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What Would the Children Say?

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child (1885–86).
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child (1885–86). Gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle.

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

Having children may or may not be good for us—but what about for the children?

Whether or not to have children is, perhaps, the most important question of all.

Despite not having any himself, Pope Francis has said, in no uncertain terms, that people ought to have children:

A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society … The choice not to have children is selfish. Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: it is enriched, not impoverished.

Pope Francis may not have watched the news, or the weather, but he has at least looked into the Bible. Psalm 127 tells us that ‘children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is His reward’. And in Genesis, the very first thing that God says to Adam is, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth…’

For most of human history, children were a religious duty, as well as a biological destiny, a social expectation, an economic asset, and an insurance policy. The question of whether to have them barely arose—and contraception was in any case more hit than miss.

The Rise of Childlessness

In most times and places, the only truly significant thing that a woman could do was to bring forth children. Women were married off at a young age and, for the most part, did not have much choice or control over their reproductive lives.

Things changed dramatically over the course of the twentieth century with the advent of women’s rights and reliable forms of contraception. Owing to the state pension and social support, people no longer had to rely on having children to underwrite their old age. And childlessness today is much less stigmatised than it used to be—and, in fact, increasingly lauded.

The more educated a woman is, the less likely she is to have children. For many women, children conflict with work; whereas, for men, children may mean working harder than they would otherwise have needed to. Educated women may also struggle to find a suitable partner, or look upon having a partner as more of a hindrance than a help. Interestingly, in the long run, people with children and people without (both men and women) report being similarly satisfied, or dissatisfied, with their lives. And both groups have a similar life expectancy.

Another factor in the rise of childlessness is the decline of marriage. Many people equate marriage with children, and being unmarried is one of the strongest predictors of childlessness—even though more than half of children in England and Wales are now born outside marriage or civil partnership.

Why We Want Children

Before running through some of the arguments for and against having children, it is worth reminding ourselves that, beneath it all, we are animals, and that the purpose of all animal life, and all life, is survival and reproduction.

For many people, the drive to reproduce is an irreducible given that is impervious to reason and argument. The philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe (d. 1990) argued that the human capacities for reason and self-awareness break with nature, giving us more than we, as a part of nature, are able to carry. So as not to go mad, ‘most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.’

The novelist George Eliot made a similar point in her novel, Middlemarch (1871):

That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

Had our parents been clear-thinking, it may be that none of us would have been born—and be worrying about whether to have children.

There remains a lot of social pressure on both women and men, but especially women, to have children. This pressure may be experienced first and foremost as parental expectation, even if it remains largely unspoken. But even without any pressure, many people would still choose to have children. If anything, it is a romantic idea. A friend once told me that he loved his partner so much that he wanted to mingle his genetic material with hers and live alongside what that would look like. He was a zoologist.

Beyond the romance, children can fill our lives with meaning, purpose, and activity. They can remove us from our adult preoccupations into the simpler, more immediate, and more innocent dimension of our own childhood, which we can re-live through them. The creation of another human being is almost God-like, and their need for us, at least in the early years, can give us a God-like sense of power and importance. We hope, or imagine, that they will grow up to be successful and dutiful, that they will become our pride and solace, and that they will imitate and flatter us by having children of their own.

When we die, they will say some fine words at our funeral and garden our grave. They will carry forth our name, our history, even our traits and habits, our manners and ways. They will inherit our accumulated estate, protecting it from dispersion and dilapidation. They will prolong our work and advocate for our memory.

In short, we give life so that life might give back to us.

A Gift to the World?

Perhaps, having a child is not just about us. It is also, we tell ourselves, an act of generosity, a gift to the world—and a new reader for me, thank you.

But is that really so? More and more people are taking a contrary view. The world population stands at around 8 billion and is still rising at an annual rate of over one per cent. For every person alive in Britain or America, how many animals suffer or die, if only to feed that person? How much carbon dioxide is emitted? And how much plastic waste produced? Putting aside animal exploitation and extinction and other forms of environmental degradation, many experts are alarmed about global heating and its impact on future generations. We may go to great lengths to reduce our carbon footprint, but no amount of restraint and recycling on our part could ever make up for the carbon footprint of bringing yet another person into the world.

Whatever they might do, the childless are far more carbon-neutral.

We might hope that, instead of adding to the problem, our child will grow up to become a part of the solution. Perhaps we could offset their carbon footprint through environmental action, for example, by sponsoring the planting of trees.

