Chapter 22
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How to deal with the stress caused by the disappearance, past or future, of loved ones, possibly starting with oneself? |
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How to get out of mutually destructive natural attitudes, mainly generalized nepotism as described in the documentary Caribbean Primates? Refer to Chapter 3 for a presentation of this documentary. |
Conversely, we exclude rhetoric from philosophy, that is, the art of speech, because even though it has been taught in many philosophy schools, it remains an instrument of power acquisition, which is often contrary to the second objective of philosophy we have just explained. The success of rhetoric corresponds to the fact that it is often what people came looking for in philosophy schools.
Another way to approach things, more scientific but also philosophical, is to start with the question 'What is man?' in the sense of: what have we inherited from evolution as an animal species; and once we have thus understood what is instinctive in each of us, what culture should be added, that is, what should be artificially added by social conditioning, to obtain the most harmonious result possible? By harmonious, one should understand the minimum level of stress in individuals. This clearly orients us towards the report Caribbean Primates seen in Chapter 2, as a starting point for philosophical reflection. This report also shows us that stress mainly comes from generalized nepotism, which justifies the adoption of the question 'How to get out of mutually destructive attitudes?' as a central point of philosophical reflection.
In his attempt to popularize major philosophical theories, Luc Ferry breaks down each philosophy school into three elements: a worldview, a morality, and finally life advice.
What we are going to try to show here is, on one hand, what modern science is, which will lead us to explain some basics of logic and the functioning of sciences, that is, to do a bit of epistemology. On the other hand, the worldview derived from modern science is the only one it is still reasonable to adopt in the 21st century, which will lead us to link it to other parts of this book.
To start with and provide concrete references for those who have difficulty following the developments concerning logic, what we mean by modern science is the sciences or parts of the sciences that correspond to the strict application of the scientific method, that is, mathematics, physics, biology, a part of medicine, and a part of sociology. Other human sciences such as history or economics clearly do not belong to this category; we will now see why.
A scientific discourse is any statement that takes the form 'If A then B' in which A defines a set of conditions such that a person who reads this statement can satisfy the set of conditions described in A, reproduce the experiment, and observe B for themselves. Generally, A takes the form 'A₁ and A₂ and A₃, etc.' This same scientific proposition collapses when a person formulates a counterexample, that is, a proposition of the type 'If A and C then not B', and other people verify this second proposition. Put more simply, the initial proposition collapses when someone shows that the conditions set were not precise enough to guarantee the result.
For centuries, the universally accepted and only used logic has been that exposed by Aristotle in theOrganon. It was an integral part of any classical philosophical education. This logic is based on the notion of properties - for example, being an animal - and favors reasoning in three steps, called syllogisms. However, this logic is limited: it cannot grasp arithmetic properties, for example, being twelve. At the end of the 19th century, Gottlob Frege, to overcome this difficulty, defined a new formalism that lays the foundations for modern logic: the predicate calculus, also known as first-order logic. This formalism has many advantages, in particular the fact that any mathematical reasoning - whether logical, arithmetic, analytic, or even geometric - can be expressed using this formalism, and can even be verified by a machine.
However, at the very moment when the formalism of logic finally becomes complete and rigorous, philosophers turn away from it. Thus, while the Philosophy Manual by Louis Bordet from 1932 was still made up for half of a part 'Logic' dealing with epistemology, the current philosophy curriculum no longer deals with logic. This one has not been reintegrated into mathematics at the high school level, so it is simply no longer widely taught. Knowing that it remains the basis of science, that understanding the mechanics of logic and practicing its use are the basis for being able to produce or verify a scientific discourse (1), to stop teaching it seems at least questionable, especially when at the same time we deplore the proliferation of alternative truths following the emergence of new media that are social networks.
Developing critical thinking is good, provided one starts from the basics, and the basics remain logic, otherwise one quickly confuses scientific discourse and rhetorical discourse. By doing so, one shifts from science to anti-science, which we will discuss a bit more later, with as a consequence, as we will see, an increase in social violence.
A course on predicate calculus goes beyond the scope of this book. I will simply take a non-trivial example to illustrate the scientific method:
'The Earth is round'
Is this a scientific proposition? At first glance, it does not seem obvious, because this proposition does not have the form 'If A then B'. Actually, it does. What is particular to this example is that A is empty. Put differently, this sentence should be read in the form 'If no particular condition then the Earth is round'.
