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Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works: Part 48 Harvard Classics
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
456 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1909
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About the author
Blaise Pascal
1,491 books836 followersEarly work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jansenist, wrote on philosophy and theology, notably as collected in the posthumous
Pensées
(1670).
This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his belief that Earth circled the Sun. He lived in Paris at the same time, when Thomas Hobbes in 1640 published his famous Leviathan (1651). Together, Pascal created the calculus.
A near-fatal carriage accident in November 1654 persuaded him to turn his intellect finally toward religion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal rode in a carriage across a bridge in a suburb of Paris, a fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. The carriage, bearing Pascal, survived. Pascal took the incident as a sign and devoted. At this time, he began a series, called the Provincial Letters , against the Jesuits in 1657.
Pascal perhaps most famously wagered not as clearly in his language as this summary: "If Jesus does not exist, the non Christian loses little by believing in him and gains little by not believing. If Jesus does exist, the non Christian gains eternal life by believing and loses an infinite good by not believing.”
Sick throughout life, Pascal died in Paris from a combination of tuberculosis and stomach cancer at 39 years of age. At the last, he confessed Catholicism.
This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his belief that Earth circled the Sun. He lived in Paris at the same time, when Thomas Hobbes in 1640 published his famous Leviathan (1651). Together, Pascal created the calculus.
A near-fatal carriage accident in November 1654 persuaded him to turn his intellect finally toward religion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal rode in a carriage across a bridge in a suburb of Paris, a fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. The carriage, bearing Pascal, survived. Pascal took the incident as a sign and devoted. At this time, he began a series, called the Provincial Letters , against the Jesuits in 1657.
Pascal perhaps most famously wagered not as clearly in his language as this summary: "If Jesus does not exist, the non Christian loses little by believing in him and gains little by not believing. If Jesus does exist, the non Christian gains eternal life by believing and loses an infinite good by not believing.”
Sick throughout life, Pascal died in Paris from a combination of tuberculosis and stomach cancer at 39 years of age. At the last, he confessed Catholicism.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 18, 2013
As far as I'm concerned, Pascal's "shorts" are far more clever, succinct, surprising, and woven together than those of Rouchefoucauld and others. There are many threaded thoughts woven amongst more than 900 maxims and mini-essays each of which stand on their own. The profundity and diversity of topics makes the Pensees something to read slowly and ponder -- it takes much more time than reading the same amount of text in typical prose. Here Pascal masterfully forces us to contemplate just about every philosophical aspect of nature, religion, culture, and government, and the human condition in general. Starting with a discussion of the mathematical versus the intuitive mind (there are advantages in both but true genius lies in the mathematically trained also being able to see the big picture and beyond the concrete), he then portrays theology in nature, argues against atheism, supports Catholic doctrine, and finds the source of all unhappiness.
May 19, 2013
Excellent book by a heroic thinker.
February 5, 2015
It was a good book, unfortunately I read it too close to Francis Bacon's "essays". The similar writing styles made for boredom
February 4, 2019
I had looked forward to the Pensees, though as I began to read it I was struck by how awful it is and my recurring thought was, "Why is this in the canon?"
Of course the answer is Pascal's wager, so I eventually quickly skimmed/skipped ahead to that portion and read it. But even it is only okay. I then skimmed/skipped through the rest of the book.
Pascal is a bad thinker, overwhelmed with a religious fundamentalism and what seems either an inability or a refusal to see the wide variety of possibilities.
He is also overwhelming pessimistic, such as this line, "Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness." I was surprised that he isn't more popular with the nihilists. There's this:
"When I see the blindness and the wretchedness of man, when I regard the whole silent universe, and man without light, left to himself, and as it were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death, and incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified, like a man who should be carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island, and should awake without knowing where he is, and without means of escape. And thereupon I wonder how people in a condition so wretched do not fall into despair."
Egads.
I was surprised that this paragraph isn't famous:
"What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel this tangle?"
Of course the answer is Pascal's wager, so I eventually quickly skimmed/skipped ahead to that portion and read it. But even it is only okay. I then skimmed/skipped through the rest of the book.
Pascal is a bad thinker, overwhelmed with a religious fundamentalism and what seems either an inability or a refusal to see the wide variety of possibilities.
He is also overwhelming pessimistic, such as this line, "Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness." I was surprised that he isn't more popular with the nihilists. There's this:
"When I see the blindness and the wretchedness of man, when I regard the whole silent universe, and man without light, left to himself, and as it were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death, and incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified, like a man who should be carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island, and should awake without knowing where he is, and without means of escape. And thereupon I wonder how people in a condition so wretched do not fall into despair."
Egads.
I was surprised that this paragraph isn't famous:
"What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel this tangle?"
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews