Chapter 22
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How do we cope with the stress of the loss, past or future, of those we love, possibly starting with ourselves? |
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How to escape from natural mutually destructive attitudes, mainly generalized nepotism as described in the documentary Caribbean primates ? Refer to Chapter 3 for the presentation of this documentary. |
Conversely, we exclude rhetoric from philosophy, that is to say the art of discourse, because even if it has been taught in numerous schools of philosophy, it nonetheless remains a tool of conquest of power, which is very often contrary to the second object of the philosophy that we have just presented. The success of rhetoric corresponds to the fact that this is very often what people came to look for in schools of philosophy.
Another way of approaching things, more scientific but just as 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 we add, that is, what should we add artificially through social conditioning, to ultimately obtain the most harmonious result possible? By harmonious, we should understand the minimum level of stress in individuals. This clearly directs us towards the report Caribbean primates seen in Chapter 2, as an entry point for philosophical reflection. This report further shows us that stress comes mainly from widespread nepotism, which justifies the adoption of the question 'How to escape mutually destructive attitudes?' as a central point of philosophical reflection.
In his attempt to popularize the major philosophical theories, Luc Ferry breaks down each philosophical school into three elements: a worldview, a morality, and finally life recipes.
What we are going to seek to show here is, on the one hand, what modern science is, which will lead us to explain some bases of logic and the functioning of sciences, that is to say, to make a little epistemology. On the other hand, the world view resulting from modern science is the only one that it is still reasonable to adopt in the 21st century, which will lead us to connect it to other parts of this book.
Let us clarify to begin with and provide concrete benchmarks for those who will have difficulty following developments concerning logic, that what we mean by modern science is the sciences or those parts of the sciences which correspond to the strict application of scientific method, that is, mathematics, physics, biology, part of medicine, and part of sociology. Other humanities such as history or economics are clearly not part of it; we will now see why.
Scientific is any discourse which is presented in the form 'If A then B' in which A defines a set of conditions such that a person who reads this statement can, by satisfying all of the conditions described in A, reproduce the experiment, and see B for herself. Generally, A takes the form 'A₁ and A₂ and A₃ etc'. This same scientific proposition falls as soon as a person formulates a counterexample, that is to say a proposition of the type 'If A and C then not B', and other people verify this second proposition. Put more simply, the initial proposal falls apart as soon as someone shows that the conditions set were not sufficiently precise to guarantee the result.
For centuries, the universally accepted and only logic used was that explained by Aristotle inOrganon. It was an integral part of all classical philosophical training. This logic is based on the notion of properties - for example, being an animal - and favors reasoning in three stages, which we call syllogisms. However, this logic is limited: it fails to understand arithmetic properties, such as being twelve. At the end of the 19th century, Gottlob Frege, to overcome this difficulty, defined a new formalism which lays the foundations of modern logic: the calculation of predicates, also called first-order logic. This has many advantages, in particular the fact that any mathematical reasoning - whether logical, arithmetic, analytical, or even geometric - can be expressed using this formalism, and even then verified by a machine. .
However, at the very moment when the formalism of logic finally becomes complete and rigorous, philosophers turn away from it. So, if the Philosophy textbookby Louis Bordet from 1932 is still half made up of a 'Logic' part which deals with epistemology, the current philosophy program no longer deals with logic. However, this has not been reintegrated into mathematics at the high school curriculum level, it is simply no longer widely taught. Knowing that it remains the foundation of science, that understanding the mechanics of logic, and training in its use, constitute the basis for being able to produce or verify a scientific discourse (1), ceasing to teach it seems to us to the least questionable, when at the same time we deplore the proliferation of alternative truths following the appearance of new media such as social networks.
Developing critical thinking is good, provided you start with the base, and the base remains logic, otherwise we quickly confuse scientific discourse with rhetorical discourse. In doing so, we shift from science to anti-science, which we will address a little later, with the consequence, as we will see, of an increase in social violence.
A course on predicate calculus is beyond the scope of this book. I'll just take a non-trivial example to illustrate the scientific method:
“The Earth is round.”
