It’s Good to Fail

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There is a somewhat dubious tale from the ancient world that claims that after his death, Plato was found to be in possession of a rough draft of the Republic in which he had written the opening lines dozens of times, rearranging the first few words again and again in every possible combination. Often used to illustrate the fastidious nature of genius, the story, however, fails to reckon with Plato’s failure. For, while it is true that he went on to have an outsized influence on Western philosophy, to say nothing of civilization more broadly, it is equally true that Plato first aspired to be a poet (he is said to have burned all his compositions in dejection) and a statesman (he failed so spectacularly that he was sold into slavery and nearly put to death) before finding his vocation in the life of the mind.

History, of course, is replete with anecdotes of highly accomplished persons being chastened by unsuccess. We are wont to recount stories of Joyce receiving dozens of rejection letters before finding a publisher for Ulysses and Einstein flunking out of high school math. We find it inspirational to learn that Beatrix Potter had to use her own money to publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit and that Jane Eyre was dismissed by an early critic as “sheer rudeness and vulgarity.” We marvel at the perseverance of Nietzsche, whose masterpiece Beyond Good and Evil sold a measly 114 copies in its first year in print, and the perspicacity of George Sand who had to adopt a man’s name as her pseudonym to see her work published in a resolutely male literary culture.

Yet we tend to interpret such setbacks not on their own terms, as they were experienced by those who suffered them, but in light of their author’s future acclaim. That is, we see them as setbacks and not failures, detours on the road to success and not the annihilation of the road itself. These are tales told to inspire resilience, not humility; determination, not an awareness of one’s fallibility.

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That we insist upon taking stories of loss and turning them into stories of gain is no doubt rooted in our preference for happy endings. Something in us needs to believe that any fate can be surmounted as long as one is strong enough to surmount it. And in the face of a chaotic and often crushing existence, such notions are not negotiable. They are necessities that must be treated as true if one is going to accomplish the Herculean feat of getting out of bed and facing the new day.

The only problem is that nothing could be further from the truth. Human existence, as we all know at some level, is rife with suffering that resists explanation and obstacles that cannot be overcome. To be human means to be continuously confronted with failure, both one’s own and the myriad failures of the world around us. What then is one to do? How ought we to cope with the struggles and shortcomings inherent in every aspect of our lives?

In his recent book, In Praise of Failure, the contemporary philosopher Costică Brădățan suggests that we stop striving for success and instead embrace life’s failures. Noting that failure “lies at the core of who we are” and that “Failing is essential to what we are as human beings,” Brădățan extolls the benefits of coming to terms with our imperfections and accepting the frailty and precarity of human existence. Doing so, he claims, will humble us and enable us to see ourselves honestly, stripped of the veneer that success seems to provide.

Borrowing a line of thinking from Boethius—whom Dante once praised as “the holy soul who makes quite plain the world’s deceit to those who listen”—Brădățan asserts that bad fortune is better than good, failure more beneficial than success. For Boethius, “Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens.” Similarly, Brădățan insists that “failure defines us, while success is auxiliary and fleeting and does not reveal much.”

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Both thinkers recognize the danger posed by hubris. Both see egocentrism as a greater weakness than weakness itself. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Galatians, famously warned that “if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he is deluding himself.” Humility, he suggests, is an honest assessment of one’s limitations, an acknowledgment of one’s need for and dependence upon others. Our fixation with success, on the other hand, distracts us from these essential elements of our being. It convinces us that we are—and must be—independent and self-sufficient. It teaches us to shun the help of others and refuse to accept our vulnerability.

Is there any doubt what the outcome of such denials will be? Is it any wonder that in those moments when we are most desirous of success, we are least happy, least content to be ourselves? It is here that philosophers such as Brădățan offer us a better way. Reminding us of our many failures, insisting that we take ownership of the things that don’t go according to plan, they encourage us to embrace life honestly, in its entirety, with all of the hardships and messiness and disappointments contained therein. Doing so, they suggest, will help us to live not only more truthfully but also more fully, allowing us to authentically become who and what we already are.