But even if having a child does contribute to the greater good, we could make an even bigger contribution by adopting an already existing child, or by remaining childless so as to concentrate all our resources on making a difference.

Pregnant in Soul

In the Symposium, Plato says that animals enter into a state of heat because they seek to reproduce and thereby attain a species of immortality. Human beings also seek to become immortal, and are prepared to take great risks, even to die, to attain fame and honour. Most people are pregnant in body and beget children to preserve their memory, but a few are pregnant in soul and choose instead to beget wisdom and virtue. As their children are more beautiful and immortal, people who are pregnant in soul have more to share with one another and a stronger bond of friendship between them. Everyone, says Plato, would rather have their children than human ones:

Who when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great poets, would not rather have their children than ordinary ones? Who would not emulate them in the creation of children such as theirs, which have preserved their memory and given them everlasting glory?

Plato thereby distinguishes between the lesser immortality of leaving behind children and grandchildren, which is relatively easy to achieve but only preserves our memory for at most three or four generations; and the greater immortality of leaving behind a significant artistic, intellectual, or social legacy, which is more enduring but also a lot harder to achieve. The childless Plato wrote the Symposium some 2,400 years ago, and here we are today still quoting from it.

Greater immortality may be insecure, but so too is lesser immortality. Our children may become people of a kind that we cannot imagine. They may write us off, or even murder us. Of course, no one imagines that. Lesser immortality is also morally problematic. The more we regard our children as extensions of ourselves, the less fully we regard them as ends in themselves.

The Costs of Having Children

Greater immortality may not be in our grasp, but there are other reasons for remaining childless. Some people do not feel that they will make good enough parents—if only because they have no affinity for children. Others, quite simply, have not found a suitable partner, or one that they are willing to put up with for the next however many years. Contrary to popular belief, relationships tend to suffer from the arrival of a child, and those who have found a partner may wish to protect their relationship by remaining childfree. In addition, many people fear that childbearing may be too traumatic or inconvenient, or that it might damage their health or physique. Some might already be in poor health, or carrying a genetic disorder that they worry about transmitting.

And then there are the costs involved. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, raising a child to the age of 18 now costs around £250,000 for a couple and £290,000 for a lone parent. In other words, roughly the price of a house—or two houses if you send them to a fee-paying school.

As well as financial costs, there are also opportunity costs. We swap friends, free time, restorative lie-ins, sleek interior décor, romantic evenings, and spontaneous travel for soiled nappies, temper tantrums, broken sleep, broken things, babysitting, and school runs—and all, perhaps, to end up with a miserable or obnoxious teen on our hands.

What if, deep down, we didn’t even love them?

Will Someone Think of the Children?

Having a child may well be good for us. It might even be good for the world. But is it actually good for the child itself?

For Immanuel Kant, people, by virtue of being people, ought never to be treated merely as means to an end, but always also as ends-in-themselves. If we are going to bring a child into the world, our first thought should be, not for our own good or even the greater good, but for the good of the child itself.

As we cannot ask a child that does not yet exist for its opinion or consent, we are left to make that decision on its behalf—and to live with that reckoning for the rest of our lives.

If we can see that the child would lead a miserable life, we may feel a moral obligation not to bring it into the world. But if we could be sure that it would lead a fulfilled life, we would not feel a moral obligation to bring it into the world. In other words, we intuitively place more value on the prevention of suffering than on the maximisation of happiness. It seems, then, that preventing a possible person’s suffering matters more than providing for their possible happiness.

Most people report being satisfied with their lives. Even so, do our lives contain more suffering than happiness? Does life in general contain more suffering than happiness? On some level, this boils down to asking whether life is preferable to death, or, at least, to non-existence.

Is Life Better Than Non-Existence?

In one of his Theban plays, Oedipus at Colonus (401 BCE), the tragedian Sophocles has the chorus sing:

Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came.

One of the most famous of the lost writings of Plato’s long-time student Aristotle is Eudemus, or On the Soul. A fragment preserved in Plutarch contains the essence of what later philosophers came to call the Wisdom of Silenus (Silenus being the tutor of the wine god Dionysus):

You, most blessed and happiest among humans, may well consider those blessed and happiest who have departed this life before you… This thought is indeed so old that the one who first uttered it is no longer known; it has been passed down to us from eternity, and hence doubtless it is true. Moreover, you know what is so often said and passes for a trite expression. What is that, he asked? He answered: It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live, and this is confirmed even by divine testimony … Midas, after hunting, asked his captive Silenus somewhat urgently, what was the most desirable thing among humankind … At length, when Midas would not stop plaguing him, he erupted with these words, though very unwillingly: ‘you, seed of an evil genius and precarious offspring of hard fortune, whose life is but for a day, why do you compel me to tell you those things of which it is better you should remain ignorant? For he lives with the least worry who knows not his misfortune; but for humans, the best for them is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature’s excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes. This should be our choice, if choice we have; and next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can.’ It is plain therefore, that he declared the condition of the dead to be better than that of the living.

We ordinarily assume that life is a gift. But Silenus, famed for his wisdom and compelled to speak, tells us that it is in fact a burden. The reversal is plausible enough to be transmitted by the likes of Sophocles and Aristotle.

The World as Will

Arthur Schopenhauer, who shared in this ancient ‘wisdom’, held that beneath our world of appearances lies the world of will, a blind process of striving and reproduction that courses through all of nature and carries us with it into a life of endless strife and servitude:

Awakened to life out of the night of unconsciousness, the will finds itself an individual, in an endless and boundless world, among innumerable individuals, all striving, suffering, erring; and as if through a troubled dream it hurries back to its old unconsciousness. Yet till then its desires are limitless, its claims inexhaustible, and every satisfied desire gives rise to a new one. No possible satisfaction in the world could suffice to still its longings, set a goal to its infinite cravings, and fill the bottomless abyss of its heart. Then let one consider what as a rule are the satisfactions of any kind that a man obtains. For the most part nothing more than the bare maintenance of this existence itself, extorted day by day with unceasing trouble and constant care in the conflict with want, and with death in prospect…

The will creates deficiency upon deficiency for us to satisfy, or try to satisfy. Satisfaction, or happiness, is not a positive state but merely a momentary reprieve from this ceaseless striving and suffering. Even if satisfaction can be sustained for a short time, boredom is bound to set in. All considered, it would have been better if we and the world had never existed.

The only lasting liberation is to arrive at the realisation, which is the height of Indian spirituality, that the world of appearances and we within it are but illusions, renounce these illusions, and await the release of death.

For my part, I think that Schopenhauer is being too pessimistic, and too binary. It is possible to relish striving, or, at least, some forms of striving—like striving to make a difference, or striving to become a better person. It is also possible to rise above suffering, to grow from it, to sublime it into something bigger than ourselves. Even if life is more suffering than satisfaction, it can still be worthwhile, and maybe more so than a hypothetical lifetime of continuous satisfaction.

Life is not merely the balance of our suffering and satisfaction, but a journey of turning suffering into satisfaction, which might be called art, and which is the greatest happiness of all.

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The Psychology and Philosophy of Solitude

Jove decadent (1899), by Ramon Casas.
Jove decadent (1899), by Ramon Casas.

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

Solitude and loneliness are not synonyms; if anything, they’re opposites. Whereas there is not much to recommend in loneliness, solitude gives us the freedom to think our own thoughts, follow our own inclinations, and live, if only for a time, entirely at our own pace.

Other people constrain us. They may be too inhibited for us, shrinking from thoughts that we would pursue, or unable to have them; or they may be too boorish, offending our sensitivities with their nasty habits and crude opinions.

Company, like employment, is a trade-off. A job provides income, security, and structure, but at the cost of our best life. Similarly, company provides affection, stimulation, and distraction, but at the cost of sinking our time and potential. For many people, this is a bargain well worth making. But perhaps not you, or you wouldn’t have read this far.

The Metaphysics of Loneliness

We tend to think of lonely people as single people, assimilating people who are lonely with people who are alone, and people who are alone with people who are single. But people who are single are not necessarily alone, and people who are alone are not necessarily lonely. Conversely, it is possible and even common to feel at our loneliest when completely surrounded by partner, family, and friends.

Many people choose to remain single, and some even choose to isolate themselves, or, at least, not to actively seek out social bonds. Such ‘loners’ (the very term is pejorative, implying, as it does, abnormality and deviousness) may revel in their rich inner life or simply dislike or distrust the company of others, which, they feel, comes with more costs than benefits. Many loners are actually very good with people when needs must, or when the right person turns up.

Timon of Athens, who lived at around the same time as Plato, began life in wealth, lavishing money upon his fawning friends, and, in accordance with his notion of friendship, never expecting anything in return. But when he ran out of coin, all his friends deserted him, reducing him to the hard toil of labouring the fields.

One day, as Timon tilled the earth, he uncovered a pot of gold, and, suddenly, all his former friends came tumbling back. But rather than welcome them with open arms, he cursed them and drove them away with sticks and clods of earth. Timon declared his hatred of humankind and withdrew into the forest—where, much to his chagrin, people sought him out as some kind of holy man.

Did Timon feel lonely in the forest? Probably not, because he did not believe that he lacked for anything. As he no longer valued his friends or their company, he could not have desired or missed them—even though he may have pined for a better class of person, and, in that limited sense, felt lonely. Loneliness is not an objective state of affairs so much as a subjective state of mind, a function of desired and achieved levels of social interaction and also of types of interaction. Lovers often feel lonely in the single absence of their beloved, even when completely surrounded by family and friends. Jilted lovers feel much lonelier than lovers who are merely apart from their beloved, indicating that loneliness is not merely a matter of the amount or degree of interaction, but also of the potential or possibility for interaction—as brought home during the coronavirus lockdowns.

Conversely, it is common to feel lonely within a marriage because the relationship is no longer validating or nurturing us, but diminishing us and holding us back. As the writer Anton Chekhov (d. 1904) admonished, ‘If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.’

And yet for many people marriage is, among others, an attempt to flee from their lifelong loneliness and escape from their inescapable demons.

At the bottom, loneliness is not the experience of lacking but the experience of living. It is, in other words, part and parcel of the human condition. Unless a person is resolved, it can only be a matter of time before the feeling of loneliness resurfaces, often with a vengeance.

On this account, loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the absence of meaning from the universe, an absence that is all the more glaring in modern societies which have sacrificed traditional structures of meaning on the thin altar of truth.

So much explains why people with a strong sense of purpose and meaning, or simply with a strong narrative, such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, or St Anthony of the Desert, are protected from loneliness regardless of the circumstances in which they may find themselves.

St Anthony (d. 356 CE), like Thoreau centuries later, sought out aloneness precisely because he understood that it could bring him closer to the real questions and value of life. He spent fifteen years in a tomb and twenty years in an abandoned fort in the desert of Egypt before his devotees persuaded him to withdraw from his seclusion to instruct and organise them, whence his epithet, ‘Father of All Monks’ (‘monk’ and ‘monastery’ derive from the Greek, monos, ‘solitary’, ‘alone’). Anthony emerged from the fort not broken and emaciated, as all had been expecting, but healthy and radiant, and expired in his hundred and sixth year—which in the fourth century might in itself have counted as a minor miracle.

Loneliness vs Solitude

St Anthony did not lead a life of loneliness, but one of solitude. Loneliness, the pain of being alone, is distressing; solitude, the joy of being alone, is freeing and empowering.

Our unconscious requires solitude to process experiences and unravel problems, so much so that our body imposes it upon us each night in the form of sleep. By removing us from the constraints, distractions, and opinions imposed upon us by others, solitude frees us to reconnect with ourself, assimilate ideas, and generate identity and meaning.

For Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900), people without the aptitude or opportunity for solitude are mere slaves because they have no alternative but to parrot culture and society. In contrast, anyone who has unmasked society naturally seeks out solitude, which becomes the source and guarantor of a more authentic set of values and ambitions.

Nietzsche was never one to mince his words:

I go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody’s cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.

Solitude removes us from the mindless humdrum of everyday life into a higher consciousness which reconnects us with our deepest humanity, and also with the natural world, which quickens into our muse and companion. When we think of company, we usually think of people. But animals too are company, as are plants, the sea, wine, and all beautiful things. I call them ‘low intensity company’, and, often, I prefer them.

By loosening the bonds of dependency and the constraints of compromise (and compromise about compromise), we free ourselves up for problem solving, creativity, and spirituality. If we are able and willing to embrace it, this opportunity to refine our perspectives creates the strength and security for still greater solitude and, in time, the substance and meaning that guards against loneliness.

The life of St Anthony can leave the impression that solitude is at odds with attachment, but this need not be the case so long as the one is not pitted against the other. For the poet RM Rilke (d. 1926), the highest task of lovers is not merely to tolerate but ‘stand guard over’ the solitude of the other.

Of his early mentor, the sculptor Auguste Rodin, Rilke wrote: ‘Rodin was solitary before he was famous. And fame, when it arrived, made him perhaps more solitary.’ Other creatives who found inspiration in solitude include Emily Dickinson, Frida Kahlo, Marcel Proust, Nikola Tesla, and Vincent van Gogh.

