Houellebecq

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INTERVIEWER

You’ve said that you are “an old Calvinist pain-in-the-ass.” What do you mean?


HOUELLEBECQ

I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us is unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death. This resembles the Calvinist notion of predestination, in which people are born saved or damned, without being able to do a thing about it. And I am a curmudgeonly pain in the ass because I refuse to diverge from the scientific method or to believe there is a truth beyond science.

-- Michel Houellebecq at The Paris Review (Fall 2010)

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Hume

David Hume argues that morality does not depend on a god or faith or religion. On the other side, it also could be said that even priestliness is no guarantor of good manners and sound morality.

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I deny a providence, you say, and supreme governour of the world, who guides the course of events, and punishes the vicious with infamy and disappointment, and rewards the virtuous with honour and success, in all their undertakings. But surely, I deny not the course itself of events, which lies open to every one’s enquiry and examination. I acknowledge, that, in the present order of things, virtue is attended with more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more favourable reception from the world. I am sensible, that, according to the past experience of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life, and moderation the only source of tranquillity and happiness. I never balance between the virtuous and the vicious course of life; but am sensible, that, to a well-disposed mind, every advantage is on the side of the former.

-- David Hume, “An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding”

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