Weil's Wager
Blaise Pascal's you've heard of. Here is Simone Weil's. Roman numerals in brackets refer to endnotes.
An intriguing argument
In her New York Notebook from 1942, Simone Weil presents an argument which she claims “…is greatly preferable to Pascal’s wager.”[i] One of her commentators agrees, finding her argument “obviously both morally and intellectually” superior to Pascal’s.[ii] I will call this argument “Weil’s Wager.” As far as I know, it has yet to be subjected to a close examination. The argument runs as follows:
If we put obedience to God above everything else, unreservedly, with the following thought: “Suppose God is real, then our gain is total – even though we fall into nothingness at the moment of death; suppose the word “God” stands only for illusions, then we have still lost nothing because on this assumption there is absolutely nothing good, and consequently nothing to lose; we have even gained, through being in accord with truth, because we have left aside the illusory goods which exist but are not good for the sake of something which (on this assumption) does not exist but which, if it did exist, would be the only good…”
If one follows this rule of life, then no revelation at the moment of death can cause any regrets; because if chance or the devil govern all worlds we would still have no regrets for having lived in this way.[iii]
Weil’s thought seems to be this. If I live a worldly life, then I live in pursuit of illusions, and so exclude myself from the truth. If I live an unworldly life, renouncing illusory goods, then I live in the truth, even if God and the soul are both unreal. Thus I cannot lose: If I opt for the unworldly life, and God and the soul do not exist, then I win, for I have lived in the truth. I also win if God and the soul do exist. For then I get to enjoy God for all eternity. So I cannot fail to win by choosing the unworldly life. On the other hand, I cannot fail to lose by choosing the worldly life. For whether or not God and the soul exist, the worldly live in illusion. They chase after phantom goods that cannot last and cannot ultimately satisfy while mistakenly thinking that they do last and can ultimately satisfy. Weil’s Wager thus appears to be a bet one cannot lose.
The argument reconstructed
To evaluate Weil’s argument, it will help to set it forth in aseptic detail:
1. The goods of this life are illusory.
2. Either God is illusory or He is real.
3. If God is illusory, then, by living the life of unreserved faith in and devotion to God, we lose nothing. For if both the goods of this life and God, the absolute good, are unreal, then there is nothing of value to lose.
On the other hand,
4. If God is real, then either we survive bodily death, or we do not.
5. If God is real, and we survive, then our gain from living the life of unreserved faith and devotion is total.
6. If God is real, and we do not survive, then our gain is also total. For we have not lost anything real that we could have gained. Worldly goods are not real, and God beyond the grave is not something we can gain unless we survive.
Therefore,
7. Whether God exists or not, and whether the soul exists or not, we have nothing to lose from the life of unreserved faith in and devotion to God.
The argument’s internal incoherence
What are we to say of this argument? Clearly, its crucial premise is the first, according to which the goods of this life are illusory. Many will reject this premise out of hand, and the argument with it. But even if one accepts the first premise, as I am inclined to do, subject to certain qualifications, the argument suffers from a fatal defect.
It is this defect I want to focus on, not the question of the truth of the first premise. The problem is that the argument is internally incoherent in that premise (1) and conclusion (7) cannot both be true. This is because the truth of the initial premise presupposes, first, that God, or the absolute good, [iv] exists, and second, that it is possible for us to participate in the absolute good, where such participation requires survival of bodily death.
What I will argue, then, is that the transient goods of this life can be justifiably claimed to be illusory only if God exists and we survive bodily death. If this is right, then the initial premise of Weil’s Wager, (1) above), is inconsistent with (7), the argument’s conclusion.
If the initial premise is true, then God, the absolute good, must exist
In Gravity and Grace, we read that “Things of the senses are real if they are considered as perceptible things, but unreal if considered as goods.”[v] I am inclined to accept this claim, resonating as it does with my Platonic sense of things. But if worldly goods (pleasure, property, pelf, progeny, power, name and fame, and the like) are unreal or illusory goods, not worthy of pursuit by the spiritually serious, they are such only by comparison with a standard of true and absolute good. For worldly goods, whether instrumentally good or good in themselves, are surely relatively real goods. No one can reasonably deny that food, shelter, clothing, and the like are relatively real goods, as relatively real and relatively satisfactory as the human life they make possible. Their undeniable contingency and impermanence does not argue their utter nonentity or lack of value. For example, in a half-hour, I am going to take a break and enjoy a good lunch. No one, I take it, will want to deny that wholesome meals are relatively real and relatively satisfactory. The illusion comes in when one seeks ultimate reality and absolute satisfaction in things like food and drink. People who live to eat we rightly take to be metaphysically deluded and spiritually dead. And we have our doubts about the spiritual depth of people who say things like, ‘The moussaka at The Mad Greek is to die for.’ To the spiritually sane, that sort of talk betrays an idolatrous over-valuation of a mere comestible. To put the point in general terms: illusion comes in when one attempts to satisfy the infinite desire of the human heart with finite objects.
To be sustainable, Weil’s point in the passage quoted above must be reformulated as follows: Things of the senses are unreal goods if (and only if) they are measured against absolutely real goods. Thus it is only relative to a standard of absolute good that we can justifiably say that worldly or sensible goods are illusory. The illusion would then consist in the confusion of what is relatively good with the absolute good. Apart from such a standard, there could be no justification for considering the things of the senses to be unreal as goods. Absent an absolute standard, the things of the senses are as real as it gets and as good as it gets.
Could the absolute standard be a projection by us or must it exist in itself?
A crucial question now arises concerning the ontological status of the absolute standard. Is the standard something we impose or project upon the world, or is it something independent of our thought and desire which imposes itself upon us? Does the absolute standard derive from a demand we make upon the world, or does the absolute standard make a demand upon us, namely, the demand that we not fall into idolatry and worship as absolutely good what is only relatively good? When Simone Weil judges that the goods of this world are illusory, is she merely imposing a demand on the world, a demand that is nowhere satisfied, but somehow ought to be satisfied, or is she (tacitly) recognizing a standard that actually exists independently of us, and that, as actually existent, satisfies its own demand? If God, the absolute good, exists, then God not only is the absolute standard, but also uniquely satisfies this standard. God sets a standard that He alone meets. And because God alone meets the standard he sets, everything other than God is ontologically derivative and axiologically substandard.
The question, then, is this: Is it failure to meet a nonexistent, merely excogitated, or projected, standard that renders the goods of this world illusory, or is it their failure to meet an existent standard that consigns them to illusory status? Either way we answer this question, problems arise for Weil’s argument.
The absolute standard cannot have the status of a human demand
Suppose we say that the absolute standard is merely a demand we make with no ontological backing, or whose only ontological backing is the contingent fact of our desire, a desire that longs for permanent and total satisfaction but cannot find in any finite object. Then the question arises as to what could justify this demand. It is clear that not every demand we make is justified. We may demand that turkeys fly around ready-roasted for our convenience, but the universe is not likely to put our culinary convenience high on its list of desiderata. Reasonable people soon learn not to make unreasonable demands.
Now the demand that the goods of this life be absolutely good on pain of being illusory is not a silly and arbitrary demand like the one for ready-roasted turkeys: it springs from a deep sense, one shared by the greatest of philosophers and sages from Buddha to Plato to Augustine to Schopenhauer, that the goods of this life are unsatisfactory (dukkha) because impermanent (anicca) and insubstantial (anatta). They don’t satisfy us because they don’t last and they lack self-nature. Thus the demand in question is not one that springs from the whimsy of a maladjusted individual, which is what many worldlings will take our dear Simone to be, but a demand that reflects a deep longing of the best of us. We long for a satisfaction that no finite object can provide. This longing is nothing arbitrary, but arguably something built into the very intentional structure of desiderative awareness. Nevertheless, the demand that originates in this deep longing might still be an impossible demand, one that cannot be satisfied.
I claim that the demand in question is impossible of fulfillment if God or the absolute good does not exist. But God does not exist if God is metaphysically contingent. Anselm of Canterbury’s great insight was that God cannot be a contingent being. God is the metaphysical absolute, and a metaphysical absolute is not the sort of entity that could exist contingently. So if God exists, he exists necessarily, and if He does not exist, then He is impossible. But this is not the case with us contingent beings and our desires and demands. Our desires demands are as contingent as we are. It follows that the absolute standard of Being and Value cannot be identified with any demand or desire or exigency of ours. It must exist in itself.
In sum, either God exists or God does not exist. If God exists, then (1) is true, but (7) does not follow and the argument is unsound because logically invalid. But if God does not exist, then (1) is false and the argument is unsound because of the falsity of its initial premise.
We must be able to participate in the absolute good
It is also important to see that Weil’s demand on worldly goods (that they be absolutely satisfactory on pain of being illusory) is fictitious and without justification on the assumption that we do not survive bodily death. For if God, the absolute good, exists, but we do not survive, then we cannot enjoy the absolute good in the sort of unending way that alone could satisfy our infinite desire. An infinite desire cannot be satisfied by a fleeting glimpse of an infinite good such as can be vouchsafed to some of us here below in mystical experience; such a desire requires for its satisfaction unending enjoyment. It is also not enough that some of us catch a glimpse while in the body since that would leave most of us out in the cold. It is necessary that all of us survive our bodily deaths. So it is not enough that God, the absolute good, exists; this good must also be enjoyable by all of us for all eternity if the characterization of worldly goods as illusory is to be justifiable.
If we do not survive, and hence cannot enjoy the absolute good, then the absolute good is out of all relation to us, which implies that there is no justifiable sense in which it could be called “good.” For although it would be a serious mistake to identify the good with what is desired, as Richard Taylor does when he writes that “The original goodness of something consists simply in its being desired…,”[vi] it is equally a mistake to divorce the good from desire. Although x’s satisfying desire does not entail x’s being good, it is surely the case that x’s being good entails x’s being possibly such as to satisfying desire. Thus there is a necessary connection between the good and the (actual or possible) satisfaction of desire. Nothing can be said to be good unless it is possible that there be someone for whom it is good, someone whose desire it satisfies. The property of being good is thus a relational property, involving as it does a relation between an object desired and one who desires.
It is essential to realize, however, that this relativity of the good to the satisfaction of desire/need is thoroughly consistent with the objectivity of the good. This is because the property of being good is grounded in objective properties of the object and of the subject of desire/need. Water is good for humans because of their need for it, a need based in their physical constitution, and in its physical constitution. Something similar can be said of God. God is good for humans because of their need for God, a need based in their metaphysical constitution. We are so constituted that our desire for the good cannot be satisfied by any finite good, any collection of finite goods, or even an endless serial enjoyment of finite goods. Thus even if we were to end up after death in a carnal Islamic paradise stocked with an inexhaustible supply of black-eyed virgins, etc., and an endless future in which to enjoy them, the best of us would still not be satisfied.[vii] An infinite desire can only be satisfied by an infinite object, God. This need for God is an objective need that exists whether or not we are aware of it as a need for God.
Is Weil’s Wager morally superior to Pascal’s?
We conclude by considering whether Weil’s Wager is “morally superior” to Pascal’s Wager, having seen that it cannot be “intellectually superior.” Presumably, the reason to think Weil’s Wager morally superior is that it is in no way motivated by self-interest. In Pascal’s Wager, the ‘bettor’ weighs the possible ‘pay-off’ for himself on the two courses of action. The whole thing is driven by self-interest, if not a crass and petty interest in one’s lower self and its perpetuation, then an interest in a higher destiny in which the lower self will be transformed. In Weil’s Wager, however, self-interest of any sort is entirely absent: the bettor’s only aim is to live in accordance with the impersonal truth that all finite goods are illusory even if such a life issues in no benefit whatsoever for the bettor either here or hereafter.
But although Weil’s disinterest may appear morally superior to Pascal’s self-interest, I would say that the former is merely an example of a perverse strain in Weil’s thinking. One mistake she makes is to drive a wedge between the question of the good and the question of human happiness, thereby breaking the necessary linkage between the two. This is a mistake because a good out of all relation to the satisfaction of human desire cannot count as a good for us. What “good” is a good out of all relation to our self-interest? The absolute good must be at least possibly such as to satisfy (purified) human desire. The possibility of such satisfaction is a necessary feature of the absolute good. Otherwise, the absolute good could not be an ideal for us, an object of aspiration or reverence, a norm. But although the absolute good is ideal relative to us, it is real in itself. Once these two aspects (ideal for us, real in itself) are distinguished, it is easy to see how the absoluteness of the absolute good is consistent with its necessary relatedness to the possibility of human happiness. What makes the absolute good absolute is not its being out of all relation to the actual or possible satisfaction of human desire; what makes it absolute is its being self-existent, a reality in itself. The absolute good, existing absolutely (ab solus, a se), is absolute in its existence without prejudice to its being necessarily related to us in its goodness. If God is (agapic) love, then God necessarily bestows His love on any creatures he happens to create. It is not necessary that there be creatures, but it is necessary that God love the creatures that there are and that they find their final good in Him.
But not only does Weil divorce the absolute good from the possibility of human happiness, she also makes a second mistake by divorcing it from existence. Thus we read:
If God should be an illusion from the point of view of existence, He is the sole reality from the point of view of the good. I know that for certain, because it is a definition. “God is the good” is as certain as “I am.”[viii]
But this is surely incoherent: God cannot be a reality if He does not exist. At most, a nonexistent God could only be an empty and impotent ideal, not a reality but a mere cogitatum, or excogitatum, if you will. To say that a nonexistent God is yet a reality from the point of view of the good is to divorce the good from what exists, while misusing the word “reality.” And although it is certain that “God is the good,” this is a merely analytic truth consistent with the nonexistence of God. As such, “God is the good” is wholly unlike “I am,” the truth of which is obviously not consistent with my nonexistence.
In divorcing the good from existence, Weil makes the opposite mistake of Richard Taylor. Taylor identifies the good with what is desired, thereby collapsing ought into is and eliminating the normativity of the good. Weil, sundering the good from desire, cuts it off from everything that exists thereby exalting the normativity and ideality of the good while rendering it impotent. The truth of the matter is that God, the absolute good, is a unity of ideality and reality. As a real Ideal, the absolute good cannot be identified with any mundane fact; as an ideal Reality, the absolute good must exist.
So although there may be no trace of self-interest in Weil’s Wager, this gives us no reason to suppose it morally superior to Pascal’s Wager. For the very absence of self-interest shows that Weil’s Wager is built upon an incoherent moral doctrine.
NOTES
[i]. Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks, trans. Richard Rees (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 157.
[ii]. Richard Rees, Simone Weil: A Sketch for a Portrait (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966), p. 105.
[iii]. Weil, op. cit., p. 157.
[iv]. Following Weil, “God” and “the absolute good” will be used interchangeably throughout this paper. It is of course not self-evident that the absolute good should be identified with God, but this is a question that will not be taken up on this occasion.
[v]. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. E. Craufurd (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 45.
[vi]. Richard Taylor, Good and Evil: A New Direction (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), p. 14.
[vii]. Of course, an Islamic luminary such as al-Ghazali is far from any such crude and popular conception of paradise.
[viii]. Simone Weil, New York Notebook, quoted from Rees, op. cit., p. 104.