At this stage, one might argue that it is not a demonstration. Indeed, a scientific proposition is not a demonstration, just an assertion that nobody can refute. A demonstration is a surplus that only exists in mathematics and allows to show in advance that nobody will ever be able to refute this proposition. A proven proposition is called a theorem, and an unproven proposition is called a conjecture. Each science establishes its own rules to determine among the propositions those it deems interesting (2). This is the specific social organization of each science. A science that easily retains propositions would be overwhelmed by dispersion, and a science that sets too strong constraints would miss interesting propositions it needs to advance. The selection rules that each science gives itself evolve as the science develops. In mathematics, the proposition must be proven (theorem), or important and unsuccessful invalidation work must have been carried out (conjecture) for a proposition to be retained. In astronomy, it must not only explain phenomena that are difficult to explain without this proposition but also, preferably, predict something that will be verified by measurement later. In general, a simple proposition, which is therefore only plausible, will not be retained, unless there are additional indicators suggesting it is true. It is at this level that modern science has differentiated itself from science included in Greek philosophy, in which being plausible was considered sufficient. Moreover, in general, only the simplest and especially the most general propositions are retained. One last point to understand the justification for this limit that each science gives itself by filtering the propositions retained: one of the most impressive results of predicate calculus, Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, is precisely to prove that there are propositions that one cannot prove, so if mathematics retained a large number of unproven propositions, we might end up with an arithmetical explosion of propositions of the type 'If A then it is possible that B', which would ultimately only limit the practical interest of the field.
Let us now see what happens if someone claims:
'The Earth is flat'
In this case, we can knock down the claim with the following counter-proposition:
'If I go to the International Space Station and look out the porthole, then I observe that the Earth is not flat'
Here, C is:
'I go to the International Space Station and I look out the porthole'.
Let us continue a bit to better understand what science is.
Our initial assertion that the Earth is round can also be partially invalidated:
'If I measure the equator, I get 40074 km with a margin of error of plus or minus 1 km, and if I measure a meridian and its opposite, I get 40008 km with a margin of error of plus or minus 1 km, therefore the Earth is not round.'
In fact, our initial proposition was too approximate, and should have been formulated as:
'The Earth is a sphere with a circumference of 40000 km with a measurement error of less than 1% and a deformation of less than 1%.'
Which leads us to understand that the evolution of modern science is rarely a complete invalidation of a scientific proposition, but much more frequently a need to complete the experimental conditions or to specify the limits of the conclusion. The most famous illustration of this is quantum mechanics which did not invalidate Newtonian mechanics, but simply required specifying its field of application and its accuracy.
Let's now consider the proposition:
'God exists'
In the same way as before, we can present it in scientific form as 'If no particular condition, then God exists'. Here is what is problematic from the point of view of science, and where Pascal made a methodological mistake by presenting a 'demonstration,' it is that the issue of such a statement is not so much to determine if it is true or false, but to define what God is. God is not something that can be observed directly, exactly as gravity can be. From the point of view of science, one must therefore deduce his existence from predictable effects. Indeed, if God is not directly perceivable and has no perceivable effects, then he is unrelated to the real world as understood by science since there exists no scientific proposition in which A would imply the existence of God, and B would imply something verifiable that is true only if A is true. In the end, the sentence 'God exists' is merely asserting that something undefined exists, and hence it is not a valid scientific proposition. In summary, this second example simply shows that contrary to everyday discourse, science requires that we define precisely everything we are talking about. A phrase such as 'The sky is blue' seems perfectly clear to us, until we ask ourselves 'What is the sky?' and 'What is the color blue?'
Let's now explain why the scientific view of the world is the only one it is reasonable to adopt in the 21st century.
We indicated in the introduction that one of the two subjects of philosophy is to enable us to move beyond mutually destructive natural attitudes. However, if we reduce beliefs to what science has established, then different beliefs do not oppose each other, and individuals have no reason to clash in order to resolve belief disputes. Conversely, as soon as the worldview includes dogmatic beliefs, an individual's or group's beliefs can be in contradiction with another's, and in this case, the dominant group will be tempted to impose its beliefs on everyone, simply to reduce its own level of cognitive dissonance. As we saw in chapter 2, this generally leads to a 'us against them' kind of conflict.
