Pascal

by Émile Boutroux

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Genres: Philosophy, Science

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Émile Boutroux was born at Montrouge, now in the Hauts-de-Seine département, near Paris. He attended the lycée Napoléon (now lycée Henri IV), and graduated in 1865 to the École Normale Supérieure. He then continued his education at Heidelberg University between 1869-1870 where he was taught by Hermann von Helmholtz and encountered German philosophy.

His first employment was the post of philosophy professor at the lycée in Caen. In 1874 he published his book on which he based his doctoral thesis. The Contingency of the laws of the nature was an analysis of the implications of Kantian philosophy for science.

Between 1874-1876 Boutroux taught at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Nancy and while there he fell in love with and married Aline Poincaré the sister of the scientist and mathematician Henri Poincaré. In 1880 his son, Pierre, was born. Pierre Boutroux was himself to become a distinguished mathematician and historian of science.

In 1888 Boutroux was made professor of history of modern philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris.

He was elected a member of Academy of the Moral and Political Sciences in 1898 and in 1902 he became Director of the Thiers foundation, a residency for France's brightest students. He was elected to the Académie française in 1912.

Reviews

[David Withun · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Ron Banister · Rating 5 out of 5]

To make a wager like Pascal one must understand the mind from whence it came.

[Marc Therrien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un ouvrage ancien qui nous permet de mieux connaître et comprendre Blaise Pas al ainsi que l’ensemble de son œuvre. La seule difficulté avec un tel ouvrage est qu’il devient difficile à un certain moment de différencier les propos de l’auteur de la pensée de Pascal.