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Ignorance is Bliss | Meaning | Expansion of Proverb | Short Essay

January 10, 2018 by Study Mentor 1 Comment

‘Ignorance is bliss’ is a phrase first said by the famous British poet, Thomas Gray. The proverb first appeared in Thomas Gray’s poem, ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ in which he said that, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

According to Cambridge Dictionary the proverb ‘Ignorance is bliss’ is, ‘said to emphasize that sometimes it is better for you if you do not know all the facts about a situation’ What it simply means is that in certain situations, lack of knowledge pertaining to that situation results in happiness and comfort.

‘Ignorance’ is the absence of knowledge and ‘bliss’ is absolute happiness. There are situations in life in which if a person is ignorant about certain things, she would live a happier, more blissful life.

Let’s take the example of a fish. A fish has no consciousness of land. It blissfully goes on swimming in the water, unaware of the existence of land. If it knew that there is something other than water, it would want to go there. But, the fish doesn’t know that it will not be able to survive out of water.

When it goes there, it will die. Therefore, until it remains unaware about the existence of land, it will live its life happily. If it is aware of the existence of the land, it will naturally want to go there. If it doesn’t, it will never be able to live a life of content and satisfaction.

Parents often protect their children from the truths of life. They don’t let their children become aware about the harsh realities of life. For example, a parent who is poor and does not have food to eat will often give the small amount of food that she can get to her children.

She will not let the child know about her own empty stomach and put up a happy face in front of her child. She does this so that the child can have a happy childhood, like children should. As a parent, she would naturally not want her child to be burdened with the family’s financial problems.

Even when you grow up, you cannot claim that you know about all the problems that your parents faced when you were little. Parents tend to protect their children, so that children can have a happy life.

Imagine if a child was made aware of all the problems that not only the parents, but the society was facing, like wars, epidemics, etc., would the child be happy? Would she still have her innocence? Ignorance, therefore for children, is bliss.

This is further illustrated in the story of Oedipus. Oedipus was a King, who wanted to find a solution to the plague that was creating havoc in the nation. For this, the Prophet asked him to find the murderer of his predecessor, King Laius. Thus, King Oedipus started the investigation to find the killer of King Laius.

This investigation led to many troubles. Many new truths were uncovered. Queen Jacosta, his wife and King Laius’s previous wife and the Shepherd urged King Oedipus to stop this investigation. But, Oedipus carried on. He was too curious to know the truth.

This ultimately led to his own downfall. He quest for knowledge led to uncovering of the truth. It was this truth that destroyed his life. One wonders, What if he never became aware of the truth? Maybe, he still would be king.

Maybe, he would never have to suffer like he did. Probably, the end result would have been different if he was ignorant to his life’s truths. The more he uncovered the truth, the more he became nearer to his own demise. Ignorance truly would have been bliss.

In the famous mythical tale of Adam and Eve, Eve the first woman ate the apple from the tree of knowledge when God had specifically asked Adam not to. After eating the apple, Adam and Eve became aware of all worldly knowledge but along with it came the shame of knowing that they disobeyed God’s orders.

It is their curiosity that led to this. If they were not curious to eat those red apples, it would not have led to such consequences. Therefore, if they did not have knowledge, they would be much happier and satisfied in their own paradise. Thus, Adam and Eve would have been in bliss if they were ignorant. Isn’t it true? If we forgot all our painful memories, wouldn’t we be happy?

Not all people agree with this view. For example, not knowing may lead to embarrassment. A person may be unaware of their spouse cheating on them. Because they don’t know, they would be happy. But, this is detrimental for them. If other people were aware of the cheating spouse, it would lead to embarrassment for that person.

Besides, that person, if unaware, would continue to be in a relationship with that cheating spouse. Would that be a good thing? That person deserves better. Having the knowledge of the cheating spouse will be painful. It will hurt a lot. But, in the need, it will only benefit that person as they will leave that spouse and be careful of people in the future so that they are not cheated on again.

If Jonas Salk, the famous scientist who invented and developed the first vaccine for polio would have been ignorant, the world would still be rampant with polio. Yes, if he was unaware of the suffering and sadness caused by polio he would have been happier. But, would that happiness be real? Jonas Salk was not ignorant. Instead, he started studying the disease of polio and gaining knowledge about it.

Consequently, after studying and experimenting, he became successful and developing a vaccine. It was difficult, but he did it. This vaccine helped later generations to prevent polio and ultimately led to its gradual extinction. Without knowledge, the humankind wouldn’t have developed and benefited.

Even if there is pain and hurt, if people braved it and would be able to survive through it, wouldn’t they emerge stronger and better. Thus, it is bliss that would be detrimental to the person and not pain. If a person braves her fear, she would emerge stronger.

Another example is the example of the father of our nation Mahatma Gandhi . If he had no knowledge of the pain and suffering that his own people went through, he wouldn’t have worked hard and inspired an entire nation to fight for their rights and gain freedom.

In fact, before launching his movement on a national scale, Mahatma Gandhi travelled through many parts of India, just to gain knowledge of the suffering that millions of his fellow countrywomen and men were facing because of the British atrocities in India.

After seeing this suffering, Mahatma Gandhi made up his mind. It was time to fight back. Imagine what would have happened if Mahatma Gandhi lived in ignorance, unaware of all the problems such as racism, poverty, hunger, etc. that his countrywomen and men were facing. Would India still be the same? Thus ignorance is not always bliss.

Knowledge will ultimately lead to betterment of the humankind. If you are aware of the problems that exist, you will strive to solve these problems, even if it is painful. This is a good thing. Not knowing the truth in itself is painful in some respects.

And, if we are ignorant, we will not be able to make informed choices in life. Making informed choices with full awareness of its consequences is extremely important.

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October 12, 2021 at 6:55 am

This was quite helpful n I got much sense from it Thanks 🥺♥️

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What did Gray mean by "where ignorance is bliss, / 'tis folly to be wise"?

Here's the last stanza of Thomas Gray's 1742 poem, ' Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College ':

To each his suff'rings: all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan, The tender for another's pain; Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

What did Gray mean by the lines in bold? To what religious or philosophical idea is he alluding? Or is the thought (as well as the expression) original to Gray?

inspiration
thomas-gray

3 Answers 3

Gray was referencing Ecclesiastes and playfully inverting the conclusion of an important verse.

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes 1:18

Grey's poem is quite famous, as is the phrase "ignorance is bliss" and much has been written on it, but the the core meaning is quite simple.

The more knowledge one has, the greater one's grief, because this knowledge includes the inevitability of death, and that all we are and do and achieve eventually turns to dust.

Shelley referenced this in his Ozymandias , although TS Eliot's allusion in The Waste Land may be the most compact: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." The reference to dust goes back to the beginning, Genesis 3:19 , and provides a basis for Ecclesiastes: "For dust you are and to dust you will return."

Remember that Ecclesiastes begins with "Vanity, vanity, vanity--all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2) and goes on to explicate this in exhaustive detail.

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. Ecclesiastes 2:11

Gray's Inversion

What makes Gray's turn of phrase so clever is the reversal of King David's conclusion:

Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly. What more can the king's successor do than what has already been done? I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. Ecclesiastes 2:12 ff.

Of course, it gets more complicated because King David goes on:

The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Ecclesiastes 2:14

Gray is saying it is better to "walk in darkness", and be happy, even if that happiness is temporary, than to go through life with full knowledge of mortality and the ultimate vanity of all endeavors.

Where David concludes that even wisdom is ultimately meaningless , Gray calls it folly, and concludes that ignorance is the optimal strategy.

1 One slight correction: Though King Solomon is never mentioned in the book, the authorship of 'Ecclesiastes' (the one who assembles) has been ascribed to him; not his father, King David. Be that as it may, many scholarly assessments date the text nearly 600 years after Solomon's passing, prior to Alexander's conquest of Palestine. – user12887 Commented May 12, 2021 at 13:26

Gray alludes in these lines to the biblical story of the fall of man in Genesis 2–3, presenting an extended comparison between the innocent play of the boys at Eton, and the sinless existence of Adam and Eve in Eden.

Adam and Eve lived in “paradise” (the garden of Eden ), in “bliss” (without toil or “sorrow”), in “ignorance” of sin, until they ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and became “wise”. But this was “folly” because God expelled them from paradise and condemned them to “labouring”, “suff’rings” and “death”: “cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life” (3:17).

The last line "'Tis folly to be wise" is a contradiction. "No more" is used as "This should stop".

The sentence becomes clear if it is extended like this:

No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. But rather: where ignorance is cowardice, it's brave to be wise.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged poetry inspiration thomas-gray or ask your own question .

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word histories

“ad fontes!”

‘ignorance is bliss’: meaning and origin

The phrase ignorance is bliss means that, if one is unaware of an unpleasant fact or situation, one cannot be troubled by it.

This phrase was coined by the English poet and literary scholar Thomas Gray (1716-1771) in An Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (London: printed for R. Dodsley and sold by M. Cooper, 1747):

To each his Suff’rings: all are Men, Condemn’d alike to groan, The Tender for another’s Pain; Th’ Unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! Why should they know their Fate? Since Sorrow never comes too late, And Happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their Paradise. No more; where Ignorance is Bliss, ’Tis Folly to be wise.

These are the earliest occurrences of the phrase that I have found, in chronological order—apart from the citations of, and the allusions to, An Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College :

1 -: From An Epistle to a Friend, from St Andrew’s. Lately found among some old papers , a poem published in The Scots Magazine (Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland) of May 1765:

’Twas peace, ’twas ease, ’twas love, ’twas happiness; Where is that bliss, that happiness refin’d, That chain’d, inchanted, rivetted, the mind? As fair the narciss in the garden blows, As smooth the stream of silver Eden flows, As sweet the thrush repeats her tender tale, As soft the zephyr travels o’er the vale, As bright the hallow’d hand of young-ey’d Spring, The lucid dewdrops o’er the fields does fling; Yet peace, yet bliss, yet love, is wanting here; And discontent still drops th’ unwilling tear. Oh! can it be that ignorance is bliss?

2 -: From The Social Fire , a poem published in The British Chronicle. Or, Pugh’s Hereford Journal (Hereford, Herefordshire, England) of Thursday 23 rd March 1786:

Oh! grant kind Heav’n a state like this, Where simple ignorance is bliss, ’Tis all that I require; Then, then—to share the joys of life, I’d seek a kind indulgent wife, And bless my Social Fire.

3 -: From Volume III of The Rector’s Son (London: Printed for Lee and Hurst, 1798), a novel by the English author and translator Anne Plumptre (1760-1818):

“Villainy, too prosperous villainy, has led them into a fatal delusion; nor are they less deserving of compassion than myself!—but they are less miserable, for they know not the occasion they have for remorse;—to them, ignorance is bliss; to me, knowledge is distraction!”

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Speech Writing /

Speech on Ignorance is Bliss in English

Updated on
Jan 12, 2024

Speech on Ignorance is Bliss: How does the saying “What you don’t know cannot hurt you” resonate with you? Generally speaking, it implies that the person who knows nothing is happier than the person who knows everything and must face difficulties afterward.

Thomas Grey, a poet, explores his perspective on ignorance in his work Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. He believes that ignorance is either knowledge or wisdom that ends with death.

Also Read: Speech On Fake News For Students In English

2 Minute Speech on Ignorance is Bliss

Greetings to all the fellow learners here. Today´s topic is centered around ¨Speech on Ignorance Bliss.¨ Do you all think that one can find joy in the absence of knowledge?

It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand anything or are ignorant of some realities or truths, as the saying goes, “Ignorance is bliss.” Why? Since a lack of anything stimulates interest and presents obstacles that aid in further exploration and discovery. If you knew everything beforehand, would you still be interested in learning??

Let me give you an example of ignorance in a workplace see what we do in such a situation.

You need to learn how to operate and change the battery on your laptop, but because you have pending projects in hand, you will attempt every solution and search Google for anything related to battery replacement.

Being ignorant facilitates self-awareness and self-discovery. We can observe historical instances where genuine discoveries and awareness are made due to ignorance and associated curiosity.

Bliss is unaffected by the benefits and disadvantages of anything. For those with the ability to study and apply themselves, ignorance is bliss, yet ignorance itself stems from a lack of understanding or information.

It is important to balance between not knowing and comprehending. Ignorance provides temporary comfort but one cannot deny that ignorance creates a hindrance to personal growth and societal progress.

Ignorance also keeps us from appreciating the depth and breadth of the existence of people. One loses out on the knowledge that arises from battling complexity when one chooses ignorance.

In conclusion, the proverb ignorance is bliss challenges us to reflect on happiness and satisfaction. While bliss can be found simply in not knowing, we must also be cautious about the consequences of ignorant behavior.

Also Read: Ignorance is Bliss Meaning, Definition, Example, Synonyms

10 Lines on Ignorance is Bliss

Let us understand the topic ¨Ignorance is Bliss¨ in simple lines:

The phrase knowledge is bliss encourages a sense of happiness.
If you know everything, then the chances of learning something out of curiosity are less.
Not knowing the answer should not make you depressed or underconfident.
Staying unaware helps in learning as well as in growing.
One should know better how to create a balance between not knowing and becoming aware of it.
Ignorance is a temporary comfort, whereas knowledge helps in growing permanently.
Not knowing can make you feel comfortable at first, but in the long run, it might lead to problems.
Ignorance avoids experiencing the richness of happiness and satisfaction.
Unawareness is the best way to discover oneself.
Ignorance is a boon, but our practice should not be to make it a bane by keeping the spirit of learning what we don´t know.

Also Read: How to Prepare for UPSC in 6 Months?

Ans: The meaning of bliss in the speech conveys a meaning that one should never get from what they don´t know.

Ans: Ignorance is not bliss because it prevents you from learning the unknown and leaves you lacking in knowledge.

Ans: Following the spiritual teachers without making an effort to know about the truth is a real-life example of ignorance as bliss.

Ans: Ignorance is bliss until you stop getting curious about the things that you don´t know. It is more powerful than knowledge because the spirit of learning is greater than what you already know.

Ans: The competing line of ignorance is bliss: “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis Folly to be Wise.” It is from the poem Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, and the poet is Thomas Grey.

For more information on such interesting speech topics for your school, visit our speech writing page and follow Leverage Edu.

Deepika Joshi

Deepika Joshi is an experienced content writer with educational and informative content expertise. She has hands-on experience in Education, Study Abroad and EdTech SaaS. Her strengths lie in conducting thorough research and analysis to provide accurate and up-to-date information to readers. She enjoys staying updated on new skills and knowledge, particularly in the education domain. In her free time, she loves to read articles, and blogs related to her field to expand her expertise further. In her personal life, she loves creative writing and aspires to connect with innovative people who have fresh ideas to offer.

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Ignorance is Bliss – Proverb Meaning, Expansion And Story

The proverb “ignorance is bliss” suggests that not knowing certain information or being unaware of certain realities can sometimes bring greater happiness or contentment. It implies that ignorance can shield individuals from the burden of knowledge, including harsh truths or painful realities that might disturb their peace of mind. By remaining oblivious, people may avoid the anxiety, worry, or responsibility that comes with understanding complex or challenging aspects of life. However, while ignorance may offer temporary tranquility, it can also hinder personal growth, critical thinking, and informed decision-making. Ultimately, the proverb underscores the delicate balance between blissful ignorance and the pursuit of knowledge and truth.

Understanding The Idea :

The proverb “ignorance is bliss” reflects the idea that there is a certain allure and tranquility in not knowing certain things or remaining unaware of certain realities. It suggests that being ignorant of certain information can shield individuals from the harsh truths, complexities, and responsibilities of the world around them. In a world inundated with constant information and an overwhelming amount of knowledge, ignorance can provide a respite, allowing individuals to focus on the immediate and the simple aspects of life.

Ignorance offers a sense of innocence, as it allows people to navigate through life without the burden of disturbing or unsettling facts. When one is ignorant of the challenges, problems, or conflicts that exist, they can experience a sense of blissful naivety, free from worry, anxiety, and the weight of the world’s troubles. This bliss arises from a lack of awareness or understanding, shielding individuals from the emotional turmoil that may accompany knowledge of unpleasant truths.

Moreover, ignorance can preserve a sense of optimism and hope. Without full awareness of potential obstacles, individuals may maintain a positive outlook and approach life with a childlike wonder. In the absence of knowledge, they can embrace a simpler, more carefree existence, untainted by the realities that may dampen their spirits. Ignorance allows people to hold on to idealistic views, fostering a sense of hope that may be shattered by a deeper understanding of the complexities and challenges of the world.

However, while ignorance can provide temporary solace and a sheltered state of mind, it also has its drawbacks. By willingly remaining ignorant, individuals may miss out on opportunities for personal growth, enlightenment, and the development of critical thinking skills. Ignorance can lead to narrow-mindedness, prejudice, and an inability to empathize with others’ experiences. It can create a bubble of limited understanding, where misconceptions and stereotypes thrive.

Furthermore, ignorance can hinder informed decision-making. Without access to relevant information and a comprehensive understanding of the consequences, individuals may make choices based on flawed assumptions or incomplete knowledge. Ignorance perpetuates a cycle of uninformed actions and perpetuates societal issues that could be addressed through knowledge and awareness.

Ultimately, the proverb “ignorance is bliss” highlights the complex relationship between knowledge and happiness. While ignorance may offer a temporary sense of bliss, it is essential to recognize that true and lasting fulfillment comes from a balance between awareness and acceptance of the world’s realities. Striving for knowledge, seeking understanding, and being open to new perspectives can lead to personal growth, empathy, and the ability to navigate life’s challenges with wisdom and resilience.

Story 1: A Beautiful Story on “Ignorance is Bliss”

Once upon a time, in a quaint village nestled amidst the lush green fields of rural India, lived a young girl named Ananya. She hailed from a poor family, but her spirit was as bright as the sun that bathed their humble dwelling each day.

Ananya possessed an insatiable thirst for knowledge, a trait that set her apart from her peers. However, the village lacked a proper school, leaving many children like her bereft of educational opportunities. Undeterred, Ananya would spend her days under a giant banyan tree, absorbing wisdom from the elderly villagers who shared tales of history, culture, and values.

One day, a traveling teacher named Mr. Gupta arrived in the village, bringing with him the promise of education. Ananya’s eyes sparkled with hope as she listened to him speak of the power of knowledge and the importance of education in transforming lives. Determined to seize this opportunity, she enrolled in Mr. Gupta’s makeshift school along with other eager children.

Under Mr. Gupta’s guidance, Ananya’s mind blossomed like a vibrant flower. She discovered the wonders of mathematics, the beauty of language, and the vastness of the world through geography. Each lesson opened new horizons for her, fueling her dreams of a better future.

As time passed, Ananya’s knowledge and passion began to influence the village. Inspired by her enthusiasm, some parents decided to support the educational initiative and contributed resources to improve the school’s infrastructure. The village collectively realized that education held the key to progress and prosperity.

Ananya’s journey was not without challenges. Her family faced financial hardships, and she often had to help with household chores after school. Nevertheless, her unwavering determination kept her focused on her studies. She even formed study groups with fellow students, fostering a sense of camaraderie and collective learning.

Word of Ananya’s remarkable achievements spread beyond the village, catching the attention of a renowned philanthropist, Mrs. Kapoor. Impressed by Ananya’s thirst for knowledge and her desire to uplift her community, Mrs. Kapoor decided to provide financial assistance for her further education in the city.

Ananya’s heart overflowed with gratitude and excitement as she embarked on a new chapter of her life. In the bustling city, she experienced the diversity and dynamism of modern India. Her journey was challenging, but she was armed with the knowledge and resilience instilled in her by her village.

Years later, Ananya returned to her village as a successful lawyer. She set up a scholarship fund to ensure that every child in the village had access to quality education. Ananya’s story became an inspiration, with children from neighboring villages seeking her guidance and support.