Is this a scientific proposition? At first glance, this does not seem obvious, because this proposition does not have the form 'If A then B'. Actually yes. What is particular about this example is that A is empty. In other words, this sentence should be read in the form 'If no particular condition then the Earth is round'.At this point, we can retort that this is not a demonstration. Certainly, but a scientific proposition is not a demonstration, just an assertion that no one can contradict. A demonstration is a surplus which only exists in mathematics and which allows us to show in advance that no one will ever be able to contradict 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 judges worthy of interest (2). This is the social organization dimension specific to each science. A science that retains propositions too easily would find itself drowned out by dispersion, and a science that sets too strong constraints would miss interesting propositions that it needs to move forward. These selection rules that each science gives itself evolve as the said science develops. In mathematics, the proposition must be demonstrated (theorem), or significant and unsuccessful work of invalidation must have taken place (conjecture) for a proposition to be accepted. In astronomy, it must not only explain phenomena that are difficult to explain without this proposition, but also preferably predict something that will only be verified by measurement later. Generally speaking, a simple proposition, which is therefore only probable, will not be accepted, unless there are additional clues which suggest that it is true. It is on this level that modern science differentiated itself from the science included in Greek philosophy in which being probable was considered sufficient. Furthermore, always in general, only the simplest and especially the most general proposals are retained. A final point to understand the merits of 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 demonstrate that there exists propositions that we do not know how to demonstrate, so if mathematics retained unproven propositions en masse, we would risk ending up with an arithmetic explosion of propositions of the type 'If A then it is possible that B' which would not final that limit the practical interest of the field.
Now let's see what happens if someone says:
“The Earth is flat.”
In this case, we can refute the assertion with the following counterproposition:
“If I go to the international space station, and I look out the window, then I see that the earth is not flat.”
Here it is:
“I'm going to the International Space Station and looking out the window.”
Let's continue a little to understand what science is.
Our initial claim that the Earth is round can also be partially invalidated:
"If I measure the equator, I obtain 40074 km to plus or minus 1 km, and if I measure a meridian and its opposite, I obtain 40008 km to plus or minus 1 km, so the Earth is not not round. »
In fact, our initial proposal was too approximate, and should have been formulated in the form:
“The Earth is a sphere with a circumference of 40,000 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 quite 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 its scope and precision to be clarified.
Now consider the proposition:
“God exists.”
In the same way as before, we can present it in scientific form in the form 'If no particular condition, then God exists'. Here, what poses a problem from the point of view of science, and where Pascal took a wrong turn at the methodological level by putting forward a demonstration, is that the problem with such an assertion is not so much whether it is true or false, but to define what God is. God is not something that can be observed directly, exactly, like gravity. From the point of view of science, we must therefore deduce its existence from its predictable effects. Indeed, if God is not directly perceptible and has no perceptible effects, then he is unrelated to the real world as understood by science since there is no scientific proposition where the A would imply the existence of God, and the B would imply something verifiable which is only true if A. Ultimately, the sentence 'God exists' amounts to asserting that something undefined exists, therefore is not a valid scientific proposition. In summary, this second example simply shows us that unlike everyday speech, science requires precisely defining everything we are talking about. A sentence like 'The sky is blue' seems perfectly clear to us, until we ask 'What is the sky?' and 'What is the color blue?'.
Now let's explain why the worldview of modern science is the only one that 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 escape from mutually destructive natural attitudes. However, if we reduce beliefs to what science has established, then the different beliefs do not oppose each other, therefore individuals have no reason to confront each other to resolve a dispute of beliefs . Conversely, as soon as the worldview includes dogmatic beliefs, then the beliefs of one individual or group may be in contradiction with those of another, and in this case, the temptation will be strong in the dominant group to impose its beliefs on everyone else, if only to reduce its own level of cognitive dissonance, and we saw in Chapter 2 that this will usually result in an 'us versus them' confrontation.
Now let's see what the opposite of science is. Naively, one might think that this is the assertion of false, doctrinaire things, such as "The Earth is flat." However, this would show that we have confused science and truth a little. Let's start again. Science is an approach that seeks to formulate solid 'If A then B' propositions, that is to say, which cannot be faulted. So as not to take anti-scientists for the imbeciles that they are not necessarily, let us define anti-science rather as the fact of formulating propositions 'If A then B' in which the objective, the ultimate value of selection interesting propositions, is no longer the fact that the proposition cannot be faulted, but the fact that the proposition is probable and above all that effect B is socially valued.
Take for example the statement “To succeed, you have to work on your network.” We can formulate it in the form “If we work on our network then we 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 don't work on your network then you don't 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 succeed” is the fact that succeeding is perceived as something important.
In other words, science selects propositions that are irrefutable, anti-science selects simply plausible propositions that have the most interesting consequences.