Let's now see what the opposite of science is. Naively, one might think it is the assertion of false, doctrinal things, such as 'The Earth is flat.' However, this would show that we have confused science and truth a little. Let's go over it again. Science is a method that seeks to formulate strong 'If A then B' propositions, that is, propositions that we cannot disprove. In order not to take anti-scientific people as fools when they might not be, let's rather define anti-science as the act of formulating 'If A then B' propositions in which the goal, the ultimate value of selecting interesting propositions, is no longer that the proposition cannot be refuted, but that the proposition is plausible and, above all, that the effect B is socially valued.
Take, for example, the assertion 'In order to succeed, you have to work on your network.' One can formulate it as 'If you work on your network, then you will succeed.' From the point of view of pure logic, the second proposition is not equivalent to the first. The correct equivalent in pure logic would be the contrapositive: 'If you do not work on your network, then you will not succeed.' But in anti-science, we don't care! What gives the anti-scientific value of the proposition 'If you work on your network, then you will succeed' is the fact that succeeding is perceived as something important.
To put it differently, science selects propositions that are unfalsifiable, whereas anti-science selects propositions that are simply plausible and have the most interesting consequences.
We now arrive at an interesting claim in this section: in our reasoning, our communication with others, and in the media, anti-science is ultra-dominant.
The two main anti-scientific theories currently thriving at the beginning of the 21st century are coaching, with propositions of the form 'If..., then you will succeed more,' and personal development, with propositions of the form 'If..., then you will be happier.'
The problem with anti-science is that the promise is often not fulfilled. That would not be so bad if we were purely rational beings whose conclusion would be: I allowed myself to confuse my desires for realities, it did not work, I received a good lesson, and next time I will be less naive toward gurus. But here is the thing, our nature is much more about cognitive dissonance. Therefore, instead of denouncing the original proposition, which would require us to question our past decision, and therefore our judgment ability, we prefer to find an external, added cause that will justify the fact that it did not work, but it would have. As a result, on the one hand, we become allies of the guru who can thus prosper, and on the other hand, we redirect our anger resulting from the dissatisfaction of the unachieved result onto something or someone who is not responsible.
This is so true that the experienced guru often delivers, in the background, and at the same time as the proposition, a suggestion of an external responsible party in case of failure.
In the end, we have created a shared belief that can be reused to lead a 'us against them' kind of battle, where 'them' is the external causes of the failures.
To summarize, anti-science starts with a positive proposition such as 'succeed' or 'be happy' and in fact produces an increase in social violence in order to purge the failures. The only ones who really benefit from it are the anti-science gurus, who find a certain social success in it.
The life recipes we retain are mainly inherited from the Stoic school. Why the Stoic school rather than another one? Because it raises the least contradictions with the whole of this book, especially the view of humans subjected to generalized nepotism and cognitive dissonance, presented in the first part of the book.
The first recipe is Socratic Maieutics from the 5th century BC, that is to say, the practice of advancing reflection by asking questions. For us, this is the beginning of modern science. Indeed, asking questions leads in practice to specifying A in a proposition of the form 'If A then B.' However, the most common mistake in our reasoning is precisely to have a formulation of A that is too general or too approximate.
Second illustration of the importance of maieutics: in the article Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony which we mentioned at the end of chapter 3, John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan show that organizations tend to operate by following commonly accepted rules, but in the end, they rest on non-proven concepts. Questioning leads to moving from the assertion of the appropriate attitude, because it corresponds to the standards of the profession, to the underlying concepts, and by continuing the questioning, to the realization that all of this ultimately rests on gratuitous assertions.
The other two come from the later Stoics, during the first two centuries of our era:
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First, Epictetus, in his Manual , invites us to distinguish what is within our control from what is not. On the one hand, we must not worry about what is not within our control, and on the other hand, we must exercise all our intelligence and courage on what is within our control. |
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Then, the book On the Shortness of Life by Seneca invites us to do what is most important rather than wasting our lives. |
Here are two complementary remarks regarding these Stoic principles:
First, note that the problem journal presented in chapter 9 is a practical implementation of Epictetus's principle. The key point is the third column, which does not aim so much at solving the problem, because often part of the solution is not within our control, but rather at simply proposing a way to improve the situation, that is, to exercise our intelligence and courage on the part that is within our control, instead of taking the part that is not within our control as an excuse for doing nothing in the end, if not just complain.
Second, note that it is often illness and the perspective of an imminent death that make us aware of the importance of Seneca's principle. Indeed, the perspective of an imminent and premature death tends to limit our interest in social ascent, and thus makes us more receptive to philosophical principles that go against our instincts.
Let's now see in what way the two principles we have retained from Epictetus and Seneca address the concerns of philosophy as we have defined it at the outset.
Seneca's principle 'do what is important' responds to the first question, that is, how to cope with the stress of death. It is a response that is not completely satisfactory, but has the advantage of not requiring the adoption of a belief in some form of continuation of life after death.
One can also see Seneca's principle as a more demanding version of the principle 'To live a life that has meaning.'
To understand the effect of Epictetus's principle, distinguishing what depends on us from what does not, one can refer to the book The End of Courage by Cynthia Fleury. She shows that the most common attitude is to give up opposing what is morally unacceptable, which comes down to giving up fighting against mutually destructive attitudes. However, Epictetus invites us, in situations where we do not have the power to resolve the problem as a whole, to not give up acting, therefore to oppose injustice. In particular, the fact of having obeyed cannot be an excuse. By doing this, we considerably limit the possibility for mutually destructive attitudes to persist indefinitely.
It is important to understand that Epictetus's principle has nothing to do with the attitude, when faced with a big problem, such as for example ecology or world hunger, of contenting oneself with a small gesture. Indeed, in this case, we have not determined all that depends on us, and we have simply bought ourselves a good conscience at low cost.
The other side of Epictetus's recommendation is equally important: not to worry about what is not within our control; this is the basis for not ruminating, not worrying unnecessarily, and therefore... not being prevented from fully living the present moment. It is the concept of ataraxia that we are now going to present in more detail.
For a philosopher, the starting question is often that of happiness: is being happy primarily about having pleasure, or is being happy primarily about living in serenity?
The first option is that of hedonism, and it is the one that seems to systematically dominate in developed capitalist societies. An extreme illustration would be the teenager who dreams of spending his life at 'mega parties.' The success of hedonism lies mainly in the fact that its naive version corresponds quite well to our instinctive search for happiness. However, this naive version does not work well, because pleasure tends to dull when it lasts for weeks or repeats in the same form. This leads to a perpetual race forward to escape dissatisfaction, frustration, or a diffuse anxiety about the future, which always returns. We will go into more detail, a little later, on the conditions for a satisfactory hedonism.
The second option is the search for ataraxia. To simplify, ataraxia is the feeling of happiness one can experience simply because nothing hinders it, neither present worries nor future anxiety. The most well-known illustration is that of Buddha. The great advantage of ataraxia is that it is a form of stable happiness that can last indefinitely if nothing comes to disturb it.
Another fundamental difference between the two is that hedonism tends to be an easier path to follow for young people with strong life instincts, whereas the search for ataraxia becomes easier when life instincts decrease, and when the experience of pursuing pleasure in youth has shown its limits.
Another way to look at it is that hedonism seeks to ensure happiness by filling life, whereas ataraxia is a path in which happiness arises from abandoning everything superfluous. To continue the metaphor, one could present hedonism as an attempt to fill the leaky container of our happiness with an ever-growing flow of water.
This leads us to present a related notion, that of impermanence. Impermanence is the fact that in life nothing is guaranteed: we may have a desirable social position, a loving family, and still have difficulty feeling happy, because we know we might lose our job tomorrow, our loved ones might be victims of a sudden accident, etc.
What is most difficult in achieving ataraxia, whether one is young or old, and what makes it in the end a much more challenging philosophy than hedonism, is the acceptance of impermanence. If one does not accept impermanence, one lives in anxiety about the next day, about the possible loss of current happiness, therefore one does not attain ataraxia. But accepting impermanence means nothing less than solving the first great question of philosophy that we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, namely 'How to deal with the stress of the disappearance, past or future, of those we love, perhaps starting with ourselves?'
Consequently, ataraxia almost always involves a notion of minimalism, of frugality. Indeed, the less we possess or believe, the less impermanence has a hold on us. Put otherwise, it is precisely because the acceptance of impermanence is difficult that frugality, which facilitates it, is necessary in order to have a chance of achieving ataraxia.
Let us summarize: hedonism seems more accessible, especially when one is young, but does not work well without special precautions which we will see a bit later, and even less well when one advances in life; ataraxia seems more effective, but is dreadfully difficult to attain because of impermanence. Let us now revisit how the precepts we just listed act.
Socratic midwifery is a tool for working on one's reason from the perspective of avoiding complacency in error.
The first part of Epictetus' precept, namely to exert all one's intelligence and all one's courage on what depends on oneself, is an invitation to effort which does not seem directly related to ataraxia.