Her village transformed into a hub of knowledge, with a proper school, a library, and computer facilities. The once-ignorant village had become a beacon of enlightenment, where dreams flourished and minds thrived.

Ananya’s tale serves as a reminder that education has the power to break the shackles of poverty, ignorance, and prejudice. Her journey exemplifies the spirit of resilience and the transformative impact that knowledge can have on individuals and communities. As Ananya often says, “In the tapestry of life, education is the thread that weaves dreams into reality and paves the path to a brighter future.”

Story 2: A Beautiful Story on “Ignorance is Bliss”

In a bustling city in India, lived two close friends, Ravi and Arjun. They grew up together, sharing dreams of success and prosperity. However, their paths diverged after completing their education.

Ravi, an ambitious and hardworking individual, pursued higher studies and landed a prestigious job at a multinational corporation. On the other hand, Arjun, content with his simple lifestyle, chose to work in a local shop, enjoying the small pleasures of life.

As years went by, Ravi’s life revolved around his demanding job. He earned a handsome salary and lived in a luxurious apartment. However, the constant pressure and stress left him feeling isolated and disconnected from the world around him.

Meanwhile, Arjun led a modest life, embracing the simplicity and warmth of his neighborhood. He developed deep connections with his neighbors and took an active part in community events. Arjun found joy in the little things, cherishing the laughter, stories, and traditions that made their locality unique.

One day, news spread through the city that the local government planned to construct a massive shopping mall, demolishing the vibrant, close-knit community that Arjun called home. Residents were distraught, fearing the loss of their culture and unity.

Arjun, known for his resourcefulness and persuasive skills, decided to take a stand. He rallied the community together, organizing peaceful protests and reaching out to the media. Their collective voice echoed throughout the city, drawing attention to the plight of their community.

Meanwhile, Ravi, oblivious to the struggles faced by his friend and the community, continued to toil away in his corporate bubble. He remained ignorant of the power of unity and the importance of preserving their cultural heritage.

As the community’s protests gained momentum, the media coverage caught the attention of an influential social activist, Ms. Sharma. Impressed by their determination and commitment, she decided to lend her support.

Ms. Sharma contacted Arjun and expressed her willingness to take up their cause. She organized a meeting with the city officials, urging them to reconsider their plans and highlighting the historical significance of the neighborhood.

With Ms. Sharma’s intervention, the government officials agreed to reassess their development plans. They proposed a more inclusive approach, aiming to revitalize the area while preserving its cultural essence.

When Ravi learned about the community’s struggle and the pivotal role his friend played, he felt a pang of remorse for his ignorance. He reached out to Arjun, apologizing for his oblivion and expressing his desire to support the cause.

Together, Ravi and Arjun worked side by side, bridging the gap between the corporate world and the grassroots community. Ravi used his professional expertise to propose sustainable development ideas, ensuring the new plans benefited both the community and the city’s growth.

In the end, the neighborhood underwent a transformation that respected its heritage. The new development featured a blend of modern amenities and traditional architecture, creating a harmonious balance. The community flourished, and its members became even closer, realizing the strength that lies within unity and collective action.

The experience transformed Ravi’s perspective on life. He learned that success and prosperity alone do not guarantee happiness. The true essence of life lies in the connections we forge, the cultures we preserve, and the shared experiences that make us feel alive.

From that day forward, Ravi and Arjun became champions of community causes. They traveled across the country, advocating for the preservation of heritage and empowering marginalized communities.

Their story became an inspiration, reminding people that in the pursuit of personal success, it is crucial to remain connected to our roots and embrace the power of collective efforts. Through their journey, Ravi and Arjun demonstrated that true fulfillment comes from understanding, compassion, and actively participating in the betterment of society.

Ignorance Really Isn’t Bliss

Life is all about learning..

Posted September 24, 2020

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Thomas Gray originated the saying in his poem “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” (1742): “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise .” But is it? Let’s look at what results from ignorance: avoidance of facts and information, a skewed view of the world where you don’t want to learn more about something, a desire to label and judge something you might not fully understand, and a general lack of knowledge about the world around you.

The trend today is to diminish those things that require knowledge—professionals in the sciences, medicine, educational system, and so on. Unproven conspiracy theories abound, and educated individuals are sidelined and maligned for their viewpoint. People can believe what they want to believe, and reading or researching alternative views isn’t necessary, or so the belief might be.

Life is all about learning. Things change, new information arises, and your viewpoint might change if you knew more about what was happening. Many people want to stay stuck in their ignorance and choose to avoid deepening their knowledge about all of what life has to offer.

As a college professor for both graduate and undergraduate students, this troubles me. Developing curiosity, an investigative worldview where you want to uncover more, is a lifelong skill that can serve you well and open your eyes and mind, rather than allowing you to stay stuck in your beliefs.

If you want to have more “bliss” that comes from education and understanding, try a few of these ideas:

1. Talk to people who have differing viewpoints without arguing or fighting. Seek to understand. You do not have to agree, and you do not have to alter your beliefs, but listen with an open mind to what they are saying and why they are saying it.

Consider your sources: Where do they come from, how were they raised, how did they come to believe what they did? Rather than reject or rebel against those who are different and react emotionally, adopt an objective, “I want to learn about you” attitude toward others.

2. Check your facts and re-check them. The problem with facts is that they can be altered and skewed depending on how you view them and the audience. There is a great marketing story about teens on a college campus who were asked about their personal lives and then happiness , in that order, and then were again asked about happiness and then their personal lives. The satisfaction ratings for the same two questions were drastically different depending on the order in which the students were asked.

If you read something, and you aren’t sure of the leaning of the writer or the accuracy of what you’ve read, use the Media Bias fact-checker tool . This site can show you the influence and veracity of any media source.

3. Deliberately read and listen to alternative news sources. You know the big ones—spend time on FOX News but then turn to CNN.com, or vice versa, to get alternate viewpoints, but read and research many different media types. Read local papers and national news; explore social media by learning more about who is posting something and where the source came from. When someone who believes differently from you posts something, explore it, but then learn about the source. Become an avid researcher.

4. Choose to be a learner. You don’t have to go back to school, but you can still take out books from the library—read biographies, history, and non-fiction, and learn about events, people, and how things have come to be a certain way. If you like a certain topic, learn more about the genesis of it, the different viewpoints on it. Not everyone reads, so consider podcasts, webinars, discussion boards, online groups, and so on. Find your way to learn and then do it.

5. Don’t assume you know what others mean, where they have come from, or anything about them unless you take the time to investigate and learn. Assumptions are almost always hurtful and never forward your progression to being a more informed individual. Stay open and let others teach you what you need to know.

Beverly D. Flaxington teaches at Suffolk University.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Ignorance — A Study on the Truth Behind the Saying “Ignorance is Bliss”

A Study on The Truth Behind The Saying "Ignorance is Bliss"

Categories: Ignorance

About this sample

Words: 1571 |

Published: Jan 4, 2019

Words: 1571 | Pages: 3 | 8 min read

Works Cited

Plato. (380 BCE). Republic (Book VII). (J. Harward, Trans.). Project Gutenberg. (Original work published in Greek)
Palmer, D. (2011). Does the prisoner in Plato's Cave have a theory of forms? Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought, 28(1), 104-128.
Descartes, R. (1641). Meditations on First Philosophy. (J. Cottingham, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published in French)
Scruton, R. (2015). Plato's allegory of the cave. A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, Routledge.
Gill, M. L. (2017). The allegory of the cave. In R. E. Auxier & L. E. Hahn (Eds.), The philosophy of Thomas Reid (pp. 343-354). Routledge.
Berman, D. (2019). Knowledge is power: The impact of information on society. Scientific American.
Sartre, J. P. (1944). Existentialism is a humanism. (P. Mairet, Trans.). Methuen Publishing.
Russell, B. (1912). The problems of philosophy. Williams and Norgate.
McLeod, S. A. (2017). Skinner - Operant conditioning. Simply Psychology.
Lao Tzu. (n.d.). Tao Te Ching. (J. Legge, Trans.). Sacred Texts. (Original work published in Chinese)

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Ken Reynolds
Aug 8, 2011

Ignorance Is Bliss For A Creative Mind

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Ken Reynolds is a graphic designer and illustrator living and working in Suffolk, UK. He runs his own design blog , arrogantly named after himself, where he … More about Ken ↬

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The saying “Ignorance is bliss” originates in Thomas Gray’s poem “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” (1742). The quote goes: “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

Face it: you were better off not knowing that, weren’t you?

Generally speaking, ignorance is a detestable state of mind. The more knowledge you have, the better equipped you are to deal with life. But ignorance itself doesn’t equal stupidity. For instance, I view myself as someone who is smart enough to realize his huge capacity for stupidity. I know there are massive gaps in my cultural and general knowledge. I would define my intellectual state as, at times, unaware. But who am I kidding? In some areas of life, I’m just plain ignorant, even if not by choice.

Many people would view this as a flaw or a hindrance, but it’s simply human nature. There isn’t a person on this planet who knows everything, despite the plenty I’ve met who think they do!

The fact that I’m aware enough to recognize my own ignorance gives me an immediate advantage, especially in design or any creative pursuit.

A lack of knowledge in any field can be a fantastic catalyst for learning. If I have the opportunity to work on a project that involves a subject I know nothing about, I jump at it! It’s a perfect chance to fill in a few of my mental chasms.

Still, while I may benefit from this opportunity, is it fair for the client?

I would argue that they benefit more than I do. How many clients have you had who have asked for a “fresh” approach to their industry or business?

A person who knows nothing about a subject is far more likely to approach it from a new angle than someone who is hindered by the “received wisdom.”

Obviously, this can be risky in some projects, and the level of success will vary from person to person. To be an effective “clueless” designer, you need the self-confidence to learn quickly and proficiently enough to accomplish the given task. You need an almost insatiable thirst to learn and improve. Most importantly, you need to feel comfortable looking stupid.