We now come to the interesting assertion of this part: in our reasoning, our exchanges with others, on the media, anti-science is ultra dominant.
The two great anti-scientific theories booming at the start of the 21st century are coaching with propositions “If... then you will be more successful” and personal development with propositions “If... then you will be happier ".
The problem with anti-science is that the promise is often not kept. It wouldn't be a big deal if we were purely rational beings whose conclusion would be: I let myself get carried away with wishful thinking, it didn't work, I learned a good lesson and next time I will be less naive towards gurus. But there you have it, our nature is much more cognitive dissonance. So rather than denouncing the initial proposal, which would require us to question our past decision, and therefore our capacity for judgment, we prefer to find an external, added cause which will allow us to justify that it did not work, but it should have. In fact, on the one hand, we become united with the guru who will thus be able to prosper, and on the other hand we transfer our hatred linked to the dissatisfaction of the unachieved result onto something or someone who is not responsible for it. Nothing.
This is so true that the experienced guru often delivers, implicitly, and at the same time as his proposal, a suggestion for an external manager in the event of failure.
In the end, we created a shared belief that can be reused to lead an 'us versus them' type battle, where 'them' are the external causes of failures.In summary, anti-science starts from a positive proposition 'to succeed' or 'to be happy' and in fact produces an increase in social violence to purge failures. The only ones who really gain are the anti-science gurus who find a certain social success.
The recipes for life that we retain are mainly inherited from the Stoic school. Why the Stoic school rather than another? Because it raises the fewest contradictions with the whole of this book, in particular the vision of man subject to generalized nepotism and cognitive dissonance, presented in the first part of the book.
The first recipe is the maieutics of Socrates, in the 5th century BC. JC, that is to say the fact of advancing thinking by asking questions. For us, these are the beginnings of modern science. Indeed, asking questions leads in practice to specifying the A in a proposition 'If A then B'. However, the most frequent error in our reasoning is precisely having a formulation of A that is too general or too approximate.
Second illustration of the importance of midwifery: in the article Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony that we discussed at the end of Chapter 3, John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan show that organizations tend to operate following commonly accepted rules, but which ultimately rely on unproven concepts. Questioning means going back from the affirmation of the appropriate attitude, because it corresponds to the standards of the profession, to the concepts which underlie it, then by continuing the questioning, to the awareness that everything This ultimately relies on gratuitous assertions.
The other two come from the late Stoics, during the first two centuries AD:
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First of all, Epictetus, in his Manual, invites us to separate what depends on oneself and what does not depend on oneself. Then, on the one hand, one must not worry about what does not depend on oneself, and on the other hand one must exercise all one's intelligence and courage on what depends on oneself. |
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Then, the work On the brevity of Seneca's life invites us to do what is most important instead of wasting our lives. |
Here are two additional remarks regarding these Stoic precepts:
First, note that the problem journal, presented in Chapter 9, is a practical application of Epictetus' precept. The key point is the third column, which is not so much about solving the problem, because very often part of the solution does not depend on us, as simply proposing a way to improve the situation, that is- that is, to exercise our intelligence and our courage on the part that depends on us, instead of taking the part that does not depend on us as a pretext for doing nothing in the end, except complaining.
Next, let us note that very often, it is illness and the prospect of imminent death that make us aware of the importance of Seneca's precept. Indeed, the prospect of an imminent and premature death has the effect of limiting our interest in social advancement, and in fact makes us more receptive to philosophical precepts which go against our instinct.
Let us now see how the two precepts retained from Epictetus and Seneca respond to the concerns of philosophy as we defined it at the starting point.
Seneca's precept 'do what is important' answers the first question, how to cope with the stress of death. This is an answer which is not entirely satisfactory, but which has the advantage of not requiring the adoption of a belief in some form of continuation of life after death.
We can also see this precept of Seneca as a more demanding form of the precept 'Have a meaningful life'.
To understand the effect of Epictetus' precept, to distinguish what depends on us from what does not, we can refer to the book The end of courage by Cynthia Fleury. It shows us that the most common attitude is to give up opposing what is nevertheless morally unacceptable, which amounts to giving up fighting against mutually destructive attitudes. Now Epictetus invites us, in situations where we do not have the power to resolve the problem as a whole, not to give up taking action, and therefore to oppose injustice. In particular, the fact of having obeyed cannot be a sufficient excuse. In doing so, we significantly limit the possibility for mutually destructive attitudes to persist indefinitely.