The second part of Epictetus' precept, namely not to worry about what does not depend on us, is clearly a working tool to promote ataraxia.
Finally, Seneca's precept to focus on what is most important rather than wasting one's life is the tool for more specifically addressing the issue of the acceptance of impermanence through the absence of regrets.
It remains only to explain why ataraxia implies effort, and therefore the reason for the first part of Epictetus' precept. What is not clarified generates anxiety, so ataraxia implies lucidity. And as one becomes more lucid, one also becomes one's own moral conscience, that is to say that one's satisfaction with oneself no longer depends so much on the results achieved or on evaluation and recognition by others, but on one's own judgment; this is shown very well by Marcus Aurelius. From there on, ataraxia implies being at peace with one's own conscience, therefore having satisfied the first part of Epictetus' precept, namely to have exerted all one's courage and all one's intelligence on what depended on oneself.
In the end, Epictetus' first precept and the effort it implies are necessary conditions for achieving ataraxia, just like the acceptance of impermanence.
We have just shown that the Stoic precepts are effective tools for achieving ataraxia. However, at the individual level, it is not only the surest way to stable happiness, but also the best tool for mastering cognitive dissonance. Indeed, what opposes the rational treatment of cognitive dissonance is the refusal to challenge a belief. Once ataraxia is achieved, one has accepted impermanence, thus the disappearance of one's beliefs.
Finally, ataraxia has a great social virtue in that it is a very effective means of limiting generalized nepotism where hedonism tends to exacerbate it.
The explanation comes from an observation of the report Caribbean Primates that we used in chapter 2 to present the concept of generalized nepotism: if the individual seeks to progress in the social hierarchy, it is because their chances of survival as an isolated individual are slim. In other words, the initial motivation is anxiety toward a hostile environment. If with ataraxia, anxiety has generally disappeared, then the motivation for the struggle for social ascent also disappears in favor of simple social cooperation.
Conversely, naive hedonism always wants more, since pleasure tends to dull. Therefore, to get more and more, the only solution is to climb higher and higher in the hierarchy to have access to more and more means.
If one specifically aims at ataraxia, there are four practices that can help achieve it, but they do not belong to philosophy, that is to say, a conscious intellectual practice aimed at allowing us to go beyond our instincts.
The first one is meditation.
The second is the practice of physical exercise, for example Yoga.
The third method is art in the general sense.
The fourth is finally, participating in rituals.
In all four cases, it is a conditioning aimed at limiting parasitic mental agitation, and there are conditions to satisfy, at the level of practice, for it to lead to progress towards ataraxia. The study of these conditions goes beyond the scope of this book.
We have just seen that the Stoic precepts go more in the direction of a search for an ataraxic happiness, and that this approach is relevant to ensuring the stability of happiness, and coherent to limit the effect of generalized nepotism from our genetic heritage.
However, pleasure, and therefore hedonistic happiness, are by no means to be excluded. We are now going to specify the conditions under which they can also contribute to the answer to the second question of philosophy, namely how to get out of mutually destructive attitudes.
Let us first note that hedonism can take several more elaborate and especially more satisfactory forms than the naive search for immediate pleasure.
First, the vitalistic variant of Jean-Marie Guyau in Sketch of a Morality without Obligation or Sanction, can prove more stable. However, it comes down to considering the isolated individual in opposition to the philosophical question 'How to get out of mutually destructive attitudes?' that we have chosen. Guyau did not have the contributions of sociology, so he did not take into account that it is a morality that ultimately increases stress due to the exacerbation of generalized nepotism. With a Kantian pirouette, one could say that this philosophy is not moral because it is not generalizable. Vitalism can take as much an altruistic appearance as in the outdoor life of certain forms of scouting, as a cynical appearance in the form 'It is normal for the strong to crush the weak', but exactly as we saw in chapter 2, it is not the benevolent or malevolent nature of the individual that makes social ambition translate into generalized violence, but rather the nature of generalized nepotism which results mechanically from social ambition.
Then comes the variant of shared pleasure, which we do not exclude a priori. In this case, it is cognitive dissonance that poses the problem. Indeed, the pleasures of one do not correspond to the pleasures of another, so the adjustment is either through hypocrisy or self-deception, which tends to come out sooner or later in the form of frustration and often of violence in one form or another.