Here are a few tips for embracing and using ignorance to your advantage.

Never Be Afraid to Show Your Ignorance

A lot of people fear looking stupid. People don’t like to look weak or ignorant, especially in the workplace. This might have to do with the atmosphere of competition at most offices and studios. Freelancers perhaps have a bit more freedom, but appearing less than brilliant in front of a client is never a good thing.

Let me give you a small example of ignorance in the workplace. You are asked by your boss to make copies of a document and get them back to him in half an hour. This isn’t strictly your job, and on the few occasions that you were shown how to use the photocopier, you were so distracted by the odd scuff marks on the paper tray that you didn’t really take in the instructions. What do you do?

Wing it. Tell your boss it’s no problem. Try your best to complete the task. You’ll probably end up screaming at the photocopier and giving it a good kick (which explains how those scuff marks got there). Ultimately, you fail to complete the simple task because you were to proud to admit your ignorance.

Tell your boss that it’s no problem. Then spend the next half hour going from person to person in the office asking for help. You might get the job done, but you’ve displayed your ignorance to everyone in the office.

Come straight out and admit to your boss that you don’t know how to use the photocopier. Then ask if someone could show you how to do it. You might look stupid for five minutes, but you would make a worse impression by not completing the simple task in a timely manner.

Options 2 and 3 are fine in my eyes, but I’d always go for the full-out admission of ignorance. I don’t see any reason to be embarrassed for not knowing something, as long as you are willing to learn and improve.

Ask Questions (Endlessly!)

This one goes hand in hand with the last example, because asking a question is in itself an admission of not knowing something. Questions come in all shapes and sizes: silly, obvious, insightful and, my personal favorite, awkward.

Asking a question that seems silly or obvious is better than leaving it unasked. Otherwise, you might be starting a job based on your own unfounded assumptions about the client and their business, possibly resulting in a lot of wasted time and a big slice of embarrassment.

When you’re working with clients, questions are good. It shows you have a healthy interest in the subject. You display a desire to learn and to discover things for the client’s benefit. Questions are the easiest way to gain insight into how a person thinks. The tricky part is figuring out the right questions to ask.

With plenty of practice, a good deal of experience and a total lack of self-consciousness, you will get the most out of the questions you ask.

Self-Initiated Learning

Recognizing the things you are ignorant about does no good if you are unwilling to improve yourself. Ignorance is only useful when used as a motivation for self-improvement. It should be used as a tool. To a certain extent, we begin every new project with a certain amount of ignorance, even if the subject matter is a passion of ours. Every job and every client is different from the last, so a certain amount of learning is always needed. But this process can work on a grander scale.

Think of something you have no deep knowledge of. For me, it’s sailing. If I were asked to design a logo for a company that makes sails, I would be quite stumped on where to start. This is the fight or flight moment of the design process. You can either dig in and find a solution or give up, citing lack of market knowledge. The latter is not a good enough excuse. For starters, your client has enough knowledge of the market for both of you. It’s up to you to get it out of them.

Then it’s time to cast a wider net. After recognizing your ignorance, it’s time to do something about it. This means tackling the dirty part of design, which people tend to ignore, even though it would be impossible to create without it: research.

Immerse yourself in the project and everything it touches on. Look at the company’s competitors and its previous images and logos. Spend days in the client’s offices and shops. It’s up to your creative mind to see something in there that no one else sees, and then figure out the best way to communicate that. If you go in with a blank slate, with no pre-conceptions or typical assumptions, you will be shocked by how much easier it is to soak up information.

Be Honest About What You Don’t Know (Yet)

One of the principles on which I try to run my business is honesty, especially concerning the things I can’t do or don’t know about. Hopefully, this won’t seem odd to most of you. If I decide to outsource a task, I will always tell the client. I will make the case that I don’t have the expertise to do the task, so I’ve passed it on to someone who I’ve worked with before, someone I trust. I always give the client the option to contact them directly, but more often than not, they would rather pay me to be the middleman. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t burst into client meetings and confess all of my shortcomings. But if asked about something that I don’t know about, I’ll be up front and honest about it. Displaying my ignorance in this way helps me build trust and, hopefully, lasting relationships.

I treasure the things I don’t know yet, because each is a learning experience. If you ever think you’ve learned everything, then you’ve just stopped trying. And if a creative type has stopped trying to learn, then their work will become stale and repetitive.

Ignorance needs to be embraced. Whenever you discover a gap in your knowledge, view it as an opportunity to learn something new, and sell it as a genuine chance to create something surprising and unique for the client.

I’d like to hear your opinions on the subject. Are you scared of being exposed as ignorant? Do you put enough effort into research? Are you honest with clients about your shortcomings? Are you stuck in a rut because you’ve settled for what you know and haven’t faced up to what you don’t?

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For some, ignorance is bliss; for others, ignorance is something else

Assistant Professor in Justice Studies, University of Regina

Disclosure statement

James Gacek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Regina provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR.

University of Regina provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA.

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Is ignorance truly bliss? Or is it destructive? What role does it play in our daily lives? What harms can it cause, or leave behind?

These are just some of the questions my colleagues and I are studying in our ongoing research of agnosis.

Agnosis means without, or lacking, knowledge . Agnotology is the study of ignorance , the apathy towards knowledge and the creation of non-knowledge and stupidity.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of examples to suggest ignorance continues to be a concern in Canada.

Often, victims of ignorance are left unaware, or at least uncertain, about the source of their harms — and sometimes, they’re not even aware they’ve been harmed.

‘Ignoring’ as an activity

People, organizations and governments can all partake in “ignoring” as an activity. When information isn’t sought out — in other words, ignored — it can offer motivation and excuses for the perpetration of even the most harmful actions.

For example, we continue to live through world events that suggest many Canadians are “ignoring” the harm they can cause when they disregard science and public health measures needed to combat COVID-19.

Too often, marginalized and immunocompromised communities face the brunt of these choices. By ignoring science and believing in conspiracies, these communities are placed in harm’s way.

Read more: 5 ways to tackle ignorance about evidence during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

In Strength to Love , Martin Luther King Jr. says “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

And in the current era of “post-truth” politics , there are new and very worrying developments in the generation of false “facts,” ignorance and stupidity.

When we study ignorance and stupidity together, we see how ignorance and stupidity act against a persons own self-interests and how there can be fatal consequences .

Fatal consequences of ignorance

Consider twice-impeached and disgraced former president Donald Trump . His administration’s politics invoked potentially moral dimensions of ignorance , where ignorance in decision-making processes were an indication of choosing stupidity by avoiding responsibility.

Such avoidance of responsibility by the anti-vax and “freedom” rallies that we have seen throughout this pandemic similarly speaks to Trumpist politics , as the ongoing ignorance and denial quietly (or not so quietly) moves us towards further challenges, suffering and loss.

In both cases, public attributions of stupidity are political, and the role of power here points to the challenges of balancing ignorance with, and alongside, an absence of knowledge.

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Ignorance and the absence of knowledge

We know pandemic public health measures work , and complicit ignorance and denial of scientific evidence does not. But, has a failure to embrace critical thinking, or claims to extreme conservative ideologies, provided comfort to people wishing for “bliss” in their lives? Regardless of the cost to and sacrifice of others? Some would say so.

Read more: COVID-19 ‘freedom’ rallies actually undermine liberty – here’s why

In any case, when “freedom” rallies incorporate conspiracies, Nazi symbols and Confederate flags , it is difficult to see how someone’s rally stands for freedom or is backed by knowledge.

If someone’s cause garners support from conspiracists, Nazis and other hate-filled groups, it is probably worth wondering why. But I would guess there is a deeply embedded and dehumanizing ideology at work here.

Studying ignorance highlights how there are certain groups of people who become excluded from the moral and legal protections normally owed to others . It has been a shocking revelation to some, in recent years, that human deception and self-deception have remained as undiminished as they have.

Efforts to spread false “facts,” ignorance and stupidity have never been as easy as it is to spread now.

The potential of our “post-truth” era far exceeds what George Orwell could have ever dreamed of in his time. He presented a predictive and dystopian vision in 1984 , but even he couldn’t have envisioned the agnosis we see today.

Our age of agnosis is increasingly coming into contact in ways beyond historical standards and recorded memory. Empathy, not apathy, is needed now more than ever before. My colleagues and I continue to explore agnosis, hoping to save critical thinking from obscurity.

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When ignorance truly isn’t bliss, lessons from we happy few, by brandon packard.

We’ve heard it a million times, “Ignorance is Bliss.” It’s a phrase that has echoed through time, but where did it start? The phrase dates back to 1742 and a poem in which Thomas Gray states, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” In other words, ignorance of certain issues makes you happy, and what’s the point of informing yourself on those issues if it will only make you miserable?

Imagine hearing that it is a law in a foreign country called “MadeUpTopia” that all puppies must be kicked once a day. The news is upsetting and you can’t do anything to change the situation. So you force yourself to stop thinking about it and thus forget about the plight of the puppies. As a result you are happy again, or at least as happy as you were before the news.

We need to ask: when does ignorance amount to negligence? When are you obliged to learn the truth even if it means making you uncomfortable?

Let’s consider an extreme case in the game We Happy Few , a case where you are so ignorant for the sake of happiness that you sacrifice essentially your entire perception of the world.

We Happy Few takes place in the fictional city of Wellington Wells in 1960s England. Everyone in the city is happy, all the time. That’s not just a state of mind, that’s the law. All the citizens of Wellington Wells (at least in the inner city) are happy because they all partake of a drug named Joy.

At the very start of the game, you have a choice of whether to take a Joy pill or not. If you do, your character remains happy, and the game ends. If you refuse to take it, the color starts to fade from the world. As you progress in the game, you quickly start to see that things are not as they seem. It turns out that the pill makes you happy, but it does so by essentially censoring the world around you, making everything seem bright and happy when really you are living in filth and squalor. For example, your main character’s job is essentially censoring any truth from old articles that would make people unhappy, and at one point you go to a party and discover that the piñata is really a dead rat. After that, you get thrown out of the town for being off your Joy.

When you return and move through the city, you must smile and wave at those you meet on the street. Otherwise they’ll get suspicious that you may be off your Joy. If they get too suspicious, they will attack you or call the police, since you are a “downer.” All of the city’s citizens have chosen to live in complete ignorance of the truth, in return for being happy, and they have done so to such an extent that they strike back at you for daring to try to discover the truth. When you see a bunch of people eating the innards of a dead rat (sorry for that mental image) because they believe it to be the candy from a piñata, it’s not hard to determine that they are taking ignorance way too far.

Clearly, in this case it seems that it would be better to stay off the joy and know the truth, rather than essentially being on an incredibly powerful hallucinogenic 24/7. However, this is an extreme dystopian scenario. How does it relate back to our real lives? In our world, we tend to favor personal autonomy over many things – often when we disagree with a friend or loved one’s decision we fall back on “well I don’t agree with it, but that’s their choice.” Generally we allow people to have some level of decision-making ability, even if their decisions tend to harm themselves. This same logic also applies in areas such as medicine or being able to take a walk late at night.

It is very important to note, however, that the “Wellies” in We Happy Few aren’t just harming themselves, but others as well. They are so afraid of being brought down by the truth that they actively seek to destroy those who start to learn the truth. Although the level to which we should allow people to potentially harm themselves in return for their autonomy is debatable, harming others crosses wherever that line may lie.

In general, the idea of ignorance being blissful stands in stark opposition to the Socratic claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” In fact, Socrates uttered these words after choosing death over exile or silence. He believed that knowledge of the truth is so important, so essential to being truly human, that he would rather die than give it up. In contrast to Thomas Gray, Socrates believed that living truthfully is the best human life. A life of ignorance in pursuit of pleasure is a life more befitting of a mere beast than a human being.

The philosopher Robert Nozick also has an interesting take on this issue in his classic thought experiment concerning an “Experience Machine.” He asks you to imagine a machine that could give you any experience you wanted while you were hooked into it. You could be writing a novel, making a friend, exploring space, or absolutely anything else that you wanted to do. Furthermore, while connected with the machine, you wouldn’t know that you were connected with the machine – you would believe it all to be really happening. The question, then, is whether or not we, as rational human beings, would want to plug into the machine. One point of Nozick’s thought experiment is to show that there are things that matter to us besides pleasure. After all, if the only thing that mattered was pleasure, then everyone would want to plug into the Experience Machine. However, many of us, myself included, would not want to sacrifice our real lives for a “virtual” life, no matter how real or pleasurable it may seem. So, fully deceiving ourselves for the sake of pleasure appears myopic at best, and reduces us to mere beasts at worst.

Naturally, we all tell ourselves and others some white lies occasionally. We do it to preserve our own or others’ happiness, by not telling them what they “don’t need to know.” However, when it goes too far, and our refusal to acknowledge a truth harms others, that is when we need to cast off our ignorance and absorb the truth. At that point, it’s time to trade our own happiness for knowledge that can help us make others happy. It’s impossible to not be ignorant about anything, but we have a responsibility, not just to ourselves but to our fellow humans, to actively work to combat our ignorance and fight for happiness for others, even if it means sacrificing some of our own.

Dr. Brandon Packard is an assistant professor at Clarion University, where he coordinates the Video Game Programming Concentration and runs an online Game Creation Camp in the summer. His research interests are video games, AI, and machine learning, and the ethical questions thereof. In his spare time, he enjoys playing video games and working on programming projects.

Image credit: https://www.xboxone-hq.com/xboxone/games/we-happy-few/651/screenshot-5800.html

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One thought on “ when ignorance truly isn’t bliss ”.

Thomas Gray definitely did not write or believe that ignorance is bliss. The full quotation is “Where ignorance is bliss, /’Tis folly to be wise.” The meaning here is thus the exact opposite of “ignorance is bliss”. Putting it bluntly, you would have to be stupid to think otherwise. Oh, the irony!

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Fill in the form below and receive news in your email box, ignorance is bliss: definition, meaning and origin.

The idiom "ignorance is bliss" usually refers to the idea that one can avoid suffering and anxiety if they are unaware of the troublesome details. It suggests that sometimes it's better not to know certain things because knowing could cause worry, stress, or unhappiness.

"Ignorance is bliss" implies that a lack of knowledge might lead to happiness or peace of mind, sparing one from worries or discomforting truths.

What Does "Ignorance is Bliss" Mean?

The phrase suggests that being unaware or uninformed about certain aspects of life can sometimes result in happiness or tranquility. For example, not knowing about the potential risks or negative outcomes of a situation might save you from stress or anxiety. However, people often use this phrase with a degree of irony, implying that it's generally better to be informed and prepared.

Let's explore its core meanings:

It typically indicates that being unaware can spare one from worry or stress.
It can imply that knowledge may sometimes bring discomfort or unhappiness.
It often carries a hint of irony, suggesting that awareness and knowledge are usually beneficial.

Where Does "Ignorance is Bliss" Come From?

The proverbial phrase "ignorance is bliss" has origins in the mid-18th century. It first appeared in the 1742 poem "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" by Thomas Gray. However, the sentiment behind the idiom can be traced back even earlier. Numerous philosophers and poets have explored the dark side of knowledge. The Bible also conveys a similar message in a passage: "For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow" (Ecclesiastes 1:18).

Historical Example

"Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise." - Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, Thomas Gray, 1742

10 Examples of "Ignorance is Bliss" in Sentences

Here are some examples of using the idiom in sentences:

For children who don't understand the severity of the world's problems, ignorance is bliss .
Ignorance is bliss , especially when the truth might be too on the nose for some.
The saying ignorance is bliss often rings true when it comes to the stock market.
Ignorance is bliss when you're a third wheel on a date.
Relying on her happy pills , she chose to believe that ignorance is bliss in dealing with life's stressors.
Not knowing the result of the job interview yet, I can only think that ignorance is bliss .
I would rather avoid the news; ignorance is bliss . How about you ?
When people argue about politics, it makes me feel that ignorance is bliss .
That is well said ; sometimes ignorance is bliss , especially when knowing too much could cause unnecessary stress.
For those uninterested in the stressful world of finance, ignorance is bliss .

Examples of "Ignorance is Bliss" in Pop Culture

The phrase "ignorance is bliss" frequently appears in pop culture, usually referring to the idea of avoiding distressing truths or realities.

Let's examine some examples:

The song "Ignorance is Bliss" by Kendrick Lamar from his album "Overly Dedicated" (2010) explores the idea of avoiding the harsh realities of life.
The phrase is also the title of a track by the band Living Colour on their album "Stain" (1993), discussing the idea of willful ignorance.
"If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?" is a book written by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson. The authors are known for their ability to unearth obscure facts, abstruse information, and amusing anecdotes, which they present in a witty and engaging manner.

Other/Different Ways to Say "Ignorance is Bliss"

There are several alternative expressions that convey a similar meaning to "ignorance is bliss."

Here are some of them:

What you don't know can't hurt you
Out of sight, out of mind
Blissfully unaware
Innocently oblivious
Unconscious tranquility

10 Frequently Asked Questions About "Ignorance is Bliss":

What does "ignorance is bliss" mean?

"Ignorance is bliss" suggests that a lack of knowledge could lead to happiness or peace of mind, as it might save one from worry or distressing truths.

How can I use "ignorance is bliss" in a sentence?

You can use "ignorance is bliss" to describe situations where not knowing something might spare one from stress or anxiety. For example, "When it comes to the complexities of the stock market, ignorance is bliss."

Where does the idiom "ignorance is bliss" come from?

The phrase originates from Thomas Gray's poem, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," published in 1742.

Is "ignorance is bliss" a positive or negative phrase?

"Ignorance is bliss" is generally considered neutral, but it can carry either positive or negative connotations depending on the context and the perspective of the speaker or listener.

Does "ignorance is bliss" suggest that knowledge is bad?

No, the phrase doesn't suggest that knowledge is bad. It only highlights that in some situations, not knowing certain information can spare one from worry or stress.

Can "you use it to justify not seeking important information?

While the phrase might be used in such a context, it's generally understood that it does not advocate for wilful ignorance or the avoidance of critical or necessary knowledge.

Is "ignorance is bliss" a universal truth?

Not necessarily. While the idiom can apply to certain scenarios, it's not a universal truth. Often, knowledge and understanding are beneficial and preferred.

Does the idiom imply that ignorance is a choice?

No, "ignorance is bliss" doesn't inherently suggest that ignorance is a choice. It merely highlights instances where a lack of knowledge might lead to a state of happiness or peace of mind.

Does "ignorance is bliss" promote a careless attitude?

The phrase itself doesn't promote carelessness. However, it can be misused to justify irresponsible behavior or the avoidance of necessary knowledge or action.

Is it always better to know the truth than to remain ignorant?

While knowledge is often valuable, there may be situations where not knowing something can bring peace or happiness, as suggested by the phrase "ignorance is bliss." However, this is context-dependent and varies based on individual perspectives and values.

Final Thoughts About "Ignorance is Bliss"

The idiom "ignorance is bliss" underscores the idea that in some situations, a lack of knowledge or awareness can lead to happiness or peace of mind. However, the phrase is often used in a tongue-in-cheek or ironic manner and does not generally advocate for willful ignorance or irresponsibility.

Here's a quick recap:

The phrase suggests that not knowing certain information can lead to a state of happiness or contentment.
The idiom originates from Thomas Gray's 18th-century poem, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College."
The phrase doesn't inherently suggest that ignorance is a choice or that it's always better to remain uninformed.

The concept of "ignorance is bliss" invites us to consider the balance between knowledge and happiness and to recognize that while understanding is often beneficial, there are times when not knowing can offer its own form of tranquility.

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Ignorance Is Bliss (Origin)

What is the origin of the saying "ignorance is bliss".

