Abstract

Throughout the manuscript of the Pensées and in other writings, Pascal crisscrosses his research on what the art of writing achieves and entails, on the one hand, and on the way to read and interpret the Holy Scriptures, on the other hand. Reading and writing practices are critically interwoven. This article offers a synthesis on Pascal’s reflexive account of such practices. After a summary of previous findings on the subject, it examines Pascal’s approach to (a) the rules that govern scriptural interpretation; (b) the techniques of persuasion; and (c) the way to ground an instituted body, an expression by which we refer to a textual corpus, a political society, or a community of believers.