This tension is found at the level of a hedonism framed by a strong imperative of respect for others to avoid its excesses, but sociology shows us that the problem is unsolvable. As soon as the framing becomes sufficiently effective to prevent the re-emergence of violence in one form or another, the constraints on pleasure are such that ataraxia seems a more satisfactory path. More precisely, the level of moral framing to be set up varies greatly from one individual to another, depending on his or her social ambition, personal creativity, and self-framing ability. As a result, any level of framing fixed collectively by society can only be unsatisfactory, as it is too constraining for some individuals and turns out to be insufficient for others.
Finally, pleasure sublimated in the form of art practice is the form often used to present ideal societies freed from work. It is a combination of the two above: the framing imposes the arts as a codified support for shared pleasure.
In the end, let us note that the human nature presented in chapters 2 and 3, and more specifically the strength of the initial motivation of social ambition linked to our genetic heritage, shows us that hedonism which does not ultimately lead to an increase in violence, and therefore stress at the level of some individuals, is very difficult to achieve. Put otherwise, the big problem with hedonism is that it has a tendency to drift towards each for oneself, and there is no universally good level of moral framing.
Conversely, the most frequent objection against ataraxia alone is: if I no longer have any pleasure in life, then I will be a bit dead. Let's see what lies behind this instinctive concern.
The first question is: have I integrated Seneca's precept and am I doing what is most important in my life, or have I found a comfortable social situation and deep down I know it does not correspond to what is most important?
The second question, totally linked to the first, is: do I have the courage to do all that depends on me, that is to say, to put myself in danger to do what is most important, or have I found excuses not to do what I consider just but which is not in my interest?
Once these two questions are posed, we notice that naive hedonistic pleasure is that which allows one to silence one's bad conscience. I have a good situation, which brings me pleasures, which is proof that everything is fine. If the pleasures stop, then the bad conscience is no longer contained. We arrive at a formulation that is more difficult to accept, which is that if I no longer have any pleasures in life, then I can no longer deceive myself regarding the fact that everything is fine in a life that has no meaning.
We can now formulate the conditions for a satisfying hedonism.
The first is to have a meaningful life.
The second is not to lie to oneself.
The third is not to obtain one's pleasure at the expense of others.
The first two conditions are those that prevent one from finding oneself in the situation of seeking pleasure to hide one's worries as we have just described.
The third condition is the one that guarantees that the search for pleasure by some and others does not ultimately lead to an increase in conflictuality. Let us note again, as we saw in chapter 3 on cognitive dissonance, that for it to be effective, this third condition also requires the second.
At this stage, we can draw a parallel between the individual plan of this chapter and the collective plan of the rest of this book. Hedonism is what we would like to be, because it is what gives the most impression of individual freedom, like capitalism and its freedom to start a business. Then, objective observation shows that, in the same way, its generalized form in practice leads to many people left behind due to the generalized conflict that results from it. From there, one can either seek to simply regulate, and this will be a moderately constraining moral framework on the individual level or the social-democracy on the collective level, or one can take into account that it is the very nature of the system that is problematic and that it is then appropriate to consider something else, and this will be ataraxia and the Stoic precepts or the social organization proposed in this book.
Let us recall that in a philosophy, morality sets the objective, and the precepts or life recipes provide tools. Now we have seen that one of the two objects of philosophy is to allow us to get out of mutually destructive natural attitudes. Therefore our morality must promote attitudes that are not mutually destructive.
The key comes from Leon Festinger who observes that socially destructive attitudes are most often accompanied by self-deception, generally in the form of an arbitrary belief. By applying the logical contrapositive of Festinger's observation, we obtain that if one does not lie to oneself, one will commit only a few socially destructive acts. From there, 'not lying to oneself' becomes logically our central moral principle, and it is an objective morality since we have shown that it is a necessary condition to not harm others. In this perspective, the practice of the scientific method, as opposed to rhetoric or anti-science, also becomes the only credible method.
One can also notice that 'not lying to oneself' was our second condition for a satisfying hedonism. This proposal is the most central, because it is essential both to curb a possible headlong rush for pleasure at the individual level, and to limit 'at the expense of others' at the collective level.
Conversely, one cannot fix the pursuit of happiness through ataraxia as a moral principle. Indeed, the only justification for imposing a moral rule is to make the sentence 'not to harm others' credible. However, nothing prevents one from choosing inhibition, that is to say, a voluntary personal framing, applied at a level appropriate to the person's specific characteristics, as a method to achieve this.
