Is ignorance truly bliss?

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0:01:19 Who hasn’t heard the phrase, ignorance is bliss 1,000 times?
0:01:23 Like all cliches, it sticks because it’s rooted in truth.
0:01:28 But it’s worth asking why ignorance can be so satisfying.
0:01:30 If you read the history of philosophy,
0:01:32 you don’t find all that much interest
0:01:34 in the delights of ignorance.
0:01:38 Instead, you hear a lot about the pursuit of truth,
0:01:42 which is assumed to be a universal human impulse.
0:01:47 As Aristotle famously claimed, all human beings want to know.
0:01:49 And that’s not entirely wrong, of course.
0:01:51 Most of us do want to know.
0:01:54 But denial and avoidance are also human impulses.
0:01:58 Sometimes, they’re even more powerful than our need to know.
0:02:02 These drives, a need to know, and a strong desire never
0:02:05 to find out, are often warring within us,
0:02:07 shaping our worldview, our relationships,
0:02:11 and our self-image, which raises the question,
0:02:14 when is ignorance really bliss?
0:02:15 When isn’t it?
0:02:16 And how can we tell the difference?
0:02:22 I’m Sean Ellen, and this is The Gray Area.
0:02:27 Today’s guest is Mark Lilla.
0:02:30 Mark is a professor of the humanities
0:02:33 at Columbia University and the author of a new book called
0:02:36 Ignorance and Bliss on Wanting Not to Know.
0:02:39 The questions I just asked are the questions Mark
0:02:41 grapples with in this book.
0:02:44 It’s short, elegantly written, and maybe the highest
0:02:47 compliment I can give is that it reads like a book that
0:02:51 could have been written at almost any point in modern history.
0:02:54 What I mean by that is that it’s not reactive to the moment.
0:02:57 It engages one of the oldest questions in philosophy,
0:03:00 to know or not to know, and manages
0:03:04 to offer fresh insights that feel relevant and timeless
0:03:06 at the same time.
0:03:08 So I invited Mark on the show to explore why we accept
0:03:13 and resist the truth and what it means to live in that tension.
0:03:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:03:29 Mark Lilla, welcome to the show.
0:03:32 Good to see you again, Sean.
0:03:33 Likewise.
0:03:37 And it’s great to talk about this lovely book of yours.
0:03:40 Obviously, the book is about our will to know
0:03:42 and our will to not know.
0:03:45 And of course, the book opens with a kind of parody
0:03:49 of Plato’s famous allegory of the cave.
0:03:53 And I think people know the basic story of Plato’s cave.
0:03:58 You have these prisoners who spend their whole life bound
0:04:03 by chains in a cave, looking at shadows being cast on a wall.
0:04:06 And they mistake those shadows for reality,
0:04:11 because it’s the only reality they’ve ever known.
0:04:14 Why don’t you take it from there and just say a bit
0:04:17 about how you play a little bit with that story?
0:04:20 Yeah, well, in Plato’s copyrighted edition
0:04:25 of the story, a stranger comes in and turns
0:04:28 one of the prisoners around so that he realizes
0:04:32 that he’s been living in a world of shadows
0:04:36 and is invited to climb up to the sun,
0:04:39 and then lives up there until he’s
0:04:41 told to come back down and get other people.
0:04:45 In my version of the story, he’s got a little friend
0:04:49 with him, a young boy, who also goes up.
0:04:53 And when it comes time to go back down,
0:04:59 the man tells him he can stay up in staring at the forms
0:05:02 and being in the pure sunlight and seeing what is.
0:05:05 And it turns out he’s desperate to return.
0:05:07 It’s a cold life.
0:05:10 All of his fantasy and imagination have dried up.
0:05:13 He misses his virtual friends.
0:05:16 And eventually he’s taken back down.
0:05:20 And so I start the book saying, it’s an open question
0:05:25 whether coming out into sunlight is a good thing.
0:05:29 So when Plato’s most famous student, Aristotle,
0:05:34 writes that all human beings want to know,
0:05:37 do you think that statement is just very importantly
0:05:41 incomplete, that the impulse to not want to know
0:05:44 is just as strong and maybe just as important?
0:05:46 Yeah, I think it’s incomplete.
0:05:50 And it’s not as if there’s a certain class of people
0:05:54 who are resisting knowledge and we the enlightened do not,
0:05:57 but rather that the struggle to know and not
0:06:00 knows going on in all of us all the time.
0:06:02 And that we ought to be aware of that
0:06:08 and be able to try to sort out when that’s a healthy instinct
0:06:09 and when it’s not.
0:06:12 When is it rational to not know?
0:06:14 Oh, there are all sorts of cases.
0:06:17 A lot of them are trivial.
0:06:18 We wrap presents.
0:06:19 Why do we do that?
0:06:23 Because we want to build the suspense.
0:06:29 Some people don’t want to know the sex of their unborn child
0:06:33 because they want to have a surprise.
0:06:39 We don’t want people to recount the entire plot of a movie
0:06:40 we want to see.
0:06:43 We tell them spoiler alert.
0:06:45 And then there are more serious situations
0:06:49 where we have to think about how to raise children
0:06:56 and when they are prepared to absorb new information
0:07:00 and knowledge and to have certain experiences.
0:07:02 We also have to think about whether there
0:07:09 are healthy taboos in society that there are places where
0:07:12 we try to not have people look in order
0:07:18 that we can somehow keep our society together.
0:07:20 One of the problems you play with a little bit
0:07:25 is that we need to be ignorant.
0:07:28 We want to be ignorant of certain things.
0:07:33 But we also really, really hate to admit our own ignorance.
0:07:37 So we’re constantly playing this game of hide and seek
0:07:38 with ourselves.
0:07:43 That’s a bit of a strange, untenable dance, don’t you think?
0:07:44 It is.
0:07:45 It is.
0:07:48 People don’t want to feel that they’re
0:07:53 insurious in holding things at arm’s distance
0:07:56 and not thinking about them.
0:07:58 And I’m not sure where that comes from.
0:08:00 But certainly it’s the case.
0:08:01 It certainly is the case.
0:08:06 And part of it, I think, is to use a metaphor
0:08:09 that our opinions are not things that we just
0:08:14 have in a bag that we pull out when they need expression.
0:08:18 But rather, they feel like prostheses, like an extra limb.
0:08:24 And if someone refutes our argument or mocks it,
0:08:29 it feels like something quite intimate has been touched.
0:08:35 And so that is an incentive to not admit your ignorance
0:08:38 and to build up all sorts of defenses
0:08:43 and appeal to bogus authorities in order
0:08:48 to remain convinced of your own rational capacities
0:08:51 and your independence.
0:08:54 And so it becomes a kind of perverse thing
0:08:59 where you’re constantly trying to patch things together
0:09:01 to show to yourself and others you understand.
0:09:04 And in the meantime, you can start
0:09:06 pulling in some preposterous things that
0:09:10 become part of your worldview.
0:09:16 Is there a good model of a wisely ignorant person,
0:09:18 a sort of counter-socrates, someone
0:09:21 who climbs the mountain of knowledge
0:09:25 and says once they reach the peak, you know what?
0:09:28 I like it better down there in the cave or in the matrix
0:09:31 or whatever metaphor one prefers.
0:09:34 Is that ever a justifiable position?
0:09:36 I think you’re leaving out an option.
0:09:40 And that option is something that Socrates explores
0:09:43 in the other platonic dialogues, which
0:09:47 is learning from your own ignorance.
0:09:54 That is to recognize that you’re genuinely and generally
0:09:55 ignorant about things.
0:09:59 And to continue inquiring with the understanding
0:10:01 of what you come up with is tentative.
0:10:04 Especially right now, we live in a world where we’re more
0:10:07 and more aware of the uncertainty of our knowledge
0:10:10 because things change so quickly.
0:10:15 It was very striking to me during COVID just how frustrated
0:10:19 people seem to be by the fact that the public health
0:10:22 authorities kept changing their advice.
0:10:25 First, they said it was all about washing your hands.
0:10:29 And then they said it was all about masks and so on.
0:10:30 They get angry about that.
0:10:33 But that’s the way science works.
0:10:34 But people don’t like to live that way.
0:10:37 They like to hear from an authority
0:10:39 that this is what you do.
0:10:42 They want a doctor who doesn’t hem and haw
0:10:45 and doesn’t constantly change the meds and say,
0:10:47 let’s try this, let’s try that.
0:10:49 It’s very destabilizing.
0:10:52 And so I think we have a yearning
0:10:55 to live standing on solid ground.
0:10:58 But we don’t stand on solid ground.
0:11:00 Part of what made Socrates so annoying
0:11:02 is that he went around pretending not to know anything,
0:11:06 yet undercutting everyone else’s claims to knowledge.
0:11:08 So there is that.
0:11:12 But he also says that the unexamined life isn’t worth living.
0:11:15 I think if anyone knows a line from Socrates, it’s that one.
0:11:17 And that’s fine up to a point.
0:11:19 But I would also say, and I don’t know
0:11:24 if you would say this as well, that a life that’s nothing
0:11:26 but examined is equally unworthy,
0:11:31 that there’s more to life than knowing and understanding.
0:11:32 Do you agree with that?
0:11:34 Oh, I do.
0:11:37 Yeah, if by that you mean that certain things in our lives
0:11:42 we need to take for granted, that’s for sure.
0:11:44 I mean, when you think about parental love,
0:11:46 and not just with young children,
0:11:49 I mean, if you were really convinced
0:11:51 that every morning your parents wake up
0:11:53 and have a working hypothesis
0:11:56 of whether they love you or not,
0:11:58 whether you’re lovable or not,
0:12:02 that would be very destabilizing to feel.
0:12:05 And it would keep us from establishing bonds
0:12:09 that presume that the bonds will continue.
0:12:11 You know, Socrates said the unexamined life
0:12:12 is not worth living.
0:12:15 He did not say that the thoroughly examined life
0:12:17 is worth living or that it was livable.
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0:15:48 (gentle music)
0:15:58 – I think everyone knows the dictum knowledge is power.
0:16:00 And I think that’s sensible enough, right?
0:16:01 You can do a lot of things in the world
0:16:03 if you know and understand.
0:16:11 Do you think that ignorance also has a kind of power?
0:16:13 That maybe we overlook?
0:16:17 – Yeah, I began the book with a quotation
0:16:21 from George Eliot’s novel, Daniel Deronda,
0:16:25 saying that we thought a lot about the power of knowledge,
0:16:28 but we haven’t thought about the power of ignorance.
0:16:31 And what she means there in the novel
0:16:35 is the power of people who are ignorant
0:16:39 to mess things up in life.
0:16:43 That it’s a kind of social force out there.
0:16:46 And I think which is certainly the case.
0:16:49 But ignorance is also power
0:16:56 if not knowing certain things
0:16:58 or leaving certain things unexamined,
0:17:04 permit you to, in fact, continue in your life
0:17:09 and not be paralyzed.
0:17:13 I use an example at the beginning of the book
0:17:16 what would happen if we each had an LED screen
0:17:19 on our embedded in our foreheads
0:17:22 and we could read the thoughts of everyone around us.
0:17:25 I mean, social life would grind to a halt
0:17:30 because you can’t control your thoughts, right?
0:17:33 You control what you say.
0:17:36 And we would constantly be looking
0:17:38 to see how people are thinking about us
0:17:42 and we could never develop a stable sense of ourselves.
0:17:45 And so we need not to know what other people think about us
0:17:49 even if we’re going to live a philosophical life.
0:17:53 – There are lots of people who are willfully ignorant
0:17:56 and there are lots of people who are ignorant
0:17:58 of their ignorance.
0:18:03 But then there’s this other species of cynicism
0:18:06 you talk about in the book
0:18:10 that knowingly exploits ignorance.
0:18:15 And historically that has been a potent source
0:18:17 of political power.
0:18:22 I mean, is this just an eternal challenge for society?
0:18:27 – Yes, and the reason is one reason
0:18:32 is that people need certainty
0:18:35 and they will demand it.
0:18:40 And so political leaders, demagogues in particular
0:18:43 can provide simple answers to things
0:18:48 that seem very complicated
0:18:53 and that stir people in a way that can be directed.
0:18:58 That’s classically how a demagogue works
0:19:02 and how a demagogue becomes a tyrant.
0:19:06 And so especially now,
0:19:10 I’m not surprised that we’re facing
0:19:15 the kind of aggressive ignorance
0:19:20 among populists and those who are moved by populists
0:19:26 because making sense of things right now
0:19:28 is just very difficult
0:19:32 because we just don’t know various things
0:19:34 because our experience is so new.
0:19:36 For example, what do you do about the fact
0:19:41 that the state of any nation’s economy
0:19:46 depends on an international economy
0:19:51 and that no country has a say, full say,
0:19:54 in how that international economy operates
0:19:58 and it will continue to affect everyone in every country.
0:20:00 So it’s hard to accept the fact
0:20:04 that our political leaders do not control the economy.
0:20:08 And so you go to whoever says he’s the answer man
0:20:10 or she says she’s the answer woman.
0:20:16 And so it’s very hard to confront the present
0:20:21 with an open mind and a very sense of the tentativeness
0:20:22 of how you understand it.
0:20:25 – You know, there’s a deep philosophical question
0:20:26 lurking in all this.
0:20:28 And the question is,
0:20:32 what is the actual point of knowledge?
0:20:35 Do we want knowledge for the sake of knowledge
0:20:39 because it’s inherently good
0:20:43 or is knowledge only valuable if it’s useful?
0:20:45 And if knowing something isn’t useful
0:20:46 or if it’s even worse than that,
0:20:48 if knowing something is actually painful,
0:20:51 why would we want to know it?
0:20:56 – The question that you’re asking for me,
0:20:59 at least in the book,
0:21:02 is really a question of different kinds of human characters.
0:21:07 There are some people who simply something quickens within
0:21:12 when the opportunity of new knowledge presents itself.
0:21:18 And so why the soul responds like that is a mystery.
0:21:25 And Socrates tells various myths about why that might be,
0:21:27 but it just seems to be a fact.
0:21:28 And not everyone has it.
0:21:31 – Do you think there’s anything worth knowing
0:21:32 regardless of the cost?
0:21:39 – Self-knowledge can be harmful if it’s partial
0:21:46 or if just the way you are is such that
0:21:50 one of your failings or limitations
0:21:55 is that you’re paralyzed if something in you unpleasant,
0:21:58 is revealed.
0:22:01 That’s the story of Augustine in the Confessions
0:22:02 at the moment where he says,
0:22:05 “God ripped off the back of me,”
0:22:08 which was this other face and everything
0:22:09 that everyone else could see.
0:22:12 I couldn’t and holds it in front of me and I see myself.
0:22:14 And in that moment, I’m so horrified
0:22:18 that something clicks and I give myself over, right?
0:22:20 And so there could be limits to that.
0:22:25 But Socrates assumes that all self-knowledge
0:22:27 is in the end going to be helpful
0:22:32 because you are now clear to yourself
0:22:37 and that knowing itself makes people good.
0:22:42 That once you know the power of your ignorance
0:22:46 is no longer holding you, so it just goes poof.
0:22:50 And now you are in the driver’s seat.
0:22:51 And-
0:22:52 Do you think that’s true?
0:22:53 I’m not sure.
0:22:54 I don’t think that’s true.
0:22:55 I don’t think that’s true.
0:23:00 And so it’s hard to believe whether Socrates,
0:23:01 whether he thought that.
0:23:06 And the reason is that the way he deals with other people
0:23:08 in the Platonic Dialogues,
0:23:11 you see that he has a lot of knowledge
0:23:13 about how people fall short of that.
0:23:15 Yeah, I could definitely make a case
0:23:16 or I could see a case being made
0:23:18 for always wanting to know.
0:23:22 You know, abstract truths
0:23:25 and truths about the external world.
0:23:27 But when it comes to self-knowledge,
0:23:28 sometimes when you peer in word,
0:23:31 what you find is that you’re just a bundle
0:23:32 of contradictions that can’t be squared.
0:23:35 And I’m not sure it’s necessarily good
0:23:38 to be intimately acquainted with that
0:23:40 and to get hung up on that.
0:23:42 There is one way in which it is,
0:23:44 and that’s the Montaigne option.
0:23:46 You know, the picture Montaigne gives of us
0:23:49 in the essays is that we’re exactly what you just said.
0:23:53 And his advice is live with it.
0:23:54 Just go with it.
0:23:56 You’re a contradiction.
0:23:58 I think that’s easier said than done.
0:24:01 But perhaps still wise, but easier said than done.
0:24:06 But do you think there is a link,
0:24:09 maybe even a necessary link
0:24:11 between self-knowledge and knowledge
0:24:13 of the external world?
0:24:15 In other words, on some level,
0:24:17 do we have to know ourselves
0:24:21 in order to know the truth about the world outside ourselves?
0:24:24 – I can think of a couple of answers to that.
0:24:26 I’m not sure which one would be mine.
0:24:30 One is that these things are detachable.
0:24:33 You know, if you meet scientists or,
0:24:37 you know, I remember spending a year
0:24:39 at the Institute for Advanced Study,
0:24:42 and I would sometimes go and sit in this place
0:24:46 where the scientists and mathematicians were.
0:24:50 And you could tell these people just had no self-awareness
0:24:53 in terms of how people reacted to them.
0:24:55 Perhaps they were just wrapped up in their problems
0:24:58 and they were discovering things.
0:25:03 On the other hand, one barrier to us
0:25:08 in knowing things about the world
0:25:12 is to know what constitutes knowing.
0:25:14 And that requires an analysis of ourselves.
0:25:17 So self-knowledge in the sense of knowledge
0:25:19 of the human animal.
0:25:21 And then the third sense,
0:25:24 while not strictly necessary,
0:25:27 the exercise of trying to know oneself
0:25:30 is a kind of training exercise
0:25:34 for inquiring about the world outside.
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0:28:08 (gentle music)
0:28:21 – I do want to talk a bit about nostalgia
0:28:23 before we get out of here,
0:28:27 which you’ve written about, we’ve spoken about before.
0:28:31 And I think a conversation about knowledge and ignorance
0:28:34 is also a conversation about nostalgia.
0:28:37 The truth is we can’t unsee what we’ve seen,
0:28:40 though we can, I guess, repress and delude ourselves.
0:28:41 I think my question to you is,
0:28:45 at what point in our journey of knowledge,
0:28:48 as individuals and societies,
0:28:50 are we overtaken by nostalgia?
0:28:53 At what point are we just longing to go back
0:28:57 to a previous time when we didn’t know what we now know?
0:29:01 – When it comes to whole societies being nostalgic,
0:29:07 I think that it has to do two things.
0:29:12 One is illegibility, if I can put it that way.
0:29:15 And that is when the world becomes illegible,
0:29:17 the present becomes illegible.
0:29:20 That means you don’t know how to act.
0:29:24 And if you don’t know how to act,
0:29:28 it’s deeply disturbing because you want to be able,
0:29:31 that’s the second point, to control your environment
0:29:35 and control things so you can reach your own ends.
0:29:39 And so a dissatisfaction with the present
0:29:43 and an absence of knowledge about how to improve things
0:29:48 are spurs to imagine that just as
0:29:52 being eight years old seemed less complicated
0:29:56 and easier than being 68 years old,
0:30:01 that there was a time when life was ordered in a better way
0:30:07 in which we knew less about various things
0:30:10 or certain changes hadn’t happened.
0:30:15 And maybe we can reverse the machine
0:30:17 or reverse the train.
0:30:23 That desire to go back, even on the more individual
0:30:26 psychological level, there’s always a connection
0:30:30 between individual and the social manifestations here.
0:30:34 But it’s part of the reason why we romanticize childhood
0:30:38 so much, it’s that innocence, it’s the simplicity,
0:30:41 it’s the freedom from anxieties,
0:30:44 it’s the freedom to be ignorant and happy
0:30:46 without judgment or guilt.
0:30:49 I mean, I think maybe the most beautiful thing
0:30:54 about my five-year-old son is precisely this kind of freedom.
0:31:01 He’s not a self competing for status among other selves.
0:31:05 He is ignorant of all the posturing and insecurities
0:31:09 that come with being a fully self-conscious person
0:31:11 in a social world.
0:31:17 I realize we cannot remain in that state of ignorance forever.
0:31:21 But surely there’s a lot to learn from it.
0:31:23 – What do you think is to be learned from it?
0:31:27 I’d be interested to hear you elaborate on that.
0:31:31 – I think there’s something to be learned about happiness
0:31:36 that there are real things in the world
0:31:38 about which to be anxious and insecure.
0:31:40 And there are many, many more things
0:31:42 that we conjure up in our minds
0:31:47 because of our own neuroses and pathologies and anxieties.
0:31:51 And to the extent we can be free of that,
0:31:54 and to the extent we can be like children,
0:31:58 which is to say, just be present in the world
0:32:02 moment to moment without any real concerns
0:32:05 about the past or the future.
0:32:08 I think we’re better for that.
0:32:12 And of course, you have to be responsible
0:32:14 and you have to take accountability, right?
0:32:16 You can’t be the child forever.
0:32:20 But surely there’s some tension between those polls
0:32:22 that we can live in.
0:32:23 – See, I don’t think you can.
0:32:25 And the reason you can’t–
0:32:26 – Not even a little bit, do you know what I’m thinking?
0:32:29 – No, but what you can preserve is something else.
0:32:32 But the very fact that you were able to describe it
0:32:36 means that you’re past it, right?
0:32:37 That you’re a–
0:32:38 – Well, shit.
0:32:41 – Yeah, I mean, you’re aware of Knight.
0:32:45 The child doesn’t know that he’s Knight, right?
0:32:47 But what I do take from what you say
0:32:52 is that it can get you refocused on,
0:32:59 yeah, on being more in the moment,
0:33:05 perhaps not trying to control your life so much
0:33:08 and to let things happen and to take opportunities
0:33:13 for play, just play and how healthy it is.
0:33:16 – Play in a sense of awe and discovery,
0:33:19 which we tend to lose as we move through the world,
0:33:22 you know, year after year after year,
0:33:24 that sense of freshness and awe dissipates.
0:33:30 And to the extent we can still grab ahold of that instinct,
0:33:31 I think it’s useful.
0:33:34 – Yeah, well, the first thing with play,
0:33:36 certainly it’s something that’s totally absent
0:33:40 from play to an Aristotle and the philosophers
0:33:43 until they come to Montaigne,
0:33:46 where he reflects at various points about play
0:33:48 and he famously says, so what is it?
0:33:51 Am I playing with my cat or is my cat playing with me?
0:33:55 But for me, there’s a difference between adult wonder
0:33:59 and a childlike wonder.
0:34:05 We’re trying to think myself back
0:34:07 into a child or just observing children
0:34:12 that when novelty affects them, wow, here’s something new.
0:34:22 And so a lot of it has to do with that,
0:34:24 but they don’t walk away with warm feelings
0:34:27 about our wonderful world.
0:34:30 They just, new things happen and they get excited about them
0:34:32 and you see their smiles
0:34:34 and they’re running around the room.
0:34:39 But with us, the wonder, at least for me,
0:34:42 is tinged with knowledge
0:34:46 that everything in the world is not wonderful.
0:34:51 And so when you have these epiphanic moments of wonder,
0:34:57 it’s the contrast between that and our daily lives
0:35:01 that seems like manna from heaven when it happens.
0:35:06 – I do wonder as we kind of careen towards the end here,
0:35:09 what the upshot of all this thinking and writing
0:35:11 was for you personally?
0:35:15 We’ve already sort of gone in a personal direction.
0:35:17 But I mean, have you changed your relationship
0:35:22 to your own ignorance as a result of this project?
0:35:25 – I would hope so, I would hope so.
0:35:30 I think I have a better understanding of what philosophy is
0:35:32 and what philosophy can do.
0:35:33 – What is the answer to that?
0:35:36 What is it that philosophy can and can’t do?
0:35:41 – That philosophy that is aware of our ignorance
0:35:43 is a step forward.
0:35:48 The greatest cognitive achievement of human beings
0:35:50 is getting to maybe.
0:35:53 – I like that.
0:35:54 I’m gonna leave it right there.
0:35:58 Once again, the book is called “Ignorance and Bliss.”
0:36:00 Mark Lilla, always a pleasure, my friend.
0:36:01 Thanks for coming in.
0:36:02 – Thanks so much, Sean.
0:36:10 – All right, friends, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
0:36:12 You already know I did.
0:36:16 But as always, you know we wanna know what you think.
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0:36:35 This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey,
0:36:38 edited by Jorge Just,
0:36:40 engineered by Christian Ayala,
0:36:42 fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch,
0:36:44 and Alex O’Brington wrote our theme music.
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