In Solitude: A Return to the Self (1988), the psychiatrist Anthony Storr persuasively argues that: ‘The happiest lives are probably those in which neither interpersonal relationships nor impersonal interests are idealised as the only way to salvation. The desire and pursuit of the whole must comprehend both aspects of human nature.’

Be this as it may, not everyone is capable of solitude, and for many people aloneness will never amount to anything more than bitter loneliness. Younger people often find aloneness difficult, while older people are more likely, or less unlikely, to seek it out. So much suggests that solitude, the joy of being alone, stems from, as well as promotes, a state of maturity and inner richness.

Profound peace of heart and perfect peace of mind, these highest earthly goods after health, are to be found in solitude alone, and, as a permanent disposition, only in the deepest seclusion. And if our own self is great and rich, we enjoy the happiest state that can be found on this miserable earth. —Arthur Schopenhauer

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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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Gottfried Leibniz and the Problem of Evil

God in the dock with Leibniz as his lawyer
‘It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted.’

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

If God is all-powerful and all-good, why is there so much evil in the world? In the Theodicy, Gottfried Leibniz, philosopher, mathematician, and trained lawyer, took it upon himself to mount God’s defence.

Many people who have heard of Gottfried Leibniz first heard of him through Voltaire’s satirical Candide (1759), in which Leibniz is caricatured as the deluded Dr Pangloss, ‘the greatest philosopher of the Holy Empire’, a parody that is hard to get past. Insofar as Leibniz is remembered, it is for holding, in the words of Voltaire, that ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’.

Unlike his predecessors Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz received a university education in philosophy, even though, in his day, university philosophy amounted to little more than Aristotelian-Christian Scholasticism. In April 1661, at the age of 14, he enrolled at Leipzig University to study liberal arts. Five years later, in 1666, Altdorf University granted him a doctorate in law, along with the offer of a professorship.

However, he declined the professorship, deeming, perhaps, that a university might not be the best place for an original thinker.

Still, Leibniz now had a licence to practise law. Later, in the Theodicy (1710), he would pose as God’s own lawyer—to defend God against the charge of having introduced evil into the world. ‘Theodicy’, a word that he himself coined, derives from the Greek for ‘vindication of God’.

The Problem of Evil

In 1755, nearly 40 years after Leibniz’s death, Lisbon suffered a magnitude 9 earthquake, sparking fires that led to greater devastation than the earthquake itself. Voltaire has Candide crawling through charred ruins, saying to himself, ‘If this is the best of all possible worlds, what can the rest be like?’

This so-called problem, or paradox, of evil has the pedigree of antiquity, having been attributed by Lactantius (d. 325 CE) to Epicurus (d. 270 BCE): God either wishes to take away evils, but cannot; or he can, but does not wish to. In the first instance, he is less than omnipotent; in the second, less than benevolent.

In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), David Hume eloquently restated the problem:

Epicurus’ old questions remain unanswered. Is [God] willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

Leibniz’s Defence

In the Theodicy, Leibniz’s response to the Problem of Evil is that God, having created the best of all possible worlds, that is, the one that is simplest in theories while being richest in phenomena, does not cause evil but permits it for the greater good. Evil results indirectly or accidentally from the absence of good. Because God did not create evil, evil is not a substance and has no proper existence.

What from our limited perspective appears to be evil in fact contributes to the greater goodness of Creation, like shadows in a painting which bring out its colours, or discordant notes in a piece of music which contribute to its richness.

Leibniz distinguishes between three forms of evil:

  • Metaphysical evil, which is the necessary imperfection or limitation in creation—since created things are not God, and if they could be perfect, would merge back into God.
  • Natural evil, which is pain and suffering, and a consequence of metaphysical evil.
  • Moral evil, which arises from the poorly exercised free will of rational minds, and leads to natural evil.

God could have created a world without minds. But although such a world would have been free from moral and natural evil (and, so, much less evil), it would not have been the best of possible worlds.

Our Role in All This

What’s more, the world, in man, carries within itself the potential for its own optimisation. We can work, first, to improve ourselves, and then, to improve the world and reduce suffering. If asked, what is the meaning of life, Leibniz would reply, ‘To perfect God’s creation!’

Schopenhauer, that paradigm of a pessimist, riffing upon Leibniz, would remark that ours is the worst of all possible worlds.

And if it were any worse, it wouldn’t exist at all—a hypothesis that humanity seems keen to test.

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To explore Leibniz’s ideas in their historical context—and discover how they influenced Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche—see my book, The German Greeks.