This is where the Stoic precepts we mentioned earlier come into play. No longer lying is not something one can decide overnight since we saw in the chapter on cognitive dissonance that self-deception is generally unconscious. Nor, for that matter, can one decide overnight to achieve ataraxia.
In the end, the only morality we are entitled to set is not to lie, but then the Stoic precepts we have provided as a guide will have a double effect. On the one hand, they lead to respecting this morality, but in addition, they lead to ataraxia, which is the most stable form of happiness. In other words, the great virtue of this morality, associated with the Stoic precepts, is that it leads to the liberation of the individual, and not to his or her sacrifice in favor of the group.
Not lying to oneself is a necessary point both to achieve ataraxia and to ensure a satisfying hedonism. However, we have not retained having a meaningful life as a moral principle. Indeed, a morality should only understand the bare minimum to satisfy 'how to get out of mutually destructive attitudes.' Therefore, a morality has no justification to cover everything that is recommended to succeed in life, which constitutes the life precepts.
Nevertheless, 'having a life that has meaning,' which is implied by the Stoic precept of Seneca 'Doing what is most important,' remains a prerequisite for anyone who wishes to give themselves the means to succeed in life. Simply, it is an individual tool, whereas morality sets a social constraint.
Le défaut d'une morale "ne pas se mentir à soi même" est d'être difficilement actionnable. Il nous faut donc continuer le raisonnement pour remonter à la racine et trouver les éléments actionnables. Pour cela, revenons encore une fois à la notion de dissonance cognitive de Léon Festinger. Constatons que le mensonge à soi même est le résultat d'une dissonance cognitive trop souvent tranchée au profit de l'ambition sociale, au détriment des faits. Quand cela a lieu, certains faits ne peuvent plus être pris en compte, car c'est tout l'équilibre psychique de l'individu qui est alors menacé. S'en suit la mise en place progressive d'un mur de croyances et conventions sociales apte à isoler efficacement l'individu de ces faits dérangeants. On peut parler dès lors non pas simplement de mensonge à soi même, mais d'une forme de psychose morale. En effet, cette perte de contact avec la réalité conduit l'individu à percevoir comme menaçant, et éventuellement attaquer violemment, toute personne qui viendrait ébranler ce mur.
Tout cela nous conduit donc à formuler au final notre morale sous la forme "ne pas ignorer les faits qui dérangent".
Cela nouvelle formulation de la morale amène trois constatations supplémentaires :
Tout d'abord, l'ambition sociale et la dissonance cognitive étudiées en détail dans la première partie de ce livre sont bien les deux caractéristiques fondamentales de notre nature humaine.
Ensuite, la morale et l'ambition sociale ne sont pas conciliables dans le cas général. Cela signifie que conduire sa vie, c'est très largement effectuer un compromis entre morale et ambition sociale. Chacun positionne le curseur individuellement, mais les individus qui prétendent avoir parfaitement concilié les deux révèlent probablement avant tout un niveau élevé de mensonge à soi même, et donc une morale faible.
Enfin, un niveau plus élevé de morale nous apparaît maintenant comme une condition nécessaire pour permettre de répondre aux deux grandes questions de notre temps évoquées dans ce livre : comment satisfaire la contrainte écologique, et comment éviter la lente dégradation du tissu sociale qui mène à la guerre civile ?
Dès lors, si l'on ne veut pas retomber dans le voeux pieux de l'émergence d'un homme nouveau, il convient donc :
De promouvoir au niveau éducatif la recherche de minimalité, qui nous apparaît mainenant comme une condition nécessaire pour atteindre un niveau moral satisfaisant.
De mettre en place la notion de cotation stratégique (voir chapitre 7), comme moyen de rendre plus compatibles la morale et l'ambition sociale.
(1)
When one learns to do demonstrations in middle school and high school, one is training oneself to something fundamentally useful, namely to produce a flawless reasoning. An even more formative exercise currently practiced in mathematics is 'Among the following propositions, indicate which are true, which are false, and explain why.' It is the basic exercise to train the brain for science since it involves testing whether the A in a proposition 'If A then B' is sufficiently precise. The problem is that, due to the lack of courses on logic and epistemology, students will tend to think that it only applies to mathematics, and is therefore of no interest in real life.
(2)
More precisely, the propositions are grouped into sets that we call theories. A new theory is an original way of representing things, the value of which will be linked to its fertility, that is to say the series of new propositions, or of new demonstrations of existing propositions, that it will induce.