Blaise Pascal

L'originalité de l'interprétation pascalienne des trois concupiscences selon 1 Jn 2, 16 est double : d'une part, il ne s'agit plus des plaisirs des sens; Pascal abandonne la doctrine janséniste de la délectation, elle-même fondée sur une théorie de l'imitation; d'autre part, cette concupiscence n'est pas tant l'amour du pouvoir que l'amour de la richesse, en tant qu'elle particularise. Le renversement des trois concupiscences en « trois ordres de choses » ne se comprend que si l'on voit que toute la (...) méditation pascalienne est orientée vers sa fin, le quaternaire sapientiel fourni par 1 Cor 1, 30. Ainsi la lecture nécessairement théologique du § 933 interdit d'en faire un modèle partout exportable et de lui attribuer une fonction architectonique pour l'ensemble de l'Apologie. The originality of the Pascalian interpretation of the three kinds of concupiscence according to 1 John 2: 16 is twofold: on the one hand, what is aimed at no longer is the pleasures of the senses; Pascal gives up the Jansenist doctrine of delectation, which was itself founded on a theory of imitation; on the other hand, concupiscence thus redefined no longer is a yearning for power, and becomes a yearning for riches, insofar as it consists in intemizing. The reversal of these three kinds of concupiscence into the « three orders of things » can be understood only if one realises that the whole Pascalian meditation is directed towards its end, namely the sapiential quaternary provided in 1 Corinthians 1: 30. Thus, the necessarily theological reading of § 933 makes it impossible to see it as a universally pertinent model or to ascribe to it an architectonic role in the structure of the Apologia. (shrink)

Traditional theistic arguments conclude that God exists. Pragmatic theistic arguments, by contrast, conclude that you ought to believe in God. The two most famous pragmatic theistic arguments are put forth by Blaise Pascal (1662) and William James (1896). Pragmatic arguments for theism can be summarized as follows: believing in God has significant benefits, and these benefits aren’t available for the unbeliever. Thus, you should believe in, or ‘wager on’, God. This article distinguishes between various kinds of theistic wagers, including finite (...) vs. infinite wagers, premortem vs. postmortem wagers, and doxastic vs. acceptance wagers. Then, we’ll turn to the epistemic-pragmatic distinction, and discusses the nuances of James’ argument, and how views like epistemic permissivism and epistemic consequentialism provide unique “hybrid” wagers. Finally, we’ll cover outstanding objections and responses. (shrink)

Katherine Dormandy aims both to classify possible modes of relating faith to epistemic norms in terms of three broad viewpoints: evidentialism, epistemological partialism, and anti-epistemological partialism. I advance two related claims: first, her categorization flattens the epistemological terrain by treating epistemic norms that operate at different levels as if they operated on the same level and thereby distorts the views she categorizes under Anti-Epistemological Partiality; and second, when rightly described, the noetic conflict involved in this view can be understood as (...) waged between epistemic norms of different types and function. To advance this claim, I examine Pascal’s conception of faith. For Pascal, we require first principles to establish an interpretive framework for understanding the universe and interpreting evidence, but outside of statements whose negations are self-contradictory, we cannot distinguish between “natural” principles and fantasies; faith is then understood as a relation to the Divine that allows the believer to receive, through grace, more accurate first principles. Faith therefore has a special cognitive status: (a) it has the right to influence how we interpret the world, including our epistemic norms and how to accommodate apparently disconfirming evidence, and (b) it is resilient to being reinterpreted in ways that would hinder it from fulfilling this function of stabilizing our epistemic situation—in the manner, for example, that such functioning would be hindered by negative beliefs concerning whether God exists, is good, and is faithful. The Pascalian believer is therefore involved in a much more subtle type of struggle than one between evidence and belief. Her conflict is waged between evidence and the interpretive framework through which she understands the world, including that evidence. I use the example of Job as a paradigm of how such a believer responds to apparently disconfirming evidence, treating doubt as grounds for frankly asking, or even demanding, God to answer one’s doubts, for the sake of his justice and love. (shrink)

Fruit d'une mathématique mystique issue de Proclus et de Denys, la doctrine des trois ordres figure-t-elle une échelle de Jacob, un chemin d'ascèse ou la radicale discontinuité de réalités incommensurables? Toujours est-il qu'elle révèle un Pascal profondément étranger au dualisme cartésien et à distance sérieuse de la spiritualité bérullienne. Being the fruit of a mystical mathematics initiated by Proclus and Dionysius, does the doctrine of the three orders figure a Jacob's ladder, a way of askesis or the radical discontinuity between (...) incommensurable realities? In any case it reveals how deeply Pascal is foreign to the cartesian dualism and how distant he is from berullian spirituality. (shrink)

Quel ordre pour les trois ordres? On se propose de montrer ici que l'interprétation des fr. 933 et 308 Lafuma requiert un examen de ce qui, en chaque ordre, est principe organisateur. En élucidant deux formes de l'ordre dans les trois ordres, on est à même d'expliquer les variations de l'ordre entre les trois ordres. La première de ces formes voit en chaque ordre des objets intentionnels de la volonté, reconnaissables à une fin dominante; mais les trois ordres sont alors (...) de même rang. La considération, en chaque ordre, de la façon dont s'accomplit la fin, met en évidence l'exercice d'un jugement de perfection qui permet par contre de concevoir la raison d'être d'une hiérarchie entre les trois ordres, tout autant que la disproportion hyperbolique que Pascal établit entre eux. What order for the three orders? The aim in this paper is to point out that the exegesis of Laf 933 and 308 demands to scrutinize the ruling principle within each order. By emphasizing two types of order in the three orders, we are in position to give the rationale of the variations of order between the three orders. The first type pertains to intentional objects, commanded by the prevailing ends of the will. But then the three orders are on an equality. By considering in each order the way of performing the end, we manifest the use of a judgment of perfection allowing us to conceive a hierarchy as well as an hyperbolical disproportion between the three orders. (shrink)

Les implications théoriques de la doctrine des trois ordres se font également sentir sur le plan politique. Non au sens où cette doctrine relèverait prioritairement d'une lecture politique (ou politico-sociologique), mais à l'inverse au sens où les concepts politiques sont retravaillés et redéfinis par Pascal en fonction de la doctrine des trois ordres. Pascal ne se contente pas de définir le lieu du politique, il repense le statut et la fonction du politique. En son ultime signification, le politique, y compris (...) à travers la doctrine pascalienne des ordres incommensurables atteste la discordance postlapsaire entre la cité de l'homme et la cité de Dieu, entre le royaume de la concupiscence et le royaume de la charité, malgré la figuration du second par le premier. Ce point apparaît de manière plus manifeste encore lorsqu'on compare les positions de Pascal avec celles de Leibniz. L'étude des implications politiques des trois ordres nous conduit à examiner successivement : 1/ L'exemplification des déterminations de la notion d'ordre dans les textes et les fragments politiques et la réforme des concepts politiques. 2/ Les fonctions politiques de la doctrine des ordres : critique et légitimation. 3/ Ordres ou degrés : discordance ou conciliation entre la cité de l'homme et la cité de Dieu. The doctrine of the three orders has theoretical implications in the political field. This does not mean that the said doctrine should be primarily interpreted from a political (or political-sociological) point of view, but on the opposite, that Pascal re-elaborates and redefines political concepts in the light of the doctrine of the three orders. Pascal does not only define the location of the political: he produces a new theory of the status and function of the political. The ultimate meaning of the political interpreted in the light of Pascal's doctrine of the incommensurable orders attests the post-lapsarian discrepancy between the city of man and the city of God, between the kingdom of concupiscence and the kingdom of charity, though the latter is a figure of the former. The latter point is even more manifest when Pascal's positions are compared with those of Leibniz. As we study the political implications of the three orders, we shall successively consider: 1/ The examples of the determinations of the notion of order given in the political texts and fragments and the reform of political concepts. 2/ The political functions of the doctrine of the orders: criticism and legitimation. 3/ Orders or degrees? discrepancy or conciliation between the city of man and the city of God. (shrink)

The article places Game of Thrones within a tradition of pessimism, reaching back to Blaise Pascal and coloured by Nabokov’s vision of birth as a separation between two voids. This lineage provides a philosophical thread to analyse the motivations and actions of the protagonists of Game of Thrones, in particular their relation to child-killing. The void looms large in the world of Game of Thrones as the unchartered space beyond the wall. It is the awareness of the reality of this (...) void and the horrors it harbours which is shown to propel those who have it, to go to the greatest lengths to preserve the life of a child. (shrink)

One is occasionally reminded of Foucault's proclamation in a 1970 interview that "perhaps, one day this century will be known as Deleuzian." Less often is one compelled to update and restart with a supplementary counter-proclamation of the mathematician, David Lindley: "the twenty-first century would be a Bayesian era..." The verb tenses of both are conspicuous. // To critically attend to what is today often feared and demonized, but also revered, deployed, and commonly referred to as algorithm(s), one cannot avoid the (...) mathematical and philosophical legacies of probability. // But attending to these probabilistic or Bayesian legacies must include an undeniable theological legacy in which they remain entangled. // We are not, today, discovering quirky theological metaphors in contemporary technics. It's the other way around. The technologies are mere metaphors of past theologies. (shrink)

The main objective of this article is to demonstrate that the thought of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal was never unaware of the main metaphysical discussions of the 17th century. The discussion thatwill be explored here is related to the question of infinity, explored with emphasis by the authors of that period. With this objective in mind, we will try to build an argument on the question of infinity in the metaphysics of two 17th century philosophers: Blaise Pascal and Baruch (...) Espinosa. We will try to show that Pascal’s philosophical reflection, on the one hand, resembles that of Spinoza when he assumes that God must be conceived as absolutely infinite, beyond any specific kind of infinity, whether mathematical orspatial, but he distances himself from the Dutch philosopher when he assumes that it is impossible for man to understand the infinite in absolute terms through rationality. (shrink)

In Pascal’s famous wager, he claims that the seeking non-believer can induce genuine religious belief in herself by joining a religious community and taking part in its rituals. This form of belief regulation is epistemologically puzzling: can we form beliefs in this way, and could such beliefs be rationally held? In the first half of the paper, we explain how the regimen could allow the seeking non-believer to regulate her religious beliefs by intervening on her evidence and epistemic standards. In (...) the second half of the paper, we argue that regulated religious beliefs can be rationally held. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, two standard critiques of the reality of modes in Spinoza’s philosophy come from Pierre Bayle and Georg Wilhelm Hegel. Both philosophers in some way assume that attributes and relations among modes constitute a shared reality in which modes participate. As a result, they assert that Spinoza’s monism leads either to an over-identification of God with contingent modes or to a limited God. In this paper, I will show how attributes and relations among modes in Spinoza’s (...) work simply explain an active modal reality; modes do not depend upon or participate in ideal relations and attributes for their existence. The result is that in Spinoza’s philosophy attributes must be seen as unreal and modal reality must be understood as primary. (shrink)

In his famous Wager, Blaise Pascal offers the reader an argument that it is rational to strive to believe in God. Philosophical debates about this classic argument have continued until our own times. This volume provides a comprehensive examination of Pascal's Wager, including its theological framework, its place in the history of philosophy, and its importance to contemporary decision theory. The volume starts with a valuable primer on infinity and decision theory for students and non-specialists. A sequence of chapters then (...) examines topics including the Wager's underlying theology, its influence on later philosophical figures, and contemporary analyses of the Wager including Alan Hájek's challenge to its validity, the many gods objection, and the ethics of belief. The final five chapters explore various ways in which the Wager has inspired contemporary decision theory, including questions related to infinite utility, imprecise probabilities, and infinitesimals. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager has received the attention of philosophers for centuries. Most of its criticisms arise from how the wager is often framed. We present Pascal’s wager three ways: in isolation from any further apologetic arguments, as leading toward a regimen intended to produce belief, and finally embedded in a larger apology that includes evidence for Christianity. We find that none of the common objections apply when the wager is presented as part of Pascal’s larger project. Pascal’s wager is a successful (...) argument in its proper place. However, the most interesting features of our first two presentations of the wager turn out to be either irrelevant or missing from our reading: infinite utility and the relativity of evidence. The successful wager is a boring wager. Still, this study shows us how the wager might profitably be incorporated into different apologetic contexts and why it often can’t. (shrink)

The leaders of the Scientific Revolution were not Baconian in temperament, in trying to build up theories from data. Their project was that same as in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics: they hoped to find necessary principles that would show why the observations must be as they are. Their use of mathematics to do so expanded the Aristotelian project beyond the qualitative methods used by Aristotle and the scholastics. In many cases they succeeded.

Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life is like a magnificent castle, covering vast ground, with towers high into the heavens, and astoundingly intricate architecture. It covers the literature on meaning with enviable completeness and weaves together the many and various strands within that literature, ‘towering’ over the debates and issues and provides a wide and inclusive perspective on them. Meaning in Life is a striking achievement and, just as the intricacy of those fortresses testified to the growing maturity of architecture, so (...) Metz’s book is a testament to the growing maturity of the literature on the meaning of life. But such castles had a dual purpose, which did not always cohere. They were fortresses intended to withstand armed assault, yet they were also supposed to manifest and project the aristocratic loftiness, status, and elegance of their masters. These purposes conflicted, especially in the design of a castle’s central tower, the keep or donjon, where elegant ornamentation was most necessary, but which could hamper or compromise its defensive functions. Meaning in Life likewise seeks to fulfil a dual purpose: on the one hand, to weave all the literature together into a coherent conception of meaning, including supernaturalist conceptions of meaning; and, on the other, to neutralize supernaturalist claims that only the existence of God or of an immortal soul could provide the necessary conditions for meaning. Does Metz’s synthesis stand, or has it compromised its defence? I argue in this Symposium piece that Metz’s methodology, as developed and deployed in Parts I and III of his book, is a poor weapon against supernaturalist skeptics, and develop an argument in the work of Blaise Pascal to explain why he, and those endorsing similar positions, would not be convinced by this type of argumentation. (shrink)

Most students of Tocqueville know of his remark, “There are three men with whom I live a little every day; they are Pascal, Montesquieu, and Rousseau.” In this paper I trace out the contours of Pascal’s influence upon Tocqueville’s understanding of the human condition and our appropriate response to it. Similar temperaments lead both Tocqueville and Pascal to emphasize human limitations and contingency, as Peter Lawler rightly emphasizes. Tocqueville and Pascal both emphasize mortality, ignorance of the most important subjects, the (...) effects of historical contingency on what we take to be human nature, and both represent the complex internal dynamic of human nature in terms of the interplay of “angel” and “brute.” The most important difference between them concerns their relative estimates of human power and the significance of human action. Whereas the motif of human weakness is fundamental for Pascal, Tocqueville repeatedly affirms that, under the right conditions, human beings are “powerful and free.” Beginning from Pascalian premises, and endeavoring to be more faithful to some of those premises than Pascal himself was, Tocqueville aims to illuminate the possibility of an amelioration of the human condition through a “new political science” that redeems the political realm without divinizing it. -/- . (shrink)

Gdzieś w ciemnej uliczce... Bandyta: Ej ty, dawaj portfel! Pascal: A niby dlaczego miałbym to zrobić? Bandyta: Bo w przeciwnym razie cię zastrzelę. Pascal: Ale przecież nie masz broni. Bandyta: A niech to! Wiedziałem, że zapomniałem o czymś. Pascal: No to zapomnij też o moim portfelu. Miłego wieczoru. Bandyta: Stój! Pascal: Co znowu? Bandyta: Jest interes do zrobienia... Co ty na to, żebyś jednak oddał mi portfel? W zamian obiecuję przyjść do ciebie jutro i dać ci dwukrotność kwoty, którą w (...) nim masz. Nieźle, co? 200 procent zwrotu z inwestycji w 24 godziny. (shrink)

This essay aims to reconstruct and defend Pascal’s account of divine hiddenness. In the first section I explain Pascal’s view that divine hiddenness is primarily a function of human volitional aversion and only secondarily a result of God’s intentional action. In the following section I evaluate the primary sense of hiddenness by considering Pascal’s response to the objection that divine goodness requires and divine power makes possible God’s provision of evidence sufficient to overcome human volitional indisposition. While Pascal does think (...) it possible for God to provide such evidence, he argues that this would unjustly harm human freedom and endanger human intellectual understanding. I conclude by addressing a weaker form of the objection through consideration of the second sense of divine hiddenness and Pascal’s surprising view that God’s intentional “hiding” is in fact a progressively deeper entry into the particulars of human history. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Internationales Jahrbuch für philosophische Anthropologie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 1 Seiten: 237-250.

