Turns Out, Hakuna Matata Really is a Problem Free Philosophy
The Lion King shows how an Epicurean lifestyle upholds Kant’s categorical imperative
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I worry a great deal about my children’s future. Every day I am confronted by news of school shootings, rising teen suicide rates, and epidemic youth opioid addiction.
Those are minor worries, however, compared to the runaway train of climate collapse, which seems inevitable given the wholesale cultural changes needed to avoid disaster.
On top of all that, there is a veritable army of violently racist, misogynistic, ultra-rightwing internet trolls on 4chan and similar forums that see my two young boys as targets for recruitment and radicalization.
And lest we forget, my kids— and yours — need to clear the always titanic hurdles of education and socialization amid these ever-intensifying existential threats.
Clearly, we’ve all got a lot to worry about.
‘The Lion King’ helps me relax
Ever since its 1994 release, The Lion King has been for me a staple comfort movie. It’s breezy storytelling, pithy dialogue, and snappy musical numbers are better than a shot of Gentleman Jack for stress-relief.
Well, maybe not better.
Still, it’s a pretty good relaxation tool, and one notable reason why is the song “Hakuna Matata.” It invites sing-along and it's easy to cast your cares aside as Simba and company wallow in worry-free philosophy.
So, even though I’m now 46-years-old, I still cue it up on occasion when I’m feeling overtaxed. And believe me, with two young boys to raise and the minefield of troubles listed above to negotiate, I feel overtaxed a lot.
I love ‘The Lion King,’ but I still want to dissect it
If “Hakuna Matata” encapsulates some principal for moral living or makes claims about the way things “really are” — in short, if it is indeed a philosophy — then it warrants our scrutiny.
That’s because any new moral claim or observation about reality entails the possibility that we’ve all been overlooking a valuable idea or truth. So, even though The Lion King is admittedly something of a frivolous lark, maybe it nevertheless holds pearls of previously uncountenanced wisdom.
Thus, we would do well to ask: is it possible that “Hakuna Matata” — as outlined in The Lion King — points toward an improved moral outlook or relation to reality?
How ‘Hakuna Matata’ works in ‘The Lion King’
As we all know, in The Lion King, runaway lion Simba is befriended by a meerkat and a warthog — Timone and Pumbaa.
Simba is wrestling with guilt and shame, but his new friends caution him against anxiety and fretfulness, advising him instead to accept “no worries”— a mantra captured by the Swahili phrase “hakuna matata.”
Fortunately for Simba, his philosopher mentors don’t just deal in abstractions — they provide practical advice on how to live “problem-free.”
Notably, Timone and Pumbaa are world citizens in the sense that they roam freely without regard to national borders — such as those that demarcate The Pride Lands.
They also forage for provisions instead of mass producing and indulging every appetite. So, Timone and Pumbaa don’t just cast aside moral guilt and social mores, they also refuse to worry about material accumulation and “creature comforts (pun intended).”
Furthermore, they find Simba’s religious sentiments comically silly — Timone mocks Simba’s suggestion that Mufasa lives among the stars as pure spirit with the quip “A bunch of royal dead guys are watching us?”
Additionally, the glue that binds the trio to a “no worries” way of life is friendship — the three partners live mainly for the good company they find in one another.
Simba quickly assimilates to “Hakuna Matata,” leaving his “past behind him” and withdrawing from political life as King of The Pride Lands. For a time, he seems “problem-free,” indeed.
Did Timone and Pumba study Epicurus?
In Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus claims that bodily health and tranquility of mind are the “sum and end of a blessed life.”
By tranquility, Epicurus specifically means freedom from fear regarding death and the gods, and liberation from pain, both mentally and physically. “Pleasure” he names the greatest good and the arbiter of moral deliberation.
Pleasure for Epicurus, however, is not characterized by hedonistic gratification:
It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul.
Though “sober reasoning” is a stretch at best for Timone and Pumbaa, “no worries” and “tranquility of mind” are easy synonyms.
Furthermore, “banishing” troubling beliefs is just what the doctor ordered from the point of view of “Hakuna Matata.”
Simba, for example, is deeply troubled by his religious beliefs about the succession of Kings watching over him.
Timone and Pumbaa — like Epicurus — recommend divorce from such spiritual torments by way of a thoroughgoing materialism.
There are no “royal dead guys” in the stars for Simba’s mentors: Timone speculates that the stars are fireflies, while Pumbaa posits a distant “burning ball of gas” hypothesis. Clearly, like Epicurus, they’re both materialists through and through.
