  Despite the emphasis he places on the benefits of prudent action, Cardano believes that real, lasting happiness can be possible only if we demonstrate in a persuasive way that the human soul is immortal and that God intervenes actively in the human world, sanctioning a providential regime of the world. Two principles, more than any other, underlie Cardano’s moral philosophy: that the human soul is immortal, and that universal order, being a direct emanation of the One, governs all aspects of reality. Everything that happens has been planned by God, and all that God has established can only be good. Regarding the immortality of the soul, Cardano maintains that, in order to lead a meaningful existence and act accordingly, people need to know whether there is life after death and whether the nature of their afterlife will depend on the way they behaved in this world. In his opinion, Aristotle and the Stoics took the value of virtue for granted. In actual life, human beings will never be persuaded that virtue should be pursued for its own sake, unless they are convinced that their soul is immortal (De utilitate, OO, II, 3). In this sense, Cardano defends the immortality of the soul on strong pragmatic grounds. Referring to Seneca’s renowned instructions on how to cope with the thought of death, he points out that meditating about death while maintaining that the soul is mortal is simply absurd. In his eyes, Seneca is a bad rhetorician and an Epicurean in disguise, who exhorts us to die serenely while claiming that there is nothing after death (De utilitate, OO, II, 10a; see Giglioni 2012, 187).