Brief overview of Pascal's place in history, and a presentation of key concepts given in his Pensees.

1. Blaise Pascal
Christian apologist,
mathematician and scientist

2. Blaise Pascal
(1623-1662 – only 39 years):
• The issue of faith and reason
• An Augustinian who appreciated Montaigne and rejected Deism
– He associated with the Jansenists (Augustinian Catholics)
– Personally had his own Night of Fire and made a religious commitment (1654):
“Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace” (“Memorial,” Pensée 913); sewn into his
coat.
– Counted among his correspondents and friends Descartes, Wren and Christina of
Sweden
– Suffered illness and physical pain all his adult life
• Important work on conic sections (written when he was about 17 years old);
envied by Descartes; involved mathematics; the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola
• Affirmed through experimentation the existence of a vacuum and atmospheric
pressure (Descartes said a vacuum could not exist); Nature has no “horror of a
vacuum”; built on the work of Torricelli and the new barometer (c. 1643)
– Pascal went on to invent the syringe
– “It is not too much to say that modern physics dates from the conclusions of Pascal
come to by 1648” (Hastings, et al., 9:653)
• Invented the first digital calculator: Pascal is a forerunner of the computer age.
• Wrote on probability (basically unthinkable at the time): Pascal furnishes (along
with Fermat) the groundwork for Leibniz’s calculus.
• Public transportation (omnibus service)

3. The Provincial Letters
(1656-1657)
• A secret and dangerous undertaking
• A genius mind was unleashed in the defense of a Jansenist
friend, Arnauld, against the casuistry of the Jesuits
• “Though in the utmost physical agonies, Pascal yet stood
boldly as the champion of freedom of conscience, of
truth, and justice against the all-powerful Jesuits without fear
of the Bastille or galleys. But the letters are also, in spite of
their occasional character, a literary masterpiece possessing a
high dramatic unity” (New Schaff-Herzog 8:363).
• The letters earned the condemnation of Louis XIV and the
approval of the public
• His literary style marks the beginning of modern French prose

4. Pascal’s epistemology
• His philosophical position: Montaigne’s skepticism (in Pascal’s
case due to an emphasis on original sin).
• He emphasized that knowledge is not merely through reason:
“The heart has reasons that reason does not know,” which
points toward Romanticism (the passions).
• Reason is important because of “infinite chaos” due to the
difference between our minds and God’s (finite vs. infinite)
and because of sin (sinfulness vs. holiness.). God has bridged
this “chaos” through the Incarnation and the Atonement.
• Wrote the Pensées (“Thoughts”), which was meant to be an
apology of the Christian faith.
• Pascal dealt with existence in light of eternity, directing
people to make decision concerning Jesus Christ.

5. Pascal and Descartes
• “I cannot forgive Descartes: in his whole philosophy
he would like to do without God; but he could not
help allowing him a flick of the fingers to set the
world in motion; after that he had no more use for
God.”
• “When the late M. Pascal wanted to give an example
of a fantasy for which obstinacy could win approval,
he usually put forward Descartes’ opinions on matter
and space.”
• “The late M. Pascal called Cartesianism ‘the
Romance of Nature, something like the story of Don
Quixote.’”
From Blaise Pascal, Pensées (tr. A. J. Krailsheimer; London: Penguin, 1966),
355-6.

6. Pascal’s Christian Apologetic
Order. Men despise religion. They hate it and are
afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to
show that religion is not contrary to reason, but
worthy of reverence and respect.
Next make it attractive, make good men wish it
were true, and then show that it is.
Worthy of reverence because it really
understands human nature.
Attractive because it promises true good.
Pensée no. 12 (187)

7. The Heart
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows
nothing: we know this in countless ways.
Pensée 423 (277)
The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which
uses principles and demonstrations.
Pensée 298 (283)
Pascal anticipates the Romantics

8. The Heart as Intuition
We know truth not only through our reason but also
through our heart. It is through the latter that we
know first principles, and reason, which has nothing
to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. The
sceptics have no other object than that, and they
work at it to no purpose. We know that we are not
dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove
it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the
weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of
all our knowledge, as they maintain. For knowledge
of first principles, like space, time, motion, number,
is as solid as any derived through reason, and it is on
such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct,
that reason has to depend and base all its argument.
Pensée 110

9. His apologetic strategy
If he exalts himself, I humble him.
If he humbles himself, I exalt him.
And I go on contradicting him
Until he understands
That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
Pensée 130 (420; cf. Rom 7:24)
Cf. “The Weight of Glory” by C. S. Lewis

10. The Human Condition: Wretchedness
We desire truth and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty.
We seek happiness and find only wretchedness and death.
We are incapable of not desiring truth and happiness and incapable of
either certainty or happiness. Pensée 401 (437; cf. La Rouchefoucauld)
Wretchedness. Solomon and Job have known and spoken best about
man’s wretchedness, one the happiest, the other the unhappiest of men;
one knowing by experience the vanity of pleasure, and the other the
reality of afflictions. Pensée 403 (174)
Greatness, wretchedness. The more enlightened we are the more
greatness and vileness we discover in man. . . .
Philosophers: they surprise the ordinary run of men.
Christians: they surprise the philosophers.
Pensée 613 (443)
[cf. Rom 7:14]