What’s more, Epicurus shuns a “luxurious table,” just as Timone and Pumbaa prefer an easily acquired meal of grubs to the delicate tastes of their apprentice philosopher.
And Epicurus would have certainly approved Simba’s renunciation of the Pride Lands’ throne, because he saw politics as anathema to tranquility.
For Epicurus, happiness comes by following a few simple maxims, known as the four-fold cure (tetrapharmakos):
“Do not fear god,
Do not worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure.”
(Philodemus, Herculaneum Papyrus, 1005, 4.9–14)
Based on the parallels we’ve already drawn, it’s plain to see how closely Timone and Pumbaa’s problem-free philosophy — “Hakuna Matata” — resembles the four-fold cure of Epicurus.
‘Hakuna Matata’ might lead to tranquility, but is it the right thing to do?
If you ask Nala — Simba’s childhood friend and love interest — then “Hakuna Matata” is, contrary to the claims of Timone and Pumbaa, positively teeming with problems.
Nala informs Simba that after he fled The Pride Lands, usurper King Scar let the hyena’s “take over.” Consequently, the lions’ homeland is utterly ruined and neither they nor their primarily herbivore subjects have anything to eat or drink.
Nala accuses Simba of shirking his responsibilities and implies that “Hakuna Matata” is an immature and selfish way of life.
So, from Nala’s point of view, while Simba has been enjoying “no worries” tranquility as a convert to “Hakuna Matata,” his lion kin and the kingdom they rule have been suffering.
Thus, according to The Lion King, in a world beset by political strife and scarce resources, any “problem-free” philosophy betrays the comfortable privilege of its adherents.
Following Nala’s intervention, Simba returns to the religion of his youth and The Pride Lands, too, where he defeats Scar, puts out the hyenas, and restores the old order.
Predictably, Simba’s victory over the hyenas renews The Pride Land’s flora, water, and food chain. Finally, Nala bears Simba an heir, and even Timone and Pumbaa join the “Circle of Life” state religion of the lions.
Thus, autocratic nationalism and the demonization of immigrants — especially those with dark complexions and “unorthodox” English (the hyenas)— carry the day in The Lion King.
A Kantian analysis of ‘The Circle of Life’
Early in the film, Simba’s father, Mufasa, explains that antelope eat grass, lions eat antelope, and then, when the lions die, they become the grass that the antelope eat.
That’s the “Circle of Life” romanticized in The Lion King, but no one ever asks the antelope how they feel about it.
Immanuel Kant’s practical imperative is instructive here: it dictates that we always treat other people as “ends in themselves” and never as means only.
“Circle of life” mysticism transgresses that directive because the lions clearly use the antelope to satisfy their own appetites.
The lions also spread fear and loathing about the hyenas to cajole the herbivores into a protection racket, even though the lions are themselves apex predators who eat the animals they claim to protect.
Frankly, Disney shouldn’t have produced The Lion King — it’s a story better suited to the talents of Goodfellas impresario Martin Scorsese.
But I digress. The hyenas are a means to power for the lions and nothing more— they are not “ends in themselves” as Kant’s practical imperative demands.
Notably, none of the lions’ animal vassals ever wonders aloud if The Pride Lands might flourish if the hyenas stayed and the lions left. To the royal subjects/banquet menu of the territory, life would likely be little different either way.
So, it’s plausible that the lions’ rule is no better for the kingdom than that of the hyenas. Ultimately, the problem is that the two groups together over-consume and thereby deplete The Pride Lands’ resources.
That consequence also invokes Kant. In The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant outlines a moral “categorical imperative” that he claims is universally binding on everyone:
“Always act so that you may also wish that the maxim of your action become a universal law.”
In The Lion King, the lions live well when only they consume at unsustainable rates. While the lions prosper, the hyenas live on subsistence provisions and are kept outside the boundaries of The Pride Lands, starving to compensate environmentally for the lions’ largesse.
When everyone — lion and hyena alike — indulges in runaway consumption, however, The Pride Lands quickly collapse.
Thus, mass consumption in The Lion King fails the test of Kant’s categorical imperative because when it becomes a universal law — when everyone does it — it leads to the brink of total extinction.
Thus, when Simba adheres to Mufasa’s “Circle of Life” doctrine, he breaches a fundamental moral constraint— namely, if everyone can’t do likewise without precipitating universal annihilation, then Simba shouldn’t follow “Circle of Life” mysticism, even if he happens to do so alone.