Recent scholarship has shown that the success of Pascal’s wager rests on precarious grounds. To avoid notorious problems, it must appeal to considerations such as what probability we assign to the existence of various gods and what religion we think provides the greatest happiness in this life. Rational judgments concerning these matters are subject to change over time. Some claim that the wager therefore cannot support a steadfast commitment to God. I argue that this conclusion does not follow. By drawing (...) upon the line of reasoning employed in getting married, I explain how unstable considerations can provide a sufficient rational foundation for a stable commitment. (shrink)

The author defends the thesis that Pascal’s use of sentir offers an important entrance to his perception of the human being, while explaining Pascal’s anthropology as an experience-oriented and love-focused understanding of human existence. This understanding of Pascal is based on the reconstruction of an alternative context of interpretation. Not the early modern debates on rationality, but the medieval authors that inspired Port-Royal is taken as the main reference. Reading Pascal’s texts from the use of sentire by Bernard of Clairvaux, (...) Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, offers a different perspective on the relation between body, will and knowledge in his thought. This alternative interpretation leads to a re-orientation on the relevance of his thought for actual debates on modernity. (shrink)

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, inventor, and theologian. In mathematics, he was an early pioneer in the fields of game theory and probability theory. In philosophy he was an early pioneer in existentialism. As a writer on theology and religion he was a defender of Christianity. Despite chronic ill […].

Blaise Pascal began as a mathematical prodigy, developed into a physicist and inventor, and had become by the end of his life in 1662 a profound religious thinker. As a philosopher, he was most convinced by the long tradition of scepticism, and so refused – like Kierkegaard – to build a philosophical or theological system. Instead, he argued that the human heart required other forms of discourse to come to terms with the basic existential questions – our nature, purpose and (...) relationship with God. This introduction to the life and philosophical thought of Pascal is intended for the general reader. Strikingly illustrated, it traces the antithetical tensions in Pascal’s life from his infancy, when he was said to have been placed under the spell of a sorceress, to his final years of extreme asceticism. Pascal stressed both the misery and greatness of humanity, our finitude and our comprehension of the infinite. The book shows how his life, philosophical thought and literary style can best be understood in the light of the paradoxical view of human nature. It covers the methods of argument and the central issues of the Provincial Letters and of the Pensées ; the Introduction places Pascal’s thought in the religious and political climate of seventeenth-century France, and a ‘Chronology of the Life of Pascal’ is also included. (shrink)

Normative accounts of the correctness of belief have often been misconstrued. The norm of truth for belief is a constitutive norm which regulates our beliefs through ideals of reason. I try to show that this kind of account can meet some of the main objections which have been raised against normativism about belief: that epistemic reasons enjoy no exclusivity, that the norm of truth does not guide, and that normativism cannot account for suspension of judgement.

This essay rejects two common views of Pascal: (a) that he holds only temporal and contingent standards of justice to be available to human beings and (b) that he is indifferent to all but eternal standards of justice. Against these reductive misunderstandings, I provide a detailed reconstruction of Pascal's political thought, drawn from the Pensées and other texts. I show that Pascal develops an account of two distinct and hierarchized orders of justice: a temporal order and an eternal order. Pascal (...) recognizes the integrity of the temporal order of justice, as expressed in local, particular custom and the historical development of positive law and, at the same time, holds that the axiological and ontological condition of this temporal order is an eternal order, a horizon beyond history which serves to ground it. Pascal's politics, rather than a tragic pessimism or a passion for the absolute, is simply a limited specification of his moral and metaphysical realism. (shrink)

Le umane azioni ed esperienze sono governate dal potere della cultura. Questo potere concerne l’azione invisibile e impercettibile di innumerevoli macchine o apparati: gli strumenti esosomatici nati durante l’evoluzione umana. Il saggio sviluppa questo argomento al fine di esplicare le conseguenze pedagogiche del pensiero delle pratiche.

Originally published in 1942, this book constitutes the companion volume to The Heart of Pascal ; both volumes were formed using selections from Pascal's Pensées. The text gathers together a series of selections, presented in French, which illustrate Pascal's Christian faith and thoughts on the relationship between man and God. An appendix and preface by the editor are also provided. This is a highly informative book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in Pascal and his late (...) thought. (shrink)

An adaptation of Pascal’s Wager argument has been considered useful in deciding about the provision of life-sustaining treatment for patients in persistent vegetative state. In this article, I assess whether people making such decisions should resort to the application of Pascal’s idea. I argue that there is no sufficient reason to give it an important role in making the decisions.