11. Existence and Alienation
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me
with dread.
Pensée 201 (206)
Pascal is a forerunner of Existentialism

12. Existence and Alienation
When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed
into the eternity which comes before and after – as
the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day
[Wis 5:15]– the small space I occupy and which I see
swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of
which I know nothing and which know nothing of
me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here
rather than there: there is no reason for me to be
here rather than there, now rather than then. Who
put me here? By whose command and act were this
time and place allotted to me?
Pensée 68 (205)

13. Death
The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the
play. They throw earth over your head and it is
finished for ever.
Pensée 165 (210)

14.  Humanity’s Band-Aid: Diversion 
If our condition were truly happy we should not
need to divert ourselves from thinking about it.
Pensée 70 (165b)
Diversion. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness
and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be
happy, not to think about such things.
Pensée 133-4 (169, 168)

15. Diversion from Thinking
Despite these afflictions man wants to be happy, only wants
to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy.
But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to
make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has
decided to stop himself thinking about it.
. . . The only good thing for men therefore is to be
diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some
occupation which takes their mind off it, or by some novel
and agreeable passion which keeps them busy, like gambling,
hunting, some absorbing show, in shot by what is called
diversion.
Pensées 134 & excerpt from 136 (168 &139)

16. Boredom
Boredom. Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be
in a state of complete rest, without passions,
without occupation, without diversion, without
effort.
Then he faces his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy,
dependence, helplessness, emptiness.
And at once there wells up from the depths of
his soul boredom, gloom, depression, chagrin,
resentment, despair.
Pensée 622 (131)

17. Faith and Reason
• If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing
mysterious or supernatural.
• If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and
ridiculous.
• [Thus] two excesses: [1] to exclude reason, [2] to admit nothing but
reason.
Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of
what they see; it is above, not against them.
Pensées 173 and 183 & 185 (273, 253, 265)
I agree that Copernicus’ opinion need not be more closely examined. But this:
It affects our whole life to know whether the soul is mortal or
immortal.
Pensée 164 (218)

18. Faith as a Gift from God
• Faith is different from proof. One is human and the
other a gift of God. The just shall live by faith [Rom
1:17]. This is the faith that God himself puts into our
hearts, often using proof as the instrument. Faith
cometh by hearing [Rom 10:17]. But this faith is in
our hearts, and makes us not say “I know,” but “I
believe.” Pensée 7
• Wisdom leads us back to childhood. Except ye
become as little children [Matt 18:3]. Pensée 82 (291)

19. Pascal appeals to Christian evidences
• The Person and Work of Jesus Christ
– Incl. the Hiddenness of God (cf. Luther)
– The Incarnation in light of the Fall
• Fulfilled Prophecy
– Incl. the Reliability of Scripture
• Testimony of the Apostles
• The Jewish People
• Miracles
– His own niece was famously healed

20. Metaphysical Arguments
for the Existence of God
The metaphysical proofs for the existence of God are
so remote from human reasoning and so involved
that they make little impact, and, even if they did
help some people, it would only be for the moment
during which they watched the demonstration,
because an hour later they would be afraid they had
made a mistake.
What they gained by curiosity they lost through
pride.
That is the result of knowing God without Christ.
Pensée 190 (543)

21. Jesus Christ
• This is not how Scripture speaks, with its better
knowledge of the things of God. On the contrary it
says that God is a hidden God, and that since nature
was corrupted he has left men to their blindness,
from which they can escape only through Jesus
Christ, without whom all communication with God is
broken off. Neither knoweth any man the Father
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will
reveal him [Matt 11:27].
Pensée 781 (242); cf. the extensive Pensée 449 (556)

22. The Testimony of the Apostles
Proofs of Jesus Christ. The hypothesis that the Apostles were
knaves is quite absurd. Follow it out to the end and imagine
these twelve men meeting after Jesus’s death and conspiring
to say that he had risen from the dead. This means attacking
all the powers that be. The human heart is singularly
susceptible to fickleness, to change, to promises, to bribery.
One of them had only to deny his story under these
inducements, or still more because of possible imprisonment,
tortures and death, and they would all have been lost. Follow
that out.
Pensée 310 (801)

23. Pascal’s Wager
I should be much more afraid of being
mistaken and then finding out that
Christianity is true than of being mistaken in
believing it to be true.
Pensée 387 (241)
[One must step out, but it is not a blind leap
of faith . . .]

24. Pascal’s Wager
From Peter Kreeft, Christianity for God exists God does not exist
Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées,
297. Pensée 387 (241)
GAIN: GAIN:
I believe everything nothing
(eternal happiness)
LOSE:
LOSE: nothing
nothing
GAIN: GAIN:
I do not believe nothing nothing
LOSE: LOSE:
everything nothing
(eternal happiness)

25. Works Cited
• Hastings, James, et al. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Google Books.
Google, n.d. Web. 28 Dec. 2012.
• Kreeft, