Blaise Pascal, Pensées | Self-Love and Aversion to Truth | Philosophy Core Concepts

Hi, this is Dr. Gregory Sadler. I'm a professor of philosophy and the president and founder of an educational consulting company called Reason.io, where we put philosophy into practice. I've studied and taught philosophy for over 20 years, and I find that many people run into difficulties reading classic philosophical texts. Sometimes it's the way things are said or how the text is structured, but the concepts themselves are not always that complicated, and that's where I come in. To help students and lifelong learners, I've been producing longer lecture videos and posting them to YouTube. Many viewers say they find them useful. What you're currently watching is part of a new series of shorter videos, each of them focused on one core concept from an important philosophical text. I hope you find it useful as well. In one long passage in his work, The Passés, Blaise Pascal very helpfully outlines for us a dynamic between self-love, something that he thinks that all of us feel to some degree, and truth, to which it is, as he says, averse and comes to hate. And in fact, because of this dynamic, generates conditions in which it becomes difficult for the person to learn and acknowledge and act upon the truth of themselves and indeed a much broader conception of truth covering other things within society, the world, their relationships. And if we go to the core of this, the fundamental problem as we're going to see it is that self-love induces us to not want to hear the truth about ourselves. So why is that the case? If we take a look at what he says, he begins by bringing up self-love, which in French is amour-propre, not the other sort of love of self, but a love that is, you might say, excessive or wrongly directed. And then he talks about what's translated in the English as the ego. And that makes perfect sense because it's the moi, the me, the who I think I am, right? And he says, the nature of self-love and of this human ego is to love self only and consider self only. So when we talk about somebody being egoistic, we don't just mean that they only value how things affect them or that they privilege and prioritize their own interests above other people. They have a sort of shortening of vision. They really only think upon themselves and the reason why they prioritize themselves or the reason why they're particularly interested in things that have to do with them and less interested in how it affects other people is because they are looking at themselves. They have the ego. They have an image of themselves in contemplation all the time, but it turns out, unfortunately, to generally be a false image. So he says, what is the human being going to do? So they want their self to be better than it actually is. They want to think of themselves as happy, as capable, as good, as true, as beautiful. He says he cannot prevent this object that he loves, that is himself. He is both subject and object in this from being full of, the translation here is faults and wants, but the French is actually a little bit harsher. It's not just faults, deficits, failures, but actually also unhappiness, misère in the French. If you really look at yourself, unless you're some sort of moral saint or paragon, you will discover parts of yourself that you're not happy with, that in fact make you unhappy to look at, that reflect unhappiness on your part. And you can frame it in terms of wants or needs that are unsatisfied, but it's really a sort of unhappiness that you carry around within yourself. So he gives you a bunch of examples here and they're great examples. So let's look at each of them. He says he wants to be great and he sees himself small. How often is this the case? How many times do people need to think of themselves as more important than they are or as having a certain stature? Even physically, there are people who try to tell you that they're taller than they are or fitter than they are. So he goes out and he says he wants to be happy and he sees himself miserable. There are so many people, particularly in this world that is now permeated by social media and images, who are portraying for us a life that they don't really have, a life that is primarily marked by happiness when perhaps they're not happy much of the time. And this is part of the human condition for Pascal. He wants to be perfect and sees himself full of imperfections. Some people can't stand to have any imperfections. He wants to be the object of love and esteem among other people and he sees that his faults merit only their hatred and contempt. So many people are not happy, are not content with how other people view them and indeed they make their own happiness or their misery dependent on whether other people like them or not or treat them even as they're liked. He says this embarrassment in which he finds himself in, that's a problem. When we think about embarrassment, it's literally to be trapped, to be stuck within something. We think of it just as an emotion, right? Feel shame or embarrassment or guilt or something like that. But it's really to be caught within something that's both affective and cognitive here. So the embarrassment, the problem that one is caught in, leads to a solution. What's the solution? Well, it's to say that we're not going to put up with that truth. It's going to go further than that and say that that truth isn't truth, that it's actually a lie and that something else is the truth. And so Pascal tells us that self-love hates the truth about itself. It hates to hear, it hates to see, it hates to think that it is less great, less happy, less perfect than it is. And so it wants to destroy that truth because that is what hatred is really about. It wants to see the thing that is hated gone. That's how hatred is different than, say, anger. Now, can you destroy the truth? Yes, in a certain way you can, but you can't destroy it by making what currently is the case not the case, can you? Well, you could. You could work on yourself. You could change yourself. If you're overweight and you want to lose weight, well, you can diet or you can exercise or you can find some other way to do that. If you want to be better read, you can set aside an hour each day and read some books, even if you read them online. There's myriad things that one can do to move oneself from a position where any saying that you're good would actually be false to a position where it would in fact be true. But what can you do besides that? An easier thing to do is just to deny that the truth is the truth. So, as Pascal puts it, self-love wants to destroy the truth in one's own knowledge and in the knowledge of others. So, one's relation to oneself and the entire social world, the world of one's relationships, where you find out who you are. So, he says, here we go. He devotes all his attention, this is how it's made concrete, to hiding his faults both from others and from himself. And he cannot endure that others should point them out to them or that they should see them. So, this leads to, as he's going to say it at the very end of this passage, man being only disguised falsehood and hypocrisy both in relation to himself and others. That is sort of an extreme limit case, but it gives you the idea of how far this can go. There are some people whose almost entire life is really a lie, whose business could be entirely paper fronts, who think of themselves and portray themselves as brave when they are living on stolen valor. We could go on and on and on. And whenever a person does this, they're always placing themselves in what feels like a safer condition, but it's really a more dangerous condition because the truth is still out there. So, what are you going to do about that? You cannot get everybody to accept