A Cup of Coffee

Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht! (Be still, stop chattering!), is a secular cantata composed by Bach between 1732 and 1734. It is also known as The Coffee Cantata. You will sometimes see it performed today in the style of a miniature comic opera.

The story revolves around a father and his daughter. The father, Schlendrian (which literally means Stick in the Mud), urges his daughter Lieschen to give up coffee. The daughter refuses and sings lovingly of her coffee. Next, the father starts issuing ultimatums, but none of these work until he threatens to withhold marriage. While the father is out looking for a husband, the daughter secretly tells potential suitors that she insists upon having her coffee, as a condition for marriage. In the end, the father comes around, and all proclaim that coffee drinking is natural to humans just as catching mice is natural to cats.

What determines whether a habit is good or bad? Well, we humans are all creatures of habit, and what ultimately determines whether one's collection of habits is good or bad is the degree to which those habits, together, promote the individual's well being. Now, for humans, being well is not as simple as just being physically healthy. A single term that captures the full meaning of "being well" in this context is the classical Greek word eudaimonia, which is best translated as "human flourishing." Aristotle discusses at length the concept of eudaimonia in his Nicomachean Ethics.

But, how can one flourish as a human if life is meaningless? To this I say: I highly doubt that anyone's life is meaningless, for it seems that each person has either openly or secretly identified, either consciously or unconsciously, a God that rules over his or her life. Thus, achieving human flourishing depends upon one's submission to the will of his or her God. It is this submission that allows one to deem habits either good or bad for oneself.

As for me, I have gone on and off coffee at various times in my life. Fortunately, for those times when I felt I would be better off not drinking it, it has proven to be not as difficult to quit as Lieschen would lead you to believe. This, together with its other virtues, makes coffee a wonderful drink, indeed.