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)
1 comment:
It was remarked during our discussion of “Pensees” that Pascal was a transitional figure (Jean?), which I found very helpful in trying to understand the piece. He wrote between the Protestant Reformation, which introduced religious autonomy, and the Age of Enlightenment, which was to overturn religious authority. A tension between faith and reason, therefore, is evident throughout the piece, not just as contradictory methodologies for truth, but also as competing strategies for belief. As a result, his somewhat dogmatic defense of Christianity hinges on several observations of the human mind that sound quite modern and that describe many of us today. As if anticipating the ascendancy of psychology in our secular age, he writes: “It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery......Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality”. Although learning to “think well”, for Pascal, ultimately involves accepting Christianity as the one, true religion, his descriptions of the human condition, interestingly enough, are the very grist of the modern therapist. The “self-love” that Pascal writes about, that “takes every care to hide its faults both from itself and others” is the narcissism and denial that are examined in personal counseling; similarly, the “diversions” of Pascal’s world are the obsessions and addictions of society today. As a leading 17th c. fideist, Pascal tries to use reason to make the case for the existence of God, but in my opinion, fails to convince; moreover, with his famous wager, in which he likens divine belief to a bet with no risk and an infinite payoff, he sounds more like a salesman than a sage. Far more convincing, however, is his quintessentially psychological description of how, in a world of uncertainty, “we burn with desire to find a firm footing”. It is a desire that defines virtually all sentient individuals, then and now, driving some of us into the folds of religion, and others, to humanistic introspection. Self-knowledge, that peculiar, internal haven where doubt becomes manageable, is the promise of both religion and psychology, but I think the burning desire on our part to believe makes it possible. The 17th c. was undoubtedly responsible for Pascal’s defense of religion, but he clearly understood the human mind on a secular level as well.
Chris Lawrence
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