Examples of Use:

Ignorance is bliss is a common saying that suggests blissful happiness can be found in unawareness or lack of knowledge.
Some people prefer to live by the notion of ignorance is bliss as a way to avoid the burdens that come with knowing certain truths.
While it may be tempting to embrace the idea that ignorance is bliss , it's important to recognize the value of knowledge and understanding.
Ignorance is bliss can sometimes lead to complacency and hinder personal growth and development.
Although there are instances where being unaware can provide temporary happiness, it is crucial to seek a balance between blissful ignorance and informed awareness.

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Ignorance is bliss

| Grammarist

Ignorance is bliss is a proverb. A proverb is a short, common saying or phrase. It particularly gives advice or shares a universal truth, or imparts wisdom. Synonyms for proverb include adage, sayings, and byword, which can also be someone or something that is the best example of a group. Often, a proverb is so familiar that a speaker will only quote half of it, relying on the listener to supply the ending of the written or spoken proverb himself. Speakers of English as a second language are sometimes confused by these expressions as translations do not carry the impact that the English phrases carry. Some common proverbs are better late than never, you reap what you sow, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, never look a gift horse in the mouth, a rolling stone gathers no moss, and haste makes waste. One of the books of the Bible is the Book of Proverbs, which contains words and phrases that are still often quoted in the English language because they are wise. Many current proverbs are taken from literature, particularly Shakespeare, as well as the Bible and other sacred writings. We will examine the meaning of the expression ignorance is bliss, where the phrase came from, and some examples of its use in sentences.

Ignorance is bliss is an expression that means it is better not to know a fact, that one is happier not being informed about a particular thing. There are many circumstances where ignorance is bliss. For instance, not knowing the odds against accomplishing something may allow you to give a better performance. Not knowing about hurtful gossip keeps your self esteem intact. Being ignorant of certain facts in certain situations allows one to make choices or perform better with a minimum of worry, anxiety or doubt. Of course, in many situations, remaining ignorant is dangerous or a detriment. The unknowing described in the phrase ignorance is bliss may be due to being stupid, uninformed, or uneducated, or it may be due to willful ignorance or choosing not to know a specific fact. The phrase ignorance is bliss was coined by Thomas Gray in his 1742 poem, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College : “Thought would destroy their paradise. / No more; where ignorance is bliss, / ‘Tis folly to be wise.”

Examples Tracks like “Inner City Pressure” and “Business Time” and their two albums “Flight of the Conchords” and “I Told You I Was Freaky” describe the lives of alternate versions of the band members as if they had repressed the sad realities of the world into an ignorance-is-bliss state of denial. ( The Daily Nebraskan ) It recognises the pressing need for well-educated and highly trained immigrants and its immigration policy reflects that priority, unlike the US, which faces similar challenges but chooses to keep its head buried in the sand in the spirit of ignorance is bliss. ( University World News ) It’s not so much a case of ignorance is bliss, as it is the belief: Why clutter your mind with stuff that does not matter? ( The Dayton Daily News )

Grammarist is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. When you buy via the links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission at no cost to you.

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ignorance is bliss

Definition of ignorance is bliss

Examples of ignorance is bliss in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ignorance is bliss.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Dictionary Entries Near ignorance is bliss

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“Ignorance is bliss.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ignorance%20is%20bliss. Accessed 16 Aug. 2024.

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The Meaning of Ignorance is Bliss: What It Is and How To Use It

Do you know the definition of ignorance is bliss? This article will provide you with all of the information you need on the word ignorance is bliss, including its definition, usage, example sentences, and more!

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What does the phrase ignorance is bliss mean?

According to Your Dictionary and other sources like the American Heritage Dictionary of the English language, the idiom ignorance is bliss means that sometimes it is better to not know the truth because you would be horrified at the reality of a situation. It can mean that sometimes, not knowing the whole story is a blessing in disguise. The discovery of the truth of any situation can be scary. While this universal truth does not mean that wisdom is bad, it does assert that it is blissful. Imagine being in heaven, without a care in the world and in sheer bliss or utter bliss, or in a hot bath, relaxed in a state of complete happiness and eternal bliss. This is a common association. Ignorance is a word that means a lack of comprehension. You might also hear this individual word in the form of a catchy cliche on a given subject, like “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” You might see more idioms like this in the Bible in the Book of Proverbs, or elsewhere.

What is the origin of ignorance is bliss?

While the sentiment of the phrase has been around since ancient times, such as from Greek playwright Sophocles and the scholar Erasmus in the 16th century, the actual wording was first used by eighteenth-century English poet Thomas Gray. According to Phrases UK , the term ignorance is bliss was first used in the beautiful poem “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” in 1742 written by Thomas Gray. Thomas Gray’s poem reads as follows:

Yet ah! Why should they know their fate?

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more; where ignorance is bliss,

‘Tis folly to be wise.

Here, English poet Gray unintentionally created a proverb. While he did not mean that it is better to be ignorant than wise at all times, he means that it is better to be blissfully ignorant of your fate or future than to worry about what is to come. Some of this information comes from the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson. According to Word Histories , this phrase was also used in the following poems and publications. First, it was used in May 1765 in “An Epistle to a Friend, from St Andrew’s”:

’Twas peace, ’twas ease, ’twas love, ’twas happiness;

Where is that bliss, that happiness refin’d,

That chain’d, inchanted, rivetted, the mind?

As fair the narciss in the garden blows,

As smooth the stream of silver Eden flows,

As sweet the thrush repeats her tender tale,

As soft the zephyr travels o’er the vale,

As bright the hallow’d hand of young-ey’d Spring,

The lucid dewdrops o’er the fields does fling;

Yet peace, yet bliss, yet love, is wanting here;

And discontent still drops th’ unwilling tear.

Oh! can it be that ignorance is bliss?

Next, it was used in a poem entitled “The Social Fire” from the Thursday 23rd March 1786 The British Chronicle.

Oh! grant kind Heav’n a state like this,

Where simple ignorance is bliss,

’Tis all that I require;

Then, then—to share the joys of life,

I’d seek a kind indulgent wife,

And bless my Social Fire.

Finally, this last early example comes from the English author and translator Anne Plumptre’s 1798 novel Volume III of The Rector’s Son:

“Villainy, too prosperous villainy, has led them into a fatal delusion; nor are they less deserving of compassion than myself!—but they are less miserable, for they know not the occasion they have for remorse;—to them, ignorance is bliss; to me, knowledge is distraction!”

What are synonyms and antonyms of ignorance is bliss?

blissfully ignorant
ignorance is pleasure
lack of knowledge results in happiness
ignorance is good
happiness in ignorance
unawareness of bad things
familiarity breeds contempt
ignorance is delight
blissful ignorance
happy to stay in the dark
ignorance is happiness
live in the unknown
lack of knowledge
in blissful unawareness
happy and oblivious
ignorant men
being unaware of bad things
what you don’t know can’t hurt you
he that knows nothing doubts nothing
be happily unaware of the fact
out of sight out of mind
it’s comfortable not to know certain things
ignorance is a blessing
ignorant people
lack of knowledge of unpleasant fact
in blissful ignorance
know a good deal
be familiar with
awareness is the key
information is power
have cognizance of something
have personal knowledge of something
knowledge is power
scientia potestas est
scientia est potentia
scientia potentia est
be aware that

How can ignorance is bliss be used in a sentence?

After only two months of marriage, the London, England couple was in a scene of such domestic bliss. However, the wife did not know her husband had been cheating on her for years every time he went to the Bahamas. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

Her work phone may have been ringing off the hook, but she refused to answer on her day off. Reece had a cold pool on a hot day in New York, and determined that ignorance was bliss. The general public could wait – nothing was such sensitive material that it couldn’t wait, and her assistant could do a little digging.

Overall, the phrase ignorance is bliss means that it is better not to know about some things. The origin of the phrase was first used in the closing lines of Thomas Gray’s famous poem “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.” This is when the precise wording of the cliché was used, though similar phrases were used in the early sixteenth century.

Ignorance is bliss – phrase meaning and origin | Phrases UK
‘ignorance is bliss’: meaning and origin | Word Histories
Examples of Ignorance Is Bliss | Your Dictionary
Ignorance is Bliss | Power Thesaurus

Kevin Miller is a growth marketer with an extensive background in Search Engine Optimization, paid acquisition and email marketing. He is also an online editor and writer based out of Los Angeles, CA. He studied at Georgetown University, worked at Google and became infatuated with English Grammar and for years has been diving into the language, demystifying the do's and don'ts for all who share the same passion! He can be found online here.

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Meaning of ignorance is bliss in English

Ignorance is bliss.

be in the dark idiom
be on another planet idiom
benightedly
Goodness/God/Heaven/Christ knows idiom
imperceptive
in blissful ignorance idiom
unawareness
unbeknownst

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Kant’s Will at the Crossroads: An Essay on the Failings of Practical Reason

Jens Timmermann, Kant’s Will at the Crossroad: An Essay on the Failings of Practical Reason , Oxford University Press, 2022, 192pp., $80.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780192896032.

Reviewed by Andrews Reath, University of California, Riverside

Jens Timmermann’s essay aims to give us Kant’s account of ‘practical failure’, that is, of what happens when an agent ‘deviates from the demands of reason’ (2). In doing so, Timmermann develops a distinctive treatment of the principal ideas in Kant’s moral psychology and conception of rational agency. One guiding thread is to ‘re-assert’ (153), in opposition to a recent and influential interpretive trend, that Kant’s moral conception does indeed operate with several stark dualisms—between duty and happiness, between moral and non-moral motivation, between pure practical reason and the empirically conditioned use of practical reason. On Timmermann’s reading, Kant held that the human being is moved by two heterogeneous kinds of incentives (moral interests and the interest in happiness) that operate in radically different ways and that, as a result, the will—by which he means the faculty of choice [ Willkür ]—stands at a crossroads (as Kant says at G 4:400) and must choose between them.