If it’s not good for everyone then it isn’t good for anyone — at least according to Kant’s categorical imperative.
Here is the first takeaway from The Lion King that we can apply to the American way of life. As climate collapse encroaches, it becomes more obvious by the day that if everyone on earth lived like we do, global ecosystem failure would quickly follow.
So, it’s reasonable to ask, if everyone can’t consume like Americans without precipitating planetary environmental apocalypse, then what moral defense for our way of life can we possibly offer?
Although celebrated by The Lion King, the “Circle of Life” — a doctrine that exalts totalitarianism, nationalism, wasteful plentitude for a few, racial demonization, and class discrimination — clearly contravenes Kant’s practical and categorical imperatives in equal measure.
Given that Kant’s imperatives inform so much of our everyday moral deliberation, perhaps, if we care at all about doing the right thing — or just surviving as a species — we should consider alternatives to the aspects of American life that resemble Simba’s violations of Kant in The Lion King.
A Kantian analysis of ‘Hakuna Matata’ and Epicureanism
As I mentioned earlier, “Hakuna Matata” in The Lion King is shorthand for the four-fold cure for tranquility prescribed by Epicurus. But how does it fare against Kant’s imperatives?
Nala’s criticisms are highly compelling. Only Simba can effectively deal with the social upheaval and environmental disaster in The Pride Lands, and in that light, his stubborn devotion to “Hakuna Matata” comes across as childish and narcissistic.
But what if Nala, the lions, and the hyenas, instead of waging factional war in The Pride Lands and consuming every resource in sight, lived like Simba, Timone, and Pumbaa?
While following the “Hakuna Matata” way, Simba and his two friends — like Epicurus — assume that what is good is easy to get.
They forage for provisions instead of preparing luxurious tables for gluttonous consumption— a sustainable way of life that would never threaten environmental disaster if everyone did the same.
For that reason, both Epicureanism and “Hakuna Matata” pass the test of Kant’s categorical imperative as it pertains to consumption.
The “Hakuna Matata” three also refuse to allow anxiety about the gods — Mufasa and the lineage of lion Kings — to dictate their actions. Simba and company therefore do not share the totalitarian, nationalist, racist, classist, consumerist ethos of the “Circle of Life.”
Surely, if all the lions dropped those biases, then “lion-kind” would only stand to increase its collective tranquility. So, here again, Epicureanism as sketched in The Lion King meets Kant’s moral standard of “universal law.”
Furthermore, team Simba is nomadic and borderless, claiming only whatever space they need for the moment. They do not seek to keep others “out” or to deny their passing neighbors access to resources.
Neither do they join political causes or worry at all about how others choose to live or identify. For that reason alone, Epicurus would be proud of the “Hakuna Matata” cohort.
It’s also easy to imagine the peace that would prevail on the savannah if the lions and hyenas stopped vilifying each other and jointly abdicated power in favor of “Hakuna Matata.”
And therein lies a second takeaway that has implications for the American way of life. Like Mufasa prides himself on his power to subjugate the hyenas, Americans tend to equate national greatness with military might.
If Americans emulated Timone and Pumbaa, however, we would find much more to celebrate in friendship than in conquest. In The Lion King, “Hakuna Matata” is an insistence on “peace through friendship,” a diplomatic credo that subverts the common American refrain “peace through strength.”
Here again, our favorite “problem-free philosophy” echoes Epicurus, who claimed that “in our limited conditions of life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship.”
Obviously, if every nation on earth prized international friendship over national power, the world would be a far safer place, indeed. So, once more, The Lion King’s Epicurean tracings meet the moral criterion of Kant’s categorical imperative.
By keeping to Kant’s imperatives we thus arrive at a surprising conclusion: even though Nala is correct that The Pride Lands are suffering without Simba, morality dictates that he nevertheless keep to the Epicurean standards of “Hakuna Matata.”
That way, he’ll never treat others (hyenas and antelope) as “means only” or do anything that would guarantee universal ruin if everyone else did the same.
Applying that lesson to the US, we might say that regardless of the national consequences, America has a moral duty to prioritize international friendship over military might, sustainable consumption over luxurious tables, and hospitality to outsiders instead of border paranoia.
That way, America won’t treat other nations and people as “means only” or consume at a rate that would spell quick extinction for our species if every other nation did likewise.
