. Affliction and disease, physical or emotional trauma, a natural disadvantage or disability have often served as an added motive or accelerator for high-level creative achievement. France in the mid-seventeenth century. will be from our eyes … which are the appropriate judges of For instance, A has better eyesight than B; X is taller and stronger than Y).Institutional inequalities, unless they are sanctioned by divine law, are entirely conventional and sometimes even arbitrary and can be rescinded or overturned. On questions of fact, therefore, otherwise, on earth. J. Krailsheimer Pascal’s life has stirred the same fascination and generated as much lively discussion and learned commentary as his writings. Now realize that there are an infinite number of such triangles, each stretching out vertically and horizontally to infinity, with each diagonal base in the structure containing within it a theoretically infinite subset of ever-smaller triangles. In our fallen condition it is impossible for us to resist interior grace. When he returned to Paris he mustered enough energy to work out his plan for a public shuttle system of omnibuses for the city. fact that the weather was very changeable, sometimes calm, sometimes he was too ill to do so himself, he arranged for his brother-in-law, (“What can I know?”) was Pascal’s more earnest if also slightly skeptical variation. The commentators who credit this tale attribute Pascal’s “second conversion” to it and view his return to Jansenism as an immediate and direct consequence of his near-death experience. “outside of which I am fully convinced there is no Pascal himself, along with his father and sisters, had never displayed much in the way of genuine religious fervor. Essentially an extensive commentary on human nature and the doctrine of divine grace, the Écrits represent Pascal’s most ambitious venture into the arena of Catholic theological debate. ‘natural light’, to ‘common sense’ or the According to Pascal, we use these goods and activities not, as we self-flatteringly suppose, to certify our achievements or add a touch of bonheur to our inner life. Pascal ends the letter with a pledge that he, Gilberte, and Jacqueline should redouble on one another the love that they shared for their late father. Expressed as a percentage, A receives 77.34375 percent of the stake; B receives 22.65625 percent of the stake. from power as a result of a relatively trivial Everything we know about Pascal during Blaise Pascal. height of the mercury on the mountain top, and subsequently at two It also confirmed his belief in miracles, a belief that would form part of the foundation for his view of religious faith as set forth in the, Plan and Purpose of the Work and its Textual History, Pascal’s Conversation with M. de Saci on Epictetus and Montaigne, Philosophy of Science and Theory of Knowledge, Conclusion: Pascal’s Reputation and Cultural Legacy, Texts and translations of works by Pascal. Such a faculty, if it is indeed instinctive, would presumably be inborn and thus either a part of our basic nature and something that all humans share or a special gift or grace bestowed by God to the elect. A problem arose almost immediately when Pascal discovered that his first four questions had in effect already been solved by his friend Roberval. The comprehensive concupiscence under which Pascal's deeply personal, angry response to the use of political power ), and that their interpretation of the Are they truly intended to convert a Méré or a Mitton, and are they addressed only to skeptics and those lacking faith? Profane literature was foreign to him, and given his tastes and habits it’s impossible to imagine him reading, say, Ovid or Catullus, much less Rabelais. established civil society or government, no matter how tyrannical it And even if he couldn’t fully accept the assertion that existence precedes essence, he could at least approve Sartre’s accompanying claim that even a tiny increment of free will is decisive. It wasn’t long before he got an early test of his new resolve. mother's death when he was three years old, Blaise was reared by his As That sum divided by the sum of all items in the row is A’s portion of the stakes. Pascal confesses that it is pleasant sport to watch Montaigne poke holes in the arguments of his opponents and see “proud reason so irresistibly baffled by its own weapons.” Of course, ironically, Montaigne’s skepticism effectively undermines not just his opponent’s views but his own arguments as well. the Fallen condition into which they have been born as a result of of Augustine (2010), On Free Choice. The poet and critic T. S. Eliot, in his 1933 introductory essay to the Pensées, also interprets the work in this traditional way. If they proved it, they would not keep their word; it is through their lack of proofs that they show they are not lacking in sense. the Auvergne. He was known to be temperamentally impatient with and demanding of others while sometimes seeming arrogant and self-absorbed. assent in their behaviour, and to obey their political and His older sister Gilberte had married Florin Périer in This pessimistic interpretation of political power and its “The greatness of human beings consists in And so on. condemned by the Pope as heretical did not occur in the text of The appropriate attitude of subjects or citizens to established Is it by reason that you love yourself? The essay includes an original proof concerning the special properties of hexagons inscribed within conic sections that is still known today as Pascal’s Theorem. compensated for a lack of evidence in support of a particular It guides our observations and assists us in the forming of hypotheses and predictions. accede to realities that are incomprehensible. Pascal was never employed in any capacity, and he lived modestly with Interpreted in this way, Pascal’s portrayal of the pleasures of life as cruel and deadly and of disease and affliction as salutary and healing seem not so much holy paradoxes as evidence of the extent to which the gloom of Jansenism had darkened his entire outlook. the Traité du vide: I, 452). permitted. For, if one does not guarantee the foundations, one cannot Here Pascal virtually abandons the artifice of “Montalte” and seems almost to come forward in his own person. From Pascal’s severe point of view, even the arts, and especially dance and theatre, are but species of divertissement. For more than three years she had suffered from a lacrimal fistula, a horrible swelling or tumor around her eye that, according to her physicians, had no known cure and was thought to be treatable if at all only by cauterization with a red hot stylus. Needless to say, he was not swayed by Pascal’s arguments. his original home in what had meantime become Clermont-Ferrand, because he understanding of nature continually proliferate; and, since they are Douglas Groothuis (Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary) has written wisely on these issues. . basis for any theory of justice which would justify opposition to an The claim that one could direct one's intention away from what is with very public disputes between competing religious and theological the Pensées. efficacious, occasionalists thought it was redundant to require a Today, the provinciales retain documentary value both as relics of Jansenism and as surviving specimens of 17th-century religious polemic, but modern readers prize them mainly for their literary excellence. “Cromwell would have ravaged the whole of Christendom; Pascal had entered . about matters that transcend the limited capacity of the human Indeed, for all he knew, an invisible emanation from the god Mercury may have influenced his results. did Pascal anticipate the solution later adopted by Locke and restrict However, we spend most of our time blocking out or concealing our true condition from ourselves via forms of self-deception and amour-propre. Upon his death, his manuscripts were placed in the custody of Arnauld and a committee of fellow Jansenists. According to Gilberte, after his 18th birthday Pascal never lived a day of his life free from pain or from some sort of illness or medical affliction. mature years. Following the accident, the Deschamps from my own children” (I, 83). seventeenth century. do not believe them for that reason” (Fragment 184: II, In the spring of 1647, partly on the advice of his physicians, he returned to Paris where he linked up once again with former colleagues and began organizing several new essays and treatises for publication. Although Other something that is permitted as the objective of one's actions” 3. That Christianity is reasonable though not provable by reason effectively summarizes one of the central arguments of the entire Pensées. Romantic readers themselves disagree on the extent to which this exercise in self-revelation is a conscious product – that is, a carefully arranged and skillfully made artifact – or, in a more psychoanalytic vein, the expression of the author’s actual inner conflicts and unconscious motives and intentions. reflections to puncture the pride, arrogance, and self-love of those Born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Pascal was the third of four children. These inspirational figures served the young Pascal as mentors, examiners, intellectual models, and academic guides. (See “Pascal’s Philosophy of Science,” in Hammond, 118.) poor … those who are rich are merely stewards of their surplus, Nonetheless, his philosophical commitments can be gleaned from 262), but He chose not to provide them with the ‘unique grace of “we do not believe the whole of philosophy to be worth one one may query whether the laws of a country are just; they are just, 378). The certainty of experimental results ‘intending’ results that differ from the actual effects or foundation of religious belief. Such logically interconnected principles and conclusions Based on the foregoing definition of fideism, Pascal does not fit into such a list, though the tendency to include him is understandable. that would transcend the limitations of our thought. view, God had provided reliable moral guidance to human beings in the géométrique adopts a foundationalist perspective on Pascal had collected his notes into However, such a unilateral interpretation of God's But, again, not being able to prove or give a convincing explanation for a belief is not quite the same thing as saying that the belief is incompatible with or contrary to reason. expressed public dissent about the crown's fiscal policies. What he produced was something utterly new in the annals of religious controversy. Such “distractions” may sometimes involve behavior that is immoral or culpable, for example, prostitution, drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, but more often take the form of habits and activities that are merely wasteful or self-indulgent, like gaming or the salon. doctrine, to which Pascal also objected, meant that one may decide Thus his authorship, while dubious, is at least possible, and so the question for his critics and biographers becomes: how to account for a work that seems so utterly contrary to Pascal’s own modest habits and reputation, so much more in the spirit of the salons of Paris rather than the cells of Port-Royal? that their belief was itself a gift from God. Rouen was a city in crisis, beset by street violence, crop failures, a tax revolt, and an outbreak of plague. Though the controversy left a blemish on Pascal’s reputation, his work on the cycloid has been admired by later mathematicians for its ingenuity and elegance, and he is credited, alongside his great contemporaries Galileo, Torricelli, Descartes, Mersenne, Roberval, Fermat, Wren, and Huygens, as having helped to solve the curve once known for its power to attract and captivate all who studied it as the “Helen of geometers.” In 1672, after having obtained and reviewed copies of Pascal’s papers on conics and the cycloid, Leibniz attested to their brilliance and concluded that were it not for an “evil fate” (by which phrase it’s unclear whether he meant their author’s short lifespan or his absorption in Jansenist theology) Pascal would have almost certainly gone on to make further and deeper mathematical discoveries. In short, if we accept existentialism as not so much a system or body of doctrine, but as more of a perspective or attitude towards life – an exacting and indeed tragic sense of life (depicted graphically and with Dostoyevsky-like force in fragment 434/686) – then Pascal can be considered an existentialist philosopher. Descartes himself paid a visit (and according to reports wisely suggested that Pascal follow a regimen of bed-rest and bouillon rather than the steady diet of enemas, purgings, and blood-lettings favored by his doctors). political arrangements facilitated citizens in the performance of That After 1654, We are made in God’s image–and thus capable of rational thought and freedom of choice–butour reason is clouded, and our wills are depraved. No one, not even Gilberte or Jacqueline, was aware of the existence of this document, which was not discovered until after his death. claimed that, when researchers work together, they “make and necessary logical steps from such axioms or principles, on the Provincial Letters, summarizes the Augustinian position as Scholarly interest in this matter involves more than just idle curiosity and medical detective-work. Pascal's rejection of any naturalistic explanation of the human (Can an act be both voluntary and irresistible?) Although he doesn’t specifically address the issue raised by Pascal’s Wager, John Stuart Mill in his essay “Theism” provides a utilitarian defense of the concept of religious hope. Bove, L., Bras, G. and Méchoulan (eds. ambition, one might also suspect that an inherent contradiction in the Pascal's philosophical reflections are dominated by a theological In this respect, Pascal stands as a kind of existential reference mark: a polestar in relation to which we as readers are able (and in Eliot’s opinion obliged) to locate ourselves. In any case, the “geometric spirit” is both a prominent characteristic of Pascal’s own genius as well as an important epistemological idea (illustrating both the powers and limitations of the human mind) that he returns to repeatedly throughout his writings. example, he seems to have contributed to an early version of the intention at the time of their performance. The text, as we have it today, represents the assembled notes, fragments, miscellaneous aphorisms, and short essays-in-progress of what was to be a detailed and comprehensive Apology for Christianity – a defense of the faith against atheism, deism, libertinism, pagan philosophy, and the cult of honnêteté. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1658, as he was studying the Bible and doing preparatory work for what was to be his magnum opus – the great Apology for Christianity that would become the Pensées – Pascal turned his attention once again to mathematics and to the problem of the roulette or cycloid. understand. Apologetic treatises in support of Christianity It is therefore from this imperfect enlightenment that it happens that the one [that is, Epictetus] knowing the duties of man and being ignorant of his impotence, is lost in presumption, and that the other [that is, Montaigne], knowing the impotence and being ignorant of the duty, falls into laxity; whence it seems that since the one leads to truth, the other to error, there would be formed from their alliance a perfect system of morals. Confident of his results, he went on tour to demonstrate his hypothesis, which he was able to do using tubes of different length and diameter and a variety of liquids. For example, Voltaire’s Pascal – the scientific genius and Enlightenment wit turned sour religious fanatic – is the reverse image of the Pascal adored by the Port-Royal community – the gentle saint who abandoned frivolous worldly pursuits to take up the Cross. On an icy day in January of 1646, Étienne Pascal, in his capacity as a public official, was summoned to prevent a duel that was to take place in a field outside Rouen. The Provincial Letters provide a statement of his Having made his discoveries more or less instinctively, using his own private mathematical inventions and methods, he then found he had to “translate” his ideas into the conventionally accepted language and procedures of his peers and fellow numerophiles. determined by God's greater power. explain natural phenomena, and that “the secrets of nature are Barely an essay at all, the work is a one-page document consisting of three diagrams, three definitions, and two lemmas. Descartes met him there, in September to belief, and it purports to show only that those who have accepted Other than his famous “wager” (about which I will say quite a bit more later), he is perhaps best known for a major contribution to mathematics: Pascal’s Triangle. His works have fared better, having received, during the three and a half centuries since his death, first-rate editorial attention, a number of superb translations, and an abundance of expert scholarly commentary. power in France. Others (including Descartes) accepted the experimental project's design would have made its implementation he terminated the mathematical discussions about which he had Pascal’s authorship of the “Discourse on the Passions of Love” has been disputed for the obvious reason that its subject (romantic love) and sentiments (that love exalts the soul, that those with the greatest souls make the truest lovers, that secret or undeclared love entails both exquisite joy and agonizing pain, and so forth) are highly uncharacteristic of the writer and would seem to be far outside his range of interest and expertise. As Pascal points out, just because something is incomprehensible, for example, God, infinity, “a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere,” doesn’t mean that it can’t exist (149,230/182,262). (God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. (1+7+21) ÷ (1+7+21+35+35+21+7+1) = 29/128 = B’s portion. the Memorial, which he sewed into his coat and carried with The new work was to be nothing less than a definitive affirmation and justification of Christianity against its detractors and critics. (1648). They are perceived directly by reason and (along with any consequences that we can directly deduce from them) represent the only knowledge that we can know infallibly and with certainty. Applying his own terminology, one can say that he made his discoveries through what he called l’esprit de finesse, that is, the intuitive mind, with its instinctive twists and turns, lucky hunches, and inspired guesswork. Cells along any diagonal row are called cells of the same base. Pascal’s response is a perfect specimen of understatement and polite forbearance in which the tone often approaches but never quite crosses over into condescension or ridicule. Pascal’s wager, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2016 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University, Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054. Even if someone were convinced that the proportions between numbers are immaterial, eternal truths, depending on a first truth in which they subsist, called God, I should not consider that he made much progress towards his salvation. The original Port Royal edition of Pascal’s works came out in 1670, incomplete and carefully screened to avoid offending the government. This of his life, beginning at the age of two. Augustine compares the human soul to a deep abyss and likens it to the Nothingness preceding the Creation (Genesis 1:2). Similarly, if we place Pascal in a sequence of “Christian existentialist” writers, a line that arguably proceeds from Augustine to Kierkegaard and then on to, say, Unamuno and Berdyaev, we find the same emphasis on personal experience and individual freedom and responsibility; the same rhetorical skill and verbal flourishes; the same flair for metaphor and self-dramatization. sources of all our actions. Paix. Through devices of interview and dialogue Montalte manages to present these issues in relatively clear, understandable terms and persuade the reader that the Jansenist and Thomist views on each are virtually identical and perfectly orthodox. fact, and to what he perceived as the undue influence of a lax, “Pascal.” In, Sartre, Jean-Paul. the certainty or otherwise of various types of knowledge claim, and ill-health and loneliness he experienced in his final years, when he are certain actions which are intrinsically evil or good. Heart-knowledge would then be like some faint glimmer or trace of the instantaneous, clairvoyant understanding that the unfallen Adam was believed to enjoy in Paradise. preferred interpretation of that tradition, as he was unwavering in his contributions to scientific and theological debates in true. He also undertook a new project. He analyzes the situation as if the reader-protagonist (the “you” of the imaginary dialog) were involved in a great existential coin-toss game. of the Deschamps brothers relied partly on Jansen's short treatise, damned, that must be because God has decided not to rescue them from He even cautioned Gilberte not to be publicly affectionate with her children – on grounds that caresses can be a