’s Euthyphro

Socrates is on his way to answer a charge of impiety for ‘corrupting young men’ and ‘creating new gods and not believing in the old ones’. The charge is being pressed by a certain Meletus, a little-known young man with a beak-like nose, long straight hair, and a sparse beard.

In the agora (market or central square), Socrates runs into the dogmatically religious Euthyphro. Following the death of a servant, Euthyphro has pressed a charge of manslaughter against his own father. Euthyphro tells Socrates that he is prosecuting his father for inadvertently killing a servant who, in a drunken rage, murdered one of the household slaves. After binding the servant and throwing him into a ditch, Euthyphro’s father sent a messenger to a priest to enquire what ought to be done. Unfortunately, the servant died of hunger and cold before the messenger could return.

Socrates flatters Euthyphro, saying that he must be far advanced in wisdom if he is willing to prosecute his own father on so questionable a charge. Euthyphro responds that his relatives are angry at him for prosecuting his father on behalf of a murderer whom he did not deliberately kill. Although they would say that he is behaving impiously, he himself thinks that he is behaving piously—and that he has knowledge of the pious and impious.

Posing as ignorant, Socrates asks Euthyphro to define the pious and impious. Euthyphro replies that the pious is to prosecute a wrongdoer regardless of who he is, and the impious not to prosecute him. He cites the example of Zeus, ‘the best and most just of gods’, who bound his father Cronus for unjustly swallowing his children.

Socrates says that many actions can be pious: but what is it that makes all pious actions pious, and all impious actions impious? What, in short, is the essence of piousness? Euthyphro offers that the pious is that which is dear to the gods. An action or man that is dear to the gods is pious, whereas an action or man that is hated by the gods is impious.

Socrates points out that the gods may be at odds, so that what is pious to one god may not be so to another. Euthyphro replies that none of the gods would be at odds on a matter such as his. Socrates argues that while both gods and men agree that whoever has killed someone unjustly ought to pay a penalty, they might disagree about who the wrongdoer is, what he did, and so on. Can Euthyphro be sure that, in his case, all the gods are in agreement? Even assuming that they are, this merely signifies that the action is hated by the gods. It does not signify that what is hated by the gods is impious, or that what is loved by them is pious. Even assuming that it does, is that which is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? If the gods love something because it is pious, it cannot be their love that makes it pious. Whereas if something is pious because the gods love it, we still don’t know for what reason they love it.

Euthyphro complains that Socrates makes his arguments go around in circles. But Socrates points out that all he is doing is asking questions: it is Euthyphro’s answers and Euthyphro’s arguments that are going round in circles.

Socrates next argues that all that is pious is necessarily just. But whereas all that is pious is necessarily just, not all that is just is necessarily pious. Thus, where there is piety there is also justice, but where there is justice there is not necessarily piety, because piety is a part or aspect of justice. So what part of justice is piety? Euthyphro replies that piety is the part of justice that is concerned with the care of the gods, with the rest of justice being concerned with the care of men. Socrates asks Euthyphro what he means by ‘care’. In most instances, ‘to care’ means ‘to aim at the good of that which is cared for’. So does piety, which is concerned with the care of the gods, aim to make them better? Euthyphro suggests that piety, the care of the gods, is the sort of care that slaves have for their masters, and thus that it is a kind of service. If piety is a kind of service to the gods, asks Socrates, what is the goal of this service? The goal of service to doctors is health, and the goal of service to shipbuilders is the building of a ship. So what is the goal of service to the gods? Euthyphro answers that service to the gods is the knowledge of how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice, for the preservation of private households and public affairs of state.

Socrates says that, if the pious is the knowledge of how to pray and sacrifice, it is the knowledge of how to beg and give to the gods. To beg correctly would be to ask from them the things that we need, whereas to give correctly would be to give to them the things that they need—so that piety would amount to a sort of trading skill between gods and men. Euthyphro says, ‘Trading yes, if you prefer to call it that’—to which Socrates replies, ‘I prefer nothing, unless it is true.’

Socrates wonders what benefit the gods might derive from the gifts that they receive from us. Or do we have such a trading advantage over them that we receive all our blessings from them and they receive nothing in return? Euthyphro now claims that we give gifts to the gods so as to honour and please them. Socrates asks whether the pious is then pleasing, rather than beneficial or dear, to the gods—to which Euthyphro replies, ‘I think it is of all things most dear to them.’ Socrates points out that they have returned to Euthyphro’s original definition of piety, namely, that piety is that which is dear to the gods.

Socrates says that Euthyphro is more skilful than Daedalus, in that Daedalus could only make arguments move whereas Euthyphro can make them go round in a circle. Socrates suggests that they begin their inquiry anew, but Euthyphro says that he is in a hurry and leaves!

Analysis and Themes of Plato’s Euthyphro

The Euthyphro is often treated as an early Platonic dialogue, interesting only insofar as it introduces the Euthyphro dilemma. But that would be to miss much of its richness. It is also a brilliant study of dogmatism, intellectual humility, and the nature of dialectic and philosophical enquiry. And, chronologically, it is the first of the four dialogues that retrace the final days of Socrates—to be followed by the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. If Plato’s internal chronology is to be relied upon, the conversation in the Euthyphro takes place on the same day as the conversation in the Theatetus, which follows the preliminary hearing (anakrisis) at the porch of the King Archon.

