HoP 497 Pure and Simple: Quietism

Peter Adamson· Host0:00

[classical music] Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to The History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Pure and Simple: Quietism. French writers living under Louis XIV seem to have had quite a bleak view of human nature. They saw hypocrisy as not merely widespread, but inevitable. We are creatures driven by relentless self-interest, who nonetheless want to be seen as altruistic and generous. Self-love is part of being human, but it's also all too human to want to conceal this selfishness from others and even from oneself. As we've seen, their grim assessment of the human condition had a powerful religious background. Most of the figures we've been discussing were somehow connected to Jansenism, which insisted on the wickedness of humans so as to demonstrate the need for divine grace. Yet the thinkers of this time who most emphatically insisted that self-love can be eliminated were also driven by faith. They were the quietists, radical optimists who believed in the possibility of a pure love for others and, in particular, for God. But there was a catch. In quietism, eliminating self-love meant abandoning the