It is important to understand that Epictetus' precept has nothing to do with the attitude that when faced with a big problem, such as ecology, or world hunger, consists of being satisfied with a small gesture. Indeed, in this case, we did not determine everything that depended on us, and we simply bought ourselves a good conscience at a lower cost.
The other side of Epictetus' recommendation is just as important: not to worry about what does not depend on oneself; this is the basis for not ruminating, not worrying unnecessarily, therefore... not being prevented from fully living the present moment. This is the concept of ataraxia which we will now present in more detail.
For a philosopher, the initial question is often that of happiness: is being happy, above all, having pleasure, or is being happy, above all, living in serenity?
The first option is that of hedonism, and it is the one that seems to become systematically dominant in developed capitalist societies. An extreme illustration would be the teenager who dreams of spending his life in 'mega parties'. The success of hedonism is primarily due to the fact that its naive version corresponds quite well to our instinctive search for happiness. However, this naive version does not work well, because the pleasure tends to dull when it continues for weeks or is repeated in the same form. This leads to a perpetual flight forward to escape dissatisfaction, frustration, or a diffuse anxiety about the future, which always returns. We will take up in more detail, a little later, the conditions of satisfactory hedonism.
The second option is to look for ataraxia. To put it simply, ataraxia is the feeling of bliss that we can feel simply because nothing comes to hinder it, neither present worry nor anxiety about the future. The most famous illustration is that of Buddha. The great advantage of ataraxia is that it is a stable form of happiness, which can last indefinitely if nothing disturbs it.
Another fundamental difference between the two is that hedonism tends to be an easier approach to follow among young people in whom the life drive is strong, whereas the search for ataraxia becomes easier when the life drives are declining, and that the experience of the search for pleasure in youth has shown its limits.
Another way of looking at it is that hedonism seeks to ensure happiness by filling life, while ataraxia is an approach in which happiness is born from the abandonment of all that is superfluous. To extend the metaphor, we could present hedonism as an attempt to fill the holey container of our happiness by feeding it with an ever-increasing flow of water.
This leads us to present a related notion, that of impermanence. Impermanence is the fact that nothing in life is guaranteed: we can have an enviable social position, a loving family, and yet struggle to feel happy, because we know we can lose our work tomorrow, that our loved ones may be victims of a sudden accident, etc.
However, what is most difficult to achieve ataraxia, whether one is young or old, and what ultimately makes it a much more difficult philosophy than hedonism, is the acceptance of impermanence. If we do not accept impermanence, we live in anxiety about tomorrow, about the possible loss of our present happiness, therefore we do not reach ataraxia. But accepting impermanence represents nothing less than resolving the first major question of philosophy that we raised at the beginning of this chapter, namely 'How to cope with the stress of the disappearance, past or future, of those whom we 'we love, possibly starting with ourselves?'As a result, ataraxia almost always involves a notion of minimalism, of frugality. Indeed, the less we possess or the less we believe, the less impermanence has a hold on us. In other words, it is because the acceptance of impermanence is difficult that the frugality which facilitates it is necessary to have a chance of achieving ataraxia.
Let's summarize: hedonism seems more accessible, especially when you are young, but does not work well without special precautions that we will see a little later, and even less and less well as you advance in life; ataraxia seems more effective, but fearsomely difficult to achieve, because of impermanence. Let us now review how the precepts we have just listed work.
Socratic maieutics is a tool for working on your reason from the angle of avoiding wallowing in error.
The first part of Epictetus' precept, namely to exercise all one's intelligence and all one's courage on what depends on oneself, is an invitation to effort which does not seem directly linked 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 concentrate on what is most important instead of wasting one's life is the tool to work more specifically on the problem of accepting impermanence via the absence of regrets.
It therefore remains to explain why ataraxia requires effort, and therefore the reason for the first part of Epictetus' precept. What is not clarified generates worry, so ataraxia presupposes lucidity. But as we become lucid, we also become our own moral conscience, that is to say that the fact that we are satisfied with ourselves no longer depends so much on the result obtained or the evaluation and recognition by others, but of one's own judgment; This is what Marcus Aurelius shows very well. From there, ataraxia presupposes being at peace with one's own conscience, therefore having satisfied the first part of Epictetus' precept, that is to say, having exercised all one's courage and all one's intelligence on this which depended on oneself.
Ultimately, Epictetus' first precept, and the effort it requires, 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, this is not only the surest path to stable happiness, but also the best tool for controlling cognitive dissonance. Indeed, what opposes the rational treatment of cognitive dissonance is the refusal to question a belief. Once ataraxia is reached, we have accepted impermanence, therefore the disappearance of our beliefs.
Finally, ataraxia has a great social virtue which is to be a very effective means of limiting generalized nepotism where hedonism tends to exacerbate it.
The explanation starts from a remark in the report Caribbean primates which we used in Chapter 2 to introduce the concept of generalized nepotism: if the individual seeks to progress in the social hierarchy, it is because his chances of survival as an isolated individual are slim. In other words, the initial motivation is anxiety regarding a hostile environment. If with ataraxia, anxiety has disappeared in general, then the motivation for the struggle for social ascension also disappears in favor of simple social collaboration.
Conversely, naive hedonism always implies more, since pleasure tends to fade. So to always obtain more, the only solution is to always move up the hierarchy to have always more resources.
If we specifically aim at ataraxia, there are four practices which can help to achieve it, but which do not necessarily fall under philosophy, that is to say, a conscious intellectual practice aimed at allowing us to overcome our instincts.
The first is meditation.
The second is the practice of physical exercise, for example Yoga.
The third method is art in the general sense.
Finally, the fourth is participation 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 a progression towards ataraxia. The study of these conditions is beyond the scope of this book.
We have just seen that the Stoic precepts go more in the direction of a search for ataraxic happiness, and that this approach is relevant to ensure the stability of happiness, and coherent to limit the effect of generalized nepotism resulting from our heritage. genetic.
However, pleasure, and therefore hedonistic happiness, cannot absolutely be excluded. We will now specify the conditions under which they can also participate in the answer to the second question of philosophy, namely how to escape from mutually destructive attitudes.
Let us begin by noting that hedonism can take several forms that are more elaborate and, above all, more satisfying than the naive search for immediate pleasure.
First of all, the vitalist variant of Jean-Marie Guyau in Outline of a morality without obligation or sanction, may prove more stable. However it amounts to considering the isolated individual as opposed to the philosophical question 'How to escape from mutually destructive attitudes?' that we chose. Guyau did not have the contributions of sociology, so he did not take into account that it is a morality which ultimately increases stress due to the exacerbation of generalized nepotism. By a Kantian pirouette, we could say that this philosophy is not moral because it cannot be generalized. Vitalism can take on both an altruistic appearance as in the outdoor life of certain forms of scouting, and a cynical appearance in the form of "it is normal for the strong to crush the weak", but exactly as we have seen in Chapter 2, it is not the benevolent or malevolent nature of the individual that causes social ambition to translate into widespread violence, but rather the very nature of the widespread nepotism that mechanically results 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 is the problem. Indeed, the pleasures of some do not correspond to the pleasures of others, so the adjustment is made either through hypocrisy or through lying to oneself, which tends to emerge sooner or later in the form of frustration and often violence in one form or another.
This tension is found at the level of a hedonism framed by a strong moral imperative of respect for others, to avoid its excesses, but sociology shows us that the problem is insoluble. Once the framing becomes sufficiently effective to avoid the re-emergence of violence in one form or another, the obstacles to pleasure are such that ataraxia seems a more satisfactory path. More precisely, the level of moral framing to be put in place varies greatly from one individual to another, depending on their social ambition, their personal creativity, and their capacity for self-framing. In fact, any level of framing set collectively by society can only be unsatisfactory because it is too restrictive for certain individuals while proving insufficient for others.
Finally, pleasure sublimated in the form of practicing the arts is the form often chosen to present ideal societies freed from work. It is a combination of the two previous ones: the framing imposes the arts as a codified support for shared pleasure.
In the end, let us remember that human nature presented in chapters 2 and 3, and more particularly the strength of the initial motivation of social ambition linked to our genetic heritage, shows us that hedonism which does not ultimately translate into increase in violence, and therefore stress among certain individuals, is very difficult to achieve. In other words, the big problem with hedonism is that it has an unfortunate tendency to drift towards everyone for themselves, and that there is no good universal level of moral framing.
Conversely, the most common objection to ataraxia alone is: If I no longer have pleasure in life, then I will be a little dead. Let's see what's behind this instinctive worry.
The first question is: have I integrated Seneca's precept, and am doing the most important thing in my life, or have I found a comfortable social situation and 'deep down I know it doesn't match the most important thing?
The second question, totally linked to the first, is: do I have the courage to do everything that depends on me, that is to say put myself in danger to do what is most important? important, or have I made excuses for not doing what feels right but is not in my best interest?
Once these two questions have been asked, we see that naive hedonistic pleasure is the one that allows you to silence your guilty conscience. I have a good situation, which brings me pleasures, which is proof that everything is going well. 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 pleasures in life, then I can no longer lie to myself about the fact that everything is going well in a life that does not it doesn't make sense.
We can now formulate the conditions for satisfactory hedonism.
The first is to have a meaningful life.
The second is not to lie to yourself.
The third is not to obtain your pleasure at the expense of others.
The first two conditions are those which avoid finding oneself in the situation of seeking pleasure to hide one's worries as we have just described.
The third condition is the one which guarantees that everyone's search for pleasure does not ultimately result in an increase in conflict. Let us note again, as we saw in Chapter 3 on cognitive dissonance, that to be efficient, this third condition also presupposes 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 most gives the impression of individual freedom, like capitalism and its freedom to undertake. Then, objective observation shows that in the same way, its generalized form translates in practice into many being left behind because of the generalized conflict that results. From there, we can either seek to just regulate, and this will be a moderately restrictive moral framework on the individual level or social democracy on the collective level, or we can take into account that this is the very nature of system which is problematic and it is therefore appropriate to consider something else entirely, and this will be ataraxia and the Stoic precepts or the social organization proposed in this book.
Let us remember that in a philosophy, morality sets the objective, and the precepts or recipes for life provide the tools. Now we have seen that one of the two objects of philosophy is to allow us to escape from mutually destructive natural attitudes. So our morality must promote attitudes that are not mutually destructive.
The key comes to us from Leon Festinger who notes that socially destructive attitudes are most often accompanied by lying to oneself, generally in the form of an arbitrary belief. By applying the logical contrapositive of Festinger's observation, we obtain that if we do not lie to ourselves, then we will commit few socially destructive actions. From there, 'not lying to yourself' logically becomes our central moral principle, and it is an objective morality since we have shown that it is a necessary condition for not harming others . From this perspective, the practice of the scientific method, as opposed to rhetoric or anti-science, also emerges as the only credible method.
We can also see that 'not lying to oneself' was our second condition for satisfactory hedonism. This proposition is the most central, because it is essential both to curbing a possible headlong rush into pleasure at the individual level, and to limiting 'to the detriment of others' on a collective basis.Conversely, we cannot set the search for happiness through ataraxia as a moral principle. Indeed, the only justification for imposing a moral rule is to make the phrase 'do not harm others' credible. However, nothing prevents us from choosing inhibition, that is to say voluntary personal framing, applied at an appropriate level depending on the specific characteristics of the person, as a method to achieve this.
This is where the Stoic precepts that we mentioned above come into play. No longer lying to yourself is not something you can decide overnight since we saw in the chapter on cognitive dissonance that lying to yourself is generally unconscious. Nor, moreover, can we decide overnight to develop ataraxia.
In the end, the morality that we have the right to set is only not to lie to ourselves, but then, the Stoic precepts that 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 Stoic precepts, is that it leads to the liberation of the individual, and not to his sacrifice for the benefit of the group.
Not lying to yourself is a necessary point both to obtain ataraxia and to ensure satisfactory hedonism. On the other hand, we have not retained as a moral principle to have a meaningful life. Indeed, a morality must include only the bare minimum to satisfy 'how to escape from mutually destructive attitudes'. Therefore, a morality has no justification in covering everything that is recommended for a successful life, which constitutes the precepts of life.
However, 'having a meaningful life', which is implied by Seneca's Stoic precept 'Do what is most important', remains a prerequisite for anyone wishing to give themselves the means to succeed in life. Simply, it is an individual tool, where morality sets a social constraint.
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When we learn to give demonstrations in middle and high school, we are practicing something fundamentally useful, that is, producing flawless reasoning. An even more educational exercise currently practiced in mathematics is 'Among the following propositions, indicate which ones are true, which ones are false and say why'. This is the basic exercise for training your brain in science since it amounts to testing whether the A of a proposition 'If A then B' is sufficiently precise. The problem is that in the absence of courses on logic and epistemology, students will tend to think that this only applies to mathematics, and therefore is of no interest in real life.
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More precisely, 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 new demonstrations of existing propositions, that it will induce.