So, in answer to our thesis question, because Epicurean “Hakuna Matata” treats others as “ends in themselves” and is sustainable as a universal law, it offers both a valuable moral renovation and an improved relation to reality when compared to the uglier hallmarks of the American way — rampant consumerism, nationalist xenophobia, racism, and classism.
Kant and Epicurus aren’t a perfect fit
Epicurus was a moral consequentialist, meaning he judged the moral worth of a lifestyle on the basis of its outcome. To Epicurus, adopting habits that maximize tranquility was the object of morality.
Kant, by contrast, saw morality as duty, meaning the right thing to do is the right thing to do regardless of its consequences (I should note, though, that consequentialism is surprisingly difficult to shed — it actually underpins a great deal of Kant’s duty-based ethics). To Kant, therefore, doing the right thing might well make tranquility impossible.
And Kant expressly parts with Epicurus by judging the exclusive pursuit of pleasure morally bankrupt.
Furthermore, Kant argued that without widespread dedication to personal improvement — individual talent cultivation, as Kant put it — and its attendant stresses, a civilization that affords great tranquility or pleasure is not possible.
So, despite what I’ve said on the subject so far, Kant would have certainly frowned on “Hakuna Matata.”
That’s because Kant assumed that cultivating one’s talents is an unequivocal good. A moment’s thought is all that’s required, however, to see that Kant had a serious blind spot when it comes to talent.
In The Lion King, for example, Scar has talents for duplicity, political intrigue, and murder, and he cultivates those talents just as far as he’s able.
Obviously, though, murder involves treating someone as a “means only” and therefore violates Kant’s practical imperative. Nor would humanity survive a day if murder became the universal moral law.
So, even though Kant invokes the categorical imperative in the name of personal development, it’s easy to imagine many human “talents” that would be better left unsharpened.
Extrapolating to the furthest extreme, one could argue that the Enlightenment was a cultural project aimed at getting the most out of everyone’s talents.
Contrary to Kant’s expectations, however, that impulse toward continual improvement has led — through global industrialization and capitalist economic growth fetish — to worldwide chemical contamination, mass overconsumption, global ocean acidification, and the threshold of climate collapse.
So, we have clear evidence that talent cultivation as a universal law violates Kant’s categorical imperative. That bodes well for “Hakuna Matata,” or, if you prefer, Epicureanism-lite as dramatized in The Lion King.
Speculative Kant may have abhorred “Hakuna Matata,” but observant Kantians can nevertheless measure the value of Epicurean simplicity by the verifiable climate crisis born in the Enlightenment.
‘The Lion King’ gets too much wrong
I’ve mentioned throughout this article how the “Circle of Life” religion celebrated in The Lion King underwrites a host of sociopathic prejudices — totalitarianism, nationalism, racism, and xenophobia top the list.
Much has been written on those observations already, and if you’re interested in learning more, you can start here.
I should also mention that in 2003 Disney copyrighted the Swahili phrase “hakuna matata” in one of the most blatant cases of legally sanctioned cultural appropriation ever witnessed.
That patent is still active, so all “hakuna matata” merchandising profits belong to Disney instead of native Swahili speakers from eastern Africa. It seems that nothing involving Disney is anything close to problem free, no matter how thick the veneer of innocence spreads on its films.
Full disclosure: despite Disney’s innumerable sins and The Lion King’s subtle endorsement of the American philosophical underbelly, somehow, I still find it a comforting watch. I’m not sure how that can be so, but it is. I wonder though, if writing this article spells the end of that difficult truth.
Regardless of where I go from here with The Lion King, it’s plain to me now that Disney picked the wrong philosophy to back. Again, the “Circle of Life” — the moral victor in The Lion King — enshrines America’s worst cultural tendencies.
Epicurean “Hakuna Matata,” however, assumes that what is good is easy to get, reminds us to live sustainably, exhorts us to worry not about the gods, and makes friendship the key to maximum tranquility.
That’s not to say that Epicurean “Hakuna Matata” is beyond reproach — like any doctrine, all that’s needed to plausibly discredit “problem-free philosophy” is a clever mind willing to do so.
Still, “Hakuna Matata” provides a durable and attractive alternative to America’s worst ideological tendencies. It therefore serves as an important critique to our way of life that can help raise our awareness about a number of ubiquitous cultural habits that we desperately need to break.
More from Dustin T. Cox in Plato’s Gymnasium:
