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Second edition of Blaise Pascal's Pensées, 1670

The Pensées (Thoughts) is a collection of fragments written by the French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensées was in many ways his life's work.[1] It represented Pascal's defense of the Christian religion, and the concept of "Pascal's wager" stems from a portion of this work.[2] However as conflicting with the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church it has been forbidden to print or read by the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.[a]

Contents

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Pascal is sceptical of cosmological arguments for God's existence and says that when religious people present such arguments they give atheists "ground for believing that the proofs of our religion are very weak".[3] He argues that the Bible actually cautions against such means. Scripture says that "God is a hidden God, and that, since the corruption of nature, He has left men in a darkness from which they can escape only through Jesus Christ, without whom all communion with God is cut off".[4]

He writes that it is an "astounding fact" that no "canonical" writer ever offers such proofs and this makes it "worthy of attention."[5] Pascal considers atheists to strawman Christianity. He writes that "If this religion boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness", however since "on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge" these arguments are not criticisms of Christianity[6] For Pascal Christianity says God is found only by those "who seek Him with all their heart" but atheists do not do this and their arguments are not related to this process.[7]

Pascal writes that "Scepticism is true; for, after all, men before Jesus Christ did not know where they were, nor whether they were great or small. And those who have said the one or the other, knew nothing about it, and guessed without reason and by chance. They also erred always in excluding the one or the other.".[8] He considers truth to be arrived at "not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them". Sceptics then who only engage by means of reason "labour to no purpose".[9]

Publication history

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The Pensées is the name given posthumously to fragments that Pascal had been preparing for an apology for Christianity, which was never completed. That envisioned work is often referred to as the Apology for the Christian Religion, although Pascal never used that title.[10]

Although the Pensées appears to consist of ideas and jottings, some of which are incomplete, it is believed that Pascal had, prior to his death in 1662, already planned out the order of the book and had begun the task of cutting and pasting his draft notes into a coherent form. His task incomplete, subsequent editors have heavily disagreed on the order, if any, in which his writings should be read.[11] Those responsible for his effects, failing to recognize the basic structure of the work, handed them over to be edited, and they were published in 1670.[12] The first English translation was made in 1688 by John Walker.[13] Another English translation by W. F. Trotter was published in 1931 with an introduction by T. S. Eliot.[14]

Several attempts have been made to arrange the notes systematically; notable editions include those of Léon Brunschvicg, Jacques Chevalier, Louis Lafuma [fr] and (more recently) Philippe Sellier. Although Brunschvicg tried to classify the posthumous fragments according to themes, recent research has prompted Sellier to choose entirely different classifications, as Pascal often examined the same event or example through many different lenses. Also noteworthy is the monumental edition of Pascal's Œuvres complètes (1964–1992), which is known as the Tercentenary Edition and was realized by Jean Mesnard [fr];[15] although still incomplete, this edition reviews the dating, history and critical bibliography of each of Pascal's texts.[16]

Editions

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  • and Nicole, Pierre (1877). Pensées de Pascal (in French). Archived from the original on June 16, 2021 – via Internet Archive.
  • Pascal's Pensées; or, Thoughts on Religion. Translated by Burford Rawlings, Gertrude. 1900. Archived from the original on June 16, 2021.
  • Pensées / The Provincial Letters. Translated by Trotter, William Finlayson; M'Crie, Thomas. New York: Modern Library. 1941. Archived from the original on June 16, 2021.
  • and Brunschvicg, Léon (1904). Pensées. Paris: Librairie Hachette. Archived from the original on June 16, 2021.

Notes

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  1. ^ Beacon for Freedom of Expression search for Pascal

References

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  1. ^ Copleston, Frederick Charles (1958). History of Philosophy: Descartes to Leibniz. Paulist Press. p. 155. ISBN 0809100681.
  2. ^ Hammond, Nicholas (2000). "Blaise Pascal". In Adrian Hastings; Alistair Mason; Hugh Pyper (eds.). The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 518. ISBN 9780198600244.
  3. ^ God and Nature Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science. University of California Press. 2023. p. 144.
  4. ^ From Plato to Derrida. Pearson Prentice Hall. 2010. p. 467.
  5. ^ Pascal, Blaise (1904). The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal. J.M. Dent & Company. p. 100.
  6. ^ Religion, Politics and Law Philosophical Reflections on the Sources of Normative Order in Society. Brill. 2009. p. 239.
  7. ^ Hammond, Nicholas, ed. (2003). The Cambridge Companion to Pascal. Cambridge University Press. p. 116.
  8. ^ Pascal, Blaise (2003). Pensees. Dover Publications. p. 119.
  9. ^ A Global Church History The Great Tradition Through Cultures, Continents and Centuries. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2019. p. 679.
  10. ^ Krailsheimer, Alban John (1995). "Introduction". Pensées. Penguin. p. xviii. ISBN 0140446451.
  11. ^ Blaise Pascal, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (accessed 2010-03-11)
  12. ^ Krailsheimer 1995, p. x.
  13. ^ Daston, Lorraine. Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988.
  14. ^ (1958) Pascal's Pensées, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot. New York: E. P. Dutton at Project Gutenberg
  15. ^ Jouslin, Olivier (2007). "Rien ne nous plaît que le combat": la campagne des Provinciales de Pascal. Vol. 1. Blaise Pascal University Press. p. 781.
  16. ^ See in particular various works by Laurent Thirouin [fr], for example "Les premières liasses des Pensées : architecture et signification", XVIIe siècle [fr], no. 177 (special Pascal), October–December 1992, pp. 451–468, or "Le cycle du divertissement, dans les liasses classées", Giornata di Studi Francesi, "Les Pensées de Pascal : du dessein à l’édition", Rome, Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta, 11–12 October 2002.
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