"Pensées" of Pascal

When Blaise Pascal died at the age of 39 in 1662, he left behind fragments of an work intended to be entitled "Apology for the  Christian Religion."  Two copies of these fragments were transcribed, and different arrangements of them have come down to us as his Pensées (or "Thoughts"). The Pensées were first published in France in 1670, and were classified under headings.  The selection we take up this Monday night in Great Conversations 1, according the the introduction, was developed to include the most well-known passages among the hundreds of paragraphs Pascal wrote.  A caveat to the reader: not all of them are related to the overarching design of an apology (or "defense") of Christianity.

I offer here a "concordance" of these 18 passages and the classifications Pascal gave to them, in order to help us see how they fit into Pascal's overriding themes.

136: "Diversion"

44: "Order"

978 (Self-love): A separately sourced fragment

512: Difference between the mathematical and intuitive mind (a translator's title)

198, 199, 200: Transition from knowledge of man to knowledge of God (according to a note by our translator, A.J. Krailsheimer, these three Pensées form a "dossier on Man"

429, 430: "Against Indifference" (a translator's title)

678: Human nature. Style. Jesuits, etc. (a translator's title)

12: "Order"

427, 428: Also "Against indifference"

148: "The Sovereign Good"

110 "Greatness"

423, 424, 418 "The Wager" (translator's title)