On Timmermann’s reading these standard dualisms support another that is the central thesis of the book—that Kant accepted a ‘hybrid theory of practical failure. . .which points to a hybrid theory of practical rationality’ (6, 7). Is failure to conform to reason due to mistaken judgment about, or ignorance of, the good due to cognitive failure (as Socrates thought)? Or is it due to a conscious failure to act on one’s judgment about what is best, due to some sensible influence, in which case the failure is ethical (as Aristotle thought in opposition to his teacher)? Timmermann terms the first account ‘intellectualist’ and the second ‘volitional’. His striking thesis is that ‘Kant is committed to intellectualism about non-moral action while defending a strongly anti-intellectualist or volitional position in the realm of moral choice’ (6–7). In non-moral or prudential choice, either an agent’s failure to take the available means to a professed end is due to ignorance or mistaken judgment about the appropriate means; or it is due to the agent’s no longer wanting the end, or not wanting it enough to bear the costs of attaining it. Neither case is an instance of what is termed ‘true irrationality’, because one’s choice does not in fact diverge from one’s judgment of what is prudentially best. Practical failure in this domain is due to mistaken judgement, rather than choice that violates some distinctively practical principle. But, Timmermann argues, this account of practical failure does not ring true in the moral sphere. ‘Moral failure is not caused by some cognitive defect or a flawed piece of reasoning. It consists in the conscious, knowing, voluntary choice not to will the moral end’ (7). In prototypically moral failure we judge one action to be the morally good choice, but knowingly choose a different course (weakly, inexplicably, perversely, etc.).

Timmermann ascribes these differing accounts of practical failure to Kant on both textual and philosophical grounds, and his discussion of practical failure is a bridge to the hybrid account of practical rationality, which holds that choice is determined in radically different ways in the moral and non-moral domains. In prudential choice Kant is an intellectualist in the sense that choice and action are invariably determined by one’s judgment (e.g., of what one wants most, or of the proper means to one’s end). There is no gap between judgment and choice, and we do not knowingly choose contrary to our judgment. However, in the moral sphere rational deliberation and judgment are one thing, but choice is something further and choice can diverge from judgment. The faculty of choice is tasked with following the dictates of practical reason. But given the heterogeneity of the incentives by which human beings are moved, following the dictates of practical reason requires an elective act on the part of an agent that reflects or determines one’s character. In that sense, Kant is a ‘volitionist’ about moral choice.

The upshot, according to Timmermann, is that there is no unified account of practical rationality in Kant. One element of this dualistic reading is his claim that for Kant ‘there is no freedom in non-moral choice’ (4n.14)—a claim to which I will return.

Some background will help bring out the significance of Timmermann’s reading. The above dualisms are on display in the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason , where Kant draws a distinction between ‘practical laws’ deriving from the formal principle of morality based in reason a priori and ‘material practical principles’ that place the ground of choice in pleasure or the feeling of agreeableness ( KpV 5: 22ff.). In the Critique Kant treats this dichotomy as exhaustive, in that any principle of choice falls into one category or the other. Moreover, what unifies those in the second category (‘makes them wholly of the same kind’) is that they place the ground of choice in pleasure or the feeling of agreeableness—which Kant treats as affections ‘of one and the same vital force’—so that any principle of choice other than respect for moral principles—including, e.g., other-regarding principles based on affection or natural sympathy— falls under the ‘general principle of self-love or one’s own happiness’ ( KpV 5:22). And in Chapter II, Kant argues that absent an a priori law of pure practical reason, the only ground of choice is the subjective standard of what an agent finds agreeable.

Several commentators have looked for ways to soften these dichotomies and to find some continuity between moral and non-moral choice—often on purely interpretive grounds, but sometimes in an effort to nudge Kant in a direction that they find philosophically more acceptable. They grant the heterogeneity of moral and non-moral incentives and allow that they ground different deliberative processes. But they argue that Kant held (should have held?) that as different as these incentives are, they are taken up into choice on the same terms—through an act of reflective endorsement, or by taking the incentive to be an objectively sufficient ground of choice. The idea—and here is a variation of what Henry Allison has called Kant’s ‘Incorporation Thesis’—is that any incentive comes to influence choice by being taken up into practical self-consciousness as an item from which one can reason to action. Timmermann cites Christine Korsgaard, Allison, Stephen Engstrom, and myself as proponents of what he calls ‘intellectualism’ about moral choice. (I’m happy to be included in this august company, and though I prefer the term ‘cognitivism’, I will use ‘intellectualism’ in this review in deference to Timmermann.) Some readers find continuity between moral and non-moral choice to be inherently attractive, but in addition this approach has the specific advantage of allowing Kant to say that choices made on both moral and non-moral grounds are free (and imputable to the agent) in just the same sense. A difficulty for this approach is that, in addition to holding that morally neutral or innocent choice results from a judgment made on sufficient grounds, it must say the same about choices that are clearly morally bad—that in action that violates moral principle, an incentive influences choice through the agent incorrectly taking it to be an objectively sufficient ground of choice. [1] Does such a model allow for knowing and intentional wrong-doing, as Kant allows and which seems clearly possible? This concern is one of Timmermann’s reasons for defending an alternative approach that he finds truer to the texts.

Timmermann’s reading is striking for ascribing to Kant a hybrid theory of practical rationality—intellectualism about prudence and a volitional understanding of moral choice. Equally striking is his suggestion that the interpretive approach that he targets is the ‘mirror image’, favoring a volitional understanding of prudential and an intellectualist understanding of moral choice (128). One might think that one should have the same understanding of each domain, whatever that might be. Clearly there is still a lot to sort out here.

Timmermann’s book contains insightful discussions of many topics central to Kant’s conception of practical reason and to related contemporary discussions. The writing is admirably clear and to the point. There is much to be learned from his careful interpretive work and from his comments on the relevant secondary literature. I found almost all of the book to be instructive, even though I take the other side on several issues. Since his main claims deserve more detailed discussion than a short review permits, I’ll limit myself to pointing out some main building blocks of the hybrid conception that he ascribes to Kant.

Chapter 2 argues for the hedonistic reading of Kant’s conception of happiness as a sum of agreeable feeling (rather than overall desire satisfaction), stressing that for Kant the difficulty of forming a conception of happiness is uncertainty about what we will find agreeable. Timmermann emphasizes Kant’s idea that the quantity of expected pleasure is the single ‘volitional currency of prudential deliberation’ (27). This is an important element of the hybrid conception since it sets up the idea that human beings are moved by two heterogeneous kinds of interests (moral and prudential), between which there is, as it were, no rate of exchange.

Chapter 4 is a discussion of instrumental imperatives aimed at showing that so-called ‘“empirical practical reason” is not a mode of practical reason at all’ (46). On Timmermann’s reading ‘there is only one principle of practical reason: the categorical imperative (52).’ Noting Kant’s later view in the Critique of Judgment that hypothetical imperatives are ‘corollaries of theoretical reason ( KU 5:172),’ Timmermann sides with those who argue that Kant did not accept a single fundamental principle of instrumental rationality that, following Tom Hill’s classic paper, is often called ‘the Hypothetical Imperative’. There are then no distinctively practical principles of means-end rationality—neither particular hypothetical imperatives understood as genuinely practical principles nor a single fundamental principle of instrumental rationality. This idea sets up one line of argument for intellectualism in the prudential domain. If there are no genuinely practical principles of instrumental reason, there is no ‘true means-end irrationality’ in the sense of action that violates some such principle. But if practical failure in the prudential domain is not due to the violation of some practical principle, then it must be due to ignorance of or failure to grasp the relevant (theoretical) means-end connection. That supports the idea that prudential choice is directly determined by judgment (about what will bring about most satisfaction, etc.). Timmermann develops a more intuitive line of argument as well. It is hard to understand why an agent would not take the known and available means to an end that she wants, especially if we assume that agreeable feeling is the single volitional currency in the prudential domain—indeed, so hard to understand that it could never happen (cf. 65). If one is not taking the available means to something that one wants on the grounds of expected pleasure, that must be due either a) to a mistaken judgment about the means or b) to the agent’s now finding some alternative more appealing (in which case there is no practical failure) (see 8, 57, 109).

One problem that I see is that Timmermann supports this point through very simple examples, such as taking steps to make good coffee or good bread. In cases where the means to a happiness-based end is clearly known and available, it is hard to understand how someone with the end can fail to take the means, and we conclude that they changed their mind about the end. Here the intellectualist account that draws a straight line between means-end judgment and choice is compelling. However, I do not see that such cases rule out the possibility of more complex cases of true means-end irrationality—where an agent fails to take the known, available but difficult steps to what she clearly believes will bring greater happiness, cases where volitional failure (out of weakness, distraction or indecision) is plausible. Philosophers are divided over this issue and though Timmermann’s discussion is carefully framed, I doubt that it will settle either the philosophical issue or what Kant thought.

Chapter 6 raises important challenges to the ‘intellectualist’ conceptions of moral choice mentioned above (namely that rational choice is constitutively guided by a judgment of sufficient reasons). First, it contains a valuable discussion of Allison’s ‘Incorporation Thesis’, arguing that this thesis does not clearly support ‘intellectualism’ about moral choice. Allison’s concern was to identify the element of spontaneity that is central to Kant’s conception of free choice across the board, and he does not explicitly position himself as supporting an ‘intellectualist’ conception of ‘incorporation’. (In fact, there is ambiguity in the notion of ‘incorporating an incentive into a maxim’. Is ‘incorporation’ a bare elective act, the simple adoption of a maxim? Or does it involve an element of normatively guided judgment or endorsement?) Timmermann’s contribution is to bring out the cognitivist slant to Allison’s reading (namely that to incorporate an incentive into a maxim is to endorse a general principle that treats the incentive as a sufficient ground of choice) and to show that another interpretation is possible, here getting into the weeds with alternate readings of passages from Kant’s Lectures on which Allison draws. The main thrust of Timmermann’s discussion is that ‘incorporation’ is an act of Willkür , of the faculty of choice. But on the standard reading of this distinction, while Wille is a deliberative capacity (it is ‘practical reason itself’ ( MdS 6: 213)), Willkür is a purely elective capacity. As Timmermann writes, given that ‘rational assessment cannot be the task of Willkür . . .why not assume that incorporation is an elective, not an evaluative act? (97)’ Human beings are moved by heterogeneous and incommensurable motives, and we must choose which to prioritize. A second challenge is the difficulty for the ‘intellectualist’ of accommodating the phenomenon of knowingly acting against one’s moral judgement (102–6). Timmermann cites several passages in which Kant clearly allows for this possibility. The question for the ‘intellectualist’ here is how to accommodate these passages and, more importantly, this phenomenon.