form of sensuality, dependency, and self-indulgence. sciences contrasted with the scientific failure of earlier natural Because the significance or value of the belief as Following Augustine, Pascal emphasized the extent to which any Of course any proper summation of Pascal’s cultural legacy must include his contributions to probability theory and game theory and his invention of the mechanical computer (in honor of which the Swiss computer scientist Niklaus Wirth aptly named his new programming language Pascal). Polemical exchanges, often acrimonious and personal, were a common feature of the 17th-century theological landscape. They also had a few unfortunate, unintended consequences. He speaks of “the true” assomething that you can “lose”, and “error” assomething “to shun”. Pascal's father was an accomplished mathematician, Modern readers are usually shocked to discover that the father of gambling odds and the mechanical computer wore a spiked girdle to chastise himself and further mortify a body already tormented by recurrent illness and chronic pain. One other oft-cited, but dubious and unverified, event in Pascal’s life also dates from this period. dispute about what is revealed in the scriptures or, more In response correspondended with Fermat, and he cancelled plans to publish a father, Étienne, in the company of his two sisters, Gilberte The concept of the Wager was by no means original with Pascal. (This legend relates to the aforementioned story of his accident on the Pont de Neuilly when his coach supposedly almost plunged into the Seine – an unconfirmed but oft-retold event that has been perpetuated and basically permanently enshrined in Baudelaire’s poem “Le Gouffre” and in Freud’s writings on obsession.). Second World War. 4. unless we have a prior proof that there exists a God who is capable of not what will prove that the earth does not move; and if one had exceed our limited powers, strike a chord of recognition with some of Chief among these ego-protective devices is divertissement (distraction or diversion), Pascal’s term for our continual need and almost addictive tendency to seek out mindless or soul-numbing forms of entertainment and amusement. outside the city boundaries — agreed to leave voluntarily (March His mother died when he was only three. This was the so-called question of fact (de fait). Logically, different assumptions may “lead to Originally conceived as a comprehensive defense of the Christian faith against non-believers, the work in its existing form is a rich assortment of notes, fragments, aphorisms, homilies, short essays, sermonettes, and aperçus that even in their disorganized and unfinished state constitute a powerful and fascinating contribution to philosophy, theology, and literary art. Étienne, in addition to being a lawyer, public official, and tax administrator, was proficient in Latin and Greek, a dabbler in natural philosophy, and an expert mathematician. ), Sir Thomas More’s anecdote of the Gallant and the Friar presents in an inverted form a similar conflict and moral: When a gallant sees a friar walking barefoot in the snow, he asks him why he endures such pain. and which men do not wish to know except for the sake of knowing guidance from his sister Jacqueline and subsequently from a prominent distinguishes between natural gifts or abilities, which vary from one 1620) and Jacqueline (b. (2) In January of 1656, after a long and heated trial, Arnauld, who had repeatedly denied that the five propositions were in Jansen’s text, was officially censured and expelled from the Sorbonne. While still traditions in which he participated, helped determine the issues to many religious traditions that claimed to report divine revelations, (See, for example, the medieval Rules of Courtly Love of Andreas Capellanus, a compendium of witty, lofty, acerbic, or tongue-in-cheek observations about love very similar to Pascal’s.). perspective of someone who already believed in God, and who assumed In essence, Pascal will leave it to readers to decide whether his account of the human condition and his descriptions of their social and physical worlds (not as they might wish them to be, but as they actually experience them in our daily lives) are credible and persuasive. Eventually these manuscripts were turned over to the great German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz for his evaluation and use. Pope Innocent X (May 1653) of five propositions about grace that were The Aeneid, The Canterbury Tales, De Rerum Natura, Kafka’s manuscripts all had work remaining or were incomplete when their authors died, but they seem like final drafts compared to the Pensées. The Jansenist Blaise Pascal, one of the most versatile geniuses of the century, represented and defended a minority religious movement that Louis XIV believed dangerously subversive. follows: God predestines some human beings for salvation and saves As Sartre puts the case, “if we are not entirely determined, then we are in effect wholly free.” Pascal would agree, though he would attribute this freedom to divine grace rather than accepting it as a mere donnée or product of happenstance. In effect, a complicated theological conflict is presented in the form of a simple human drama. the financial support provided by his family. 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