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Schopenhauer on Nationalism, Politics, and Rising Above the Times

Schopenhauer at the window with his opera glasses
Schopenhauer preferred to observe the torrent of history from a safe distance.

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

Essay substantially revised on 16 August 2026.

Although he thought of existence as a sorry mistake, the philosopher of pessimism Arthur Schopenhauer retained a strong ‘will to life’. One of his reasons for settling in Frankfurt was the reputation of that city’s doctors.

In Frankfurt, he took many precautions, bordering on the paranoid, to preserve his life and comfortable lifestyle. For example, he kept loaded pistols at his bedside, carried a leathern flask to avoid drinking infected water, and forbade barbers from shaving his neck. To prevent robbers, servants, and others from reading them, he wrote his business records and personal thoughts in English, Latin, or Greek, or in a shorthand code.

In the final year of his life, he moved to a ground-floor apartment not because he could no longer manage the stairs but from fear of being caught in a house fire. ‘A man of genius,’ he wrote in typical style, ‘is like a person who lives in a house where there are no other people but only dogs and cats; he is the only one who has any intelligence, but he is constantly in danger of being bitten or scratched.’

The 1848 Riots

In September 1848, there were violent riots in Frankfurt following the murder of two conservative politicians, a prince and a general.

Schopenhauer, who was then sixty years old, became worried about his safety and property. He welcomed the arrival of Austrian troops, and even allowed some twenty soldiers into his elegant apartment to shoot at revolutionaries from the window. In a parody of his social class, when the soldiers moved next door for a better vantage point, he lent one of the officers his large, double opera glasses.

Shaken by these events, he altered his will to leave the bulk of his estate to a fund for Prussian soldiers who had been maimed while quashing the 1848 revolutions—a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions across the German Confederation aimed at establishing a unified nation state, constitutional governance, and civil rights.

Really, Schopenhauer just wanted to be left alone, to enjoy his afternoon meanderings and deploy his opera glasses for the purpose that God had intended. He would rather have stood outside the torrent of politics and history. So when they rudely arrived at his door, he naturally sided with the forces of order.

Is Nationalism the Cheapest Form of Pride?

Schopenhauer had no truck with either nationalism or rabble utopias. National pride, he held, is the cheapest form of pride, because it requires no individual effort or character. In Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), he wrote:

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resort pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

The insult conceals an interesting argument. Pride in something that I myself have achieved—mastering an instrument, raising a family, growing a garden—is at least pride in something to which I have contributed. But what exactly have I done to deserve credit for Shakespeare, Goethe, or the US military? National pride enables us to appropriate the achievements of others simply because we happen to have been born into the same nation or culture. For Schopenhauer, the less a person has to be proud of individually, the more tempting this borrowed pride becomes. The nation supplies the power or the greatness that the individual cannot find in himself.

As for the Germans, Schopenhauer wrote in The World as Will and Representation that they benefited from having such long words in their mouths, because they ‘think slowly’ and need ‘time to reflect’. When the Nazis co-opted him to their cause, they disregarded this passage and others like it. But in his private papers, Schopenhauer went even further: ‘I hereby declare, in the event of my death, that I despise the German nation for its excessive stupidity and am ashamed to belong to it.’ In fact, Schopenhauer was an Anglophile who wrote a lot more like the limpid Hume than the convoluted Kant. For this reason, ironically, he is regarded as one of the greatest German prose stylists.

Rising Into Timelessness

While the Young Hegelians (most famously, Karl Marx) were agitating for political and social reform, Schopenhauer claimed that misery is the natural, inevitable state for human beings, regardless of external conditions, and would not be alleviated by ‘progress’. He made a point of stepping outside the torrent of history and ‘minding not the times but the eternities’—and considered this ability to ‘rise into timelessness’ to be the true mark of a genius.

This is the larger idea behind his disdain for nationalism. Nationalism roots us all the more firmly in a particular place and time; Schopenhauer wanted to do the opposite and escape all contingency. To rise into timelessness is to stand outside the assumptions, passions, and controversies of one’s own age and try to see what remains when they have passed away. It is one reason I often retreat into antiquity—for perspective over my own times, and all times. For instance, if the ancients did not have a concept of one of our modern mental disorders, that tells me something about it—something which many other people don’t see.

Whereas for Hegel, the state was the aim of human existence, for Schopenhauer it was simply its guarantor. The role of the state, in his Hobbesian view, was strictly to limit ‘the war of all against all’ and afford him the conditions to philosophise and enjoy the arts without having to lend his opera glasses.

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

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