Can the ‘intellectualist’ respond to these clearly legitimate challenges? I think that there is textual support for the ‘intellectualist’ position, though granted there are texts that run in the other direction. One might not find a decisive answer in what Kant says. [2] But there are systematic considerations as well. There is a general worry that the ‘volitional conception’ detaches moral choice from practical reasoning and judgment in ways that make it arbitrary and ungrounded. Should we attribute such a view to Kant? More generally, does an elective conception of choice fit into a general conception of the will as a rational power that is exercised according to its own constitutive principle? Is there room in that conception of the will for a purely elective capacity whose exercise, though subject to normative (moral) assessment, is itself normatively ungrounded? (Timmermann will certainly say ‘Yes,’ while I say: ‘Perhaps Not’.) These are complicated issues that need more discussion than this review permits. One virtue of Timmermann’s essay is to have raised them so clearly.

One recurring theme in the essay is that prudential choice is not free: ‘there is no freedom in empirically conditioned practical choice, which might just as well be mechanical, because the spontaneity involved is relative to antecedent purposes rather than absolute’ (98). (See also 4n14, 8, 24, 120, 156.) Initially these remarks puzzled me because they come close to saddling Kant with the ‘Reinhold problem’—that only morally good choice is free, that morally bad choice is not free and therefore not imputable. But Timmermann does not saddle Kant with this problem. Rather he is articulating the standard Kantian idea that free agency is only manifest or most fully realized in action motivated by respect for moral principle. But then does Timmermann’s reading leave room for a sense in which all choice across the board is free?

I understand his reading as follows: Genuine freedom requires the capacity to choose between radically different alternatives. That is, it requires both that agents face motivational alternatives of an entirely different kind and that they have the capacity to choose between them. Furthermore, freedom requires a capacity for genuine self-determination. Human beings satisfy these conditions. We are moved by incentives that operate in ‘different volitional currencies,’ and we have the capacity to choose between them. Furthermore, that capacity is a capacity for self-determination because it gives us the ability to set aside sensible interest and to act from principles that reason gives to itself. Human beings then have the capacity for free agency. Where only prudential considerations rooted in the expectation of agreeable feeling are at issue, we can move almost ‘mechanically’ from such considerations to choice; in that respect prudential choice does not draw on our free/moral capacity. But since moral considerations are always on the table, in any choice situation where we find reason to, we can bracket prudential interest and follow moral principle. (So the existence of free/moral capacity settles the issue of responsibility.)

I suspect that there is another piece to this puzzle. One might think that, given the ever-presence of morality, whenever agents act from prudence, they have elected to—that is, they did in fact side with that basic alternative. That is to say that they have exercised a capacity for elective choice that does not draw on specifically moral capacity (but which could at any time). Is that a sense in which all choice across the board is free? These are delicate issues that Timmermann might address more explicitly.

Kant’s Will at the Crossroad develops a comprehensive approach to Kant’s conception of practical rationality supported by careful reading of the principal texts. By re-affirming several (familiar) dualisms that other commentators have played down, it lays out an alternative to one influential trend in recent Kant scholarship. These issues are subtle and complex, and we should be grateful to Jens Timmermann for putting them on the table so clearly and giving us the opportunity to think them through once more.

References to Kant’s work use the following abbreviations and cite paging in the Berlin Academy Edition:

G Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals .

KpV Critique of Practical Reason .

KU Critique of the Power of Judgment .

MdS The Metaphysics of Morals .

Reath, Andrews. 2018. “The Law of a Free Will”, in Violetta Waibel and Margit Ruffing, eds., Nature and Freedom: Proceedings of the 12 th International Kant Congress (Berlin: de Gruyter): 2123–2130 .

[1] As Kant allows at KpV 5:74, in a passage that Timmermann does not discuss.

[2] For a short essay in which I address these questions, see Reath 2018.

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A Nazi Villa So Tainted Berlin Can’t Give It Away

The former estate of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, is too expensive to keep and perilous to sell. No one knows quite what to do with it.

Two older men, backs to the camera, stand outside a building with the word “Bogensee” on it.

By Sarah Maslin Nir

Sarah Maslin Nir reported from inside the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels’s abandoned villa in Germany.

Behind thickets of beech trees, overgrown with nettles and beside a blue lake an hour north of Berlin, a villa that once belonged to a Nazi mastermind quietly rots.

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No one knows what to do with the estate beside the Bogensee lake in Brandenburg. It was built for Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, by his grateful country just before the start of World War II. Owned by the State of Berlin today, it has sat moldering expensively on the public’s tab, along with a set of dramatic dormitories built later by the Communist Party to house an indoctrination school. It is a nearly 20-acre campus that echoes with the pasts of two totalitarian regimes.

Too burdensome for the state to continue carrying, prohibitively expensive for most real estate prospectors and tainted by history, Berlin has given up on selling or developing it.

Instead, it has offered to give the Nazi mansion away, free. (The taker, of course, would be subject to the government’s approval.)

In exasperated comments made to Parliament this spring, Stefan Evers, the state’s senator for finance, made the pitch — take it off our hands, or we will tear it down — setting off a flurry of interest in prospective takers from around the globe.

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Bangladesh’s new ruler is in a race against time

The country’s police have gone missing

A man walks past graffiti that reads "our new secular Bangladesh" at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh.

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O VER THE past ten days Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, has been transformed. Images of Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister who fled the country on August 5th, and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, her father and Bangladesh’s founding father, have vanished from billboards. Walls covered in posters and slogans advertising the Awami League ( AL ), their party, have been painted over with colourful graffiti displaying slogans and scenes from the protests that brought down Sheikh Hasina. “Gen Z cleans the mess”, reads one, “Courage is contagious”, another. The mood has changed along with the appearance of the city. “It’s very freeing to be able to talk openly about things after all these years,” says a young NGO worker.

For now, the political transformation seems to be keeping pace. Since taking charge on August 8th, the interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel peace laureate and social entrepreneur, has overseen a rapid leadership overhaul of key institutions. Mr Yunus has appointed a new chief justice and a new central-bank governor. At least 16 university vice-chancellors have stepped down following pressure from students. The government has announced it will try those responsible for state-sponsored killings during the protests, has started to throw out cases filed against students since they began in July, and embarked on police reforms to restore trust in law enforcement.

Slowly, life is returning to normal. Primary schools reopened on August 14th; Dhaka’s metro will do so on August 17th. Factories are operating again and workers have begun returning to offices. High-school and university exams, slated for August, have been rescheduled to September, to allow students time to recover and prepare. Police stations have begun to reopen, too, raising hopes that the many ordinary people who have spent the past few weeks guarding their neighbourhoods at night can return to a more normal rhythm.

Yet questions remain over how solid this return to normality really is. Mr Yunus’s position, though backed by the army and popular support, is legally precarious: Sheikh Hasina abolished a constitutional provision for caretaker governments between elections. The worry is that Mr Yunus will have to step down before reforming the political system enough to break the cycle of retribution between Sheikh Hasina’s AL and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party ( BNP ) of Khaleda Zia that has scarred Bangladesh’s politics ever since independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The constitution mandates that an election be held within 90 days. But observers in Dhaka say Mr Yunus needs more time to insulate the judiciary, the police and the electoral system from renewed political capture. “If we hold an election in two years, we may have a balanced political system,” reckons Major General Shahidul Haque, a retired officer and former ambassador. “But if we have one too soon, we’ll just end up with the same old thing.”

The reopening of police stations shows how quickly things could go wrong. Most are still staffed by soldiers. The police remain loth to return to work, fearing retaliation for violence committed during the protests. But that is wearing thin, says General Haque. “The army does not have the capacity to do this forever, so they really need to redeploy the police as soon as possible.” The risk is that, otherwise, the country faces anarchy or martial law.

As The Economist went to press the new law-and-order structure was undergoing one of its first tests. On August 15th, the anniversary of Sheikh Mujib’s assassination in 1975, AL supporters traditionally hold big rallies. The interim government declared the day a normal working day. Urged on by Sheikh Hasina from exile in Delhi, the AL called for a rally anyway.

Pressure from the countries’ political parties to hold early elections is another danger. For now, they are showing restraint. “We support the interim government,” says Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the BNP ’s secretary-general. “We want an election as soon as possible, but the political environment needs to be ready for it.” Other party leaders say much the same. Yet if they sense a wobble in Mr Yunus’s government, they may change their tune.

Another risk is that the students whose protests swept Mr Yunus to power lose patience and try to take matters into their own hands. The resignation of the former chief justice on August 10th was prompted partly by a large protest outside the Supreme Court. More such politics by protest could undermine Mr Yunus’s authority. To make Bangladesh a vibrant democracy, his government needs to move fast. ■

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This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Move fast and fix things”

Asia August 17th 2024

What if south korea got a nuclear bomb, taiwan braces for america’s election, kishida fumio, japan’s prime minister, stands down, thailand’s prime minister is sacked. what next, afghans are suffering. don’t expect any tears from the taliban.

Footloose and fancy degree: How countries compete for talent

From the August 17th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

More from Asia

An America First world will force allies to face uncomfortable questions

For the opposition, a possible Trump victory is another reason to talk to China

The constitutional court has further muddied the country’s messy politics

Three years on from America’s humiliating departure, the country is ignored

The race to succeed him next month is unusually unpredictable

Muhammad Yunus, a microcredit pioneer, is Bangladesh’s interim leader

His experience, popularity and international reputation offer new hope for a democratic future

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