At no point does Euthyphro realise that he may be ignorant, or even that his knowledge of impiety may be less than complete. He confidently prosecutes his own father, without questioning whether this is what the gods would really want. When Socrates challenges the source of his self-esteem—knowledge of the gods—he finds himself unable to refute Socrates—and so simply leaves. It is a masterclass in the psychology of self-deception. The irony, too, is striking. Socrates is on his way to answer a charge of impiety, yet proves far more concerned with piety than the supposed expert on religion.

Whereas Euthyphro mistakes certainty for knowledge, Socrates is content to admit his ignorance and continue the search. It is apparent, especially in the unabridged dialogue, that Euthyphro struggles to understand what Socrates is asking of him—in other words, he struggles to understand what Socrates means by a definition. The same might be said of other so-called experts who engage with Socrates, including Laches in the Laches and Meno in the Meno. The confusion of these experts, some of whom, like Meno, were philosophically trained or at least philosophically aware, suggests that Socrates’ search for rigorous definitions was something original and radical.

For Socrates, it is not sufficient simply to define an ethical concept in terms of itself or related concepts, or by a list of its instances, or according to convention or popular opinion (‘piety is what is dear to the gods’). Instead, a rigorous definition is one which, by picking out the nature or essence of the ethical concept, applies to all its instances and no more. For example, Meno’s definition of virtue as ‘the ability to rule over people’ is both too narrow for excluding children and slaves, and too broad for including those who rule unjustly. Today, we take the search for rigorous definitions so much for granted that it is easy to forget how revolutionary it once was.

If beauty, courage, justice, and piety can have an essence that can be defined, perhaps they can also have an independent reality. In time, Socrates’ search for essences would evolve into Plato’s Theory of the Forms. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle is quite clear that Socrates did not originate the Theory of the Forms: ‘Two things may properly be ascribed to Socrates, inductive reasoning and definition by universals… But Socrates did not assign to the universal or the definitions an independent existence.’ Nonetheless, the seeds of the Theory of the Forms are already present in dialogues such as the Euthyphro.

Leibniz and the Best of All Possible Worlds

In the modern era, Leibniz (1646–1716) followed the direction of Socrates’ argument while going beyond anything that Socrates himself explicitly claimed. God does not make something good simply by willing it; rather, he wills it because it is good. Eternal or necessary truths—including the standards of the beautiful, the good, and the just—depend on God’s understanding, but not on his will.

This is no mere point of theology. It underpins Leibniz’s most famous doctrine, that this is the best of all possible worlds. If goodness depended solely on God’s will, then whatever world God chose to create would de facto have been the best, rendering the claim empty.

The very idea that God chose to create the best of all possible worlds presupposes an objective standard of goodness by which the alternatives can be judged. Notice that, in the Bible, in Genesis, as God created the world, he kept on checking that what he had done was ‘good’—and even, at the end of the sixth day, ‘very good’. Had there not been an independent standard of goodness, he would not have needed to look.

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To delve deeper into Plato, see The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Plato’s Shadow: A Primer on Plato.

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Hate Noise? You Might Be a Genius

My silent writing retreat
Where I Wrote The German Greeks, surrounded by all the right sounds.

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

Silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation. —Thomas Keating

I am excruciatingly sensitive to noise. I always carry earplugs and sometimes fantasise about living in the middle of the woods or on top of a hill. If I were browsing property listings, the first word I’d search for would be ‘secluded’. Is the problem with me—or with the world?

As a misophone (‘hater of sounds’), I’m in pretty good company. Kant hated noise, as did Proust, Kafka, and Darwin—and even, ironically, Wagner. Kant is said to have moved lodgings on account of a crowing rooster, while Proust lined his bedroom with cork.

Among all the great thinkers, none hated noise more openly or fervently than Arthur Schopenhauer.

Schopenhauer and the Noisy Seamstress

In August 1821, while living in Berlin, the 33-year-old Schopenhauer had an altercation with a neighbour, the 47-year-old seamstress Caroline Louise Marquet. On that day, he was enraged by the noise of three women talking in the private anteroom to his apartment. When he demanded that they leave, two of the women complied but Marquet refused.

Later, Marquet claimed that Schopenhauer kicked and punched her and threw her down the stairs, leaving her paralysed on the right side and unable to work. He countered that he had only pushed her, and that she fell to the ground on purpose so that she could sue him.

Following a six-year legal battle ending in May 1827, he was made to pay her medical expenses along with a maintenance allowance of 60 thalers per annum for the rest of her life. On the day she died in 1842, the great philosopher of compassion recorded in his ledger, in Latin, Obit anus, abit onus (‘The crone dies, the burden is lifted’). Moral of the story: Don’t make noise around philosophers.

Schopenhauer built his pessimistic philosophy on that of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who lived all his life in Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad). Although gregarious and fond of laughter, Kant needed absolute quiet to write. In May 1784, he penned a letter to the police superintendent to complain about the ‘stentorian singing of prayers by the hypocritical inmates of the jail’ (in the Iliad, the Greek herald Stentor had a voice as loud ‘as fifty voices of other men’). He was offended not merely by the noise but also by the insincerity of the prayers, which were offered, he thought, simply to appear God-fearing to the jailor.

Schopenhauer on Noise

In his essay On Din and Noise (1851), Schopenhauer rails hardest not against the nattering of women but the cracking of whips in narrow resounding streets (the nineteenth-century equivalent of revving motorbikes, or those fart-can cars with modified exhausts): ‘Hammering, the barking of dogs, and the screaming of children are abominable; but it is only [his emphasis] the cracking of a whip that is the true murderer of thought.’ To him, the cracking of whips was all the more unbearable for being unnecessary and, worse than unnecessary, useless.

He goes on to link noise intolerance (misophonia, ‘the hatred of sound’) with intellect and creativity:

Certainly there are people, nay, very many, who will smile at [my predicament], because they are not sensitive to noise; it is precisely these people, however, who are not sensitive to argument, thought, poetry, or art, in short, to any kind of intellectual impression: a fact to be assigned to the coarse quality and strong texture of their brain tissues.

The Difference Between Sound and Noise

But not every sound is noise. The difference between sound and noise is not merely one of acoustics but also of perception. The sounds of nature, I find, are almost always more tolerable than those of man. Years ago, I toured Copenhagen Zoo—the only thing open on a Monday—and noted that the most disturbing cries came not from the animals but from the human children.

I enjoy birdsong, the burbling of a stream, or waves lapping or breaking on a shore, but not, say, an air conditioner humming (unless it is very hot outside), children crying, or people shouting or talking without saying anything useful, interesting, or amusing. If I believe that something is important, meaningful, or beautiful, the sound that it makes is much less likely to constitute noise. Noise, then, is whatever I don’t think is worth hearing. In the final analysis, it is whatever dissipates rather than concentrates my energies.

For Schopenhauer, genius is precisely this: the ability of the mind to remain focused on a single point and object. But as soon as a focused mind is interrupted or distracted, it is no better than an ordinary mind. It is, says Schopenhauer, as with a large diamond, which, if shattered, loses most of its value; or as with an army, which, if dispersed, loses most of its power.

It is not merely a matter of genius but also of happiness. For anyone who has experienced it, deep concentration is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Aristotle famously conceived of God, the traditional fount of all reason, as a mind that turns blissfully upon itself. In contrast, people who are too frightened to put two and two together, or too dense to do so, use noise to occupy and numb their minds.

The Stoic Answer: Can We Rise Above the Noise?

Unlike Schopenhauer, the Stoic Seneca (d. 65 CE) sought not to eliminate noise but to rise above it. In his Letters to Lucilius, he claims to be living above a bustling Roman bathhouse, and paints a vivid picture of the soundscape: the grunts of the weightlifter, the slaps and pummelling of the masseur, the splashing of the enthusiast who bombs into the pool, the ceaseless chatter of the hair-plucker who makes his victims yell… ‘So picture to yourself the assortment of sounds, which are strong enough to make me hate my very powers of hearing!’

Despite the din, Seneca remains able to read and write, assuring Lucilius that ‘this racket means no more to me than the sound of waves or falling water.’

Still, he recognises that some noises are worse than others. Intermittent noises, he says, are more upsetting than steady ones. Spoken words are more distracting than mere sounds, in that they demand our attention: compared to speech, even the saw-sharpener is easier to bear. 

Yet Seneca is able to force his mind to concentrate and ‘keep it from straying to things outside itself’. More than that, he sees this as a test of his Stoicism, mental fortitude, and even virtue. Ultimately, he reasons, noise only disturbs us insofar as it resonates with our own emotional turmoil. If our mind is still, no amount of noise can unsettle it; but if our mind is angry or fearful, or burning with greed or envy, no amount of silence can still it: ‘For of what benefit is a quiet quarter or neighbourhood if our emotions are in an uproar?’

We tend to associate sleeping with resting. But unless we are able to still our mind by the use of reason, the night merely changes the form of our worries. Real tranquillity, in contrast, ‘is the state reached by a rational mind when it is at rest.’

I think there is a lot of truth in that. When overwhelmed by noise, I find it helpful to ask myself, ‘Is my annoyance more to do with me or my prejudices than with the noise itself?’ But I would contest that even if we are able to concentrate in a din, our concentration is less profound or complete than it would otherwise have been, and more wearing too.

Seneca concedes that, having tested ourselves, it is simpler to avoid the uproar, or block it out, just as Odysseus blocked his ears and had his men row faster to get past the Sirens. According to lore, the Sirens were fated to die if someone ever escaped their singing, and after Odysseus were never again seen or heard.

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I explore Schopenhauer and the German philosophers in The German Greeks, and Seneca and Stoicism in Stoic Stories.

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