  Cardano presents De utilitate and Theonoston as complementary treatises aimed at implementing two different approaches in moral philosophy, the former based on the ordinary circumstances of human life (humanitus), the latter assuming the existence of supernatural conditions such as immortal individual souls and the effects of divine providence (divinitus). They outline two different paths towards the achievement of the same end: lasting happiness. While the ethical program devised in De utilitate is designed to face situations of obvious emergency (quae oculis ipsis subjacent) concerning human affairs (humanae res), Theonoston provides an account of the immortality of the soul (enarratio immortalitatis animi) that has momentous ethical consequences (De utilitate, OO, II, 8, 39a; Theonoston, OO, II, 299b). The same duplicity of levels is evident in the way Cardano examines the notion of “tranquillity,” which represents the highest point in one’s virtuous behaviour: one type of tranquillity is premised on the attainment of a certain level of “honorable and moderate pleasure,” the other secures a decent degree of happiness “even in the greatest calamities” (Theonoston, OO, II, 310b). Here it is worth pointing out that Cardano’s pragmatic approach to questions of moral philosophy works on both levels, the rational and the empirical. In the final analysis, tranquillity is for Cardano the most useful thing that may happen to a human being, for it provides inner joy, long life, and a more robust kind of wisdom.