the lie or the concealment that you're providing them. And you may not, in fact, be able to hide it from yourself forever as well. So, he says, this is really a bad situation to be in. And he wants to stress that it's already bad to have all sorts of faults. But it's even worse to deny that you have all these sort of faults. And, you know, this is so for several reasons. It makes you unable to work on those faults if you wanted to change them. But it also generates this condition where you constantly need to reaffirm that you don't actually have any faults, where you need to say that how things are is not actually what the case is. And that takes a lot of time, energy, and effort. So, this is actually a bad situation. He says, it's a great evil to be full of faults, but it's a still greater evil to be full of them and unwilling to recognize them. Why? That's adding yet another fault there. You're lying to yourself. You're engaging in what he calls a voluntary illusion. And he's got a few reflections here that are worth thinking about. He says, we don't like for others to deceive us, right? I don't like if you lie to me or you cheat on your taxes or you conceal the fact that, you know, you've actually got the solution to my problem or any other sort of things. We don't like to be deceived by others. He says, we don't think it's fair that they should be held in higher esteem by us than they deserve. So, it's not fair we should deceive them. We're doing something wrong to them by demanding that they treat us as better than we actually are. And he says, it's not fair that we should wish them to esteem us more highly than we deserve, right? We shouldn't deceive them. So, he says, what happens then when they discover the imperfections? Well, this is where it gets very interesting. So, we could ask ourselves this question here. What would be a better attitude to take in this situation than the repress it, stuff it down, lie about it, keep trying to maintain the self-image, keep trying to preserve one's ego, as we say. We could look at it this way, the way that Pascal sets out. He says, when they discover only the imperfections and vices which we really have, they don't do anything wrong to us. They're not actually harming us. They are not doing some injustice to us. They're not lying about us even. He says, they actually are doing us good. Why? Because they help to free us of this evil, this double evil of having the faults and imperfections in the first place and being stuck in this state of denial where we have to pretend like that's not the case. We could take that as an option. We could look at it that way and say, when this person criticizes me, they're not just trying to hurt me. They're not trying to put me down. They're not trying to get my job. They're not trying to assert power over me. They're actually trying to, in some way, realize it or not, help me out. So he says, we shouldn't be angry at their knowing our faults and even despising us. But it's right that they should know us for who we are and should despise us if we are contemptible. If we are contemptible, the solution to that is not to try to hide it or fight them or get angry with them. It's to change who we are so that we are no longer contemptible. And this is what Pascal says. These are the feelings that would arise in a heart full of equity and justice. Isn't that a wonderful way to say it? These are the feelings. Oh, thanks for pointing that out. That would arise in a heart full of equity and justice. Now, there's two things to say there. One is, that's not our case, for the most part, right? So, as he says then, the second thing, what must we say of our own heart when we see it in a wholly different disposition? Is it not true that we hate truth and those who tell it to us and that we like them to be deceived in our favor and prefer to be esteemed by them as being other than what we are in fact? And he says, the proof of this makes me shudder. When you actually look at this, when you stare the lie in its face, it is something that you should have an effective reaction towards. But there is this possible better attitude that we could take, that we could steer ourselves towards. But it would take a massive effort on our part. And this indeed is what people who engage in self-transformation, in the realization of human nature, attempt to do. Now, he goes on and he says that, two things. There's a corollary to this. Other people don't actually want to tell us the truth. Why not? Because we've made it difficult for them to tell us the truth without us engaging in some sort of aggression or reprisals or some other move, some other hostility against them. And he gives us some examples of this. He talks about a false delicacy, which makes those under the necessity of reproving others choose so many windings and middle courses to avoid offense. They must lessen our faults, appear to excuse them, intersperse praises and evidence of love and esteem. Why? Because we're not strong enough to take people saying to us, hey buddy, you're not as good as you think you are. Your playing isn't melodious. Your actions over here are not harmonious with the ideals you espouse. Your work product isn't up to snuff. You're not the great lover you think you are. You throw a lot of money around, but you're actually poor because you've maxed out your credit cards. We go on and on and on and on and on. So people will soft-pedal their criticism to us in part because they don't want to incur our hostility. And you can think about how you do that to other people as well. So he says, if any have some interest in being loved by us, they're averse to render us a service which they know to be disagreeable. They treat us as we wish to be treated, as we wish to be treated in accordance with self-love. We hate the truth, so they hide the truth from us. We desire flattery, they flatter us. We like to be deceived, so they deceive us. And there's two things that follow from this that are worth pointing out. A little bit earlier, Pascal talked about there being degrees of self-love and thereby degrees in which we are embroiled within this dynamic. He says, there are different degrees in this aversion to truth, but all may be said to have it in some degree because it is inseparable from self-love. It is part of the nature of self-love. Some people are just more on top of it. There is something that makes it a little bit tougher for us to recognize and to act upon this, and that is social hierarchy. He says, each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us further from truth. Why? Because it's harder to get people to be straightforward and honest with us. If you're a rich person, if you're a powerful person, if you enjoy immense social prestige, as do celebrities, you actually have to work to find people who will tell you things as they really are. Because most people have an interest in making sure they stay on your good side. Less so, he says, for people in lower positions, but that's still a problem. He says, the evil is no doubt greater and more common among the higher classes, but the lower are not exempt from it. Because why? There's always an advantage in making men love us. So, human society, as he says, is founded on mutual deceit, and he's got this telling line. Few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. It's very tough to accept genuine criticism that's on track and well-informed from somebody who we care about, and that stems from this issue of self-love. So we have to be very careful if we want to know the truth about things, not only the truth about ourselves and our qualities and characteristics, but all of our relations with the rest of the world, everything that touches our ego, if we allow this self-love to take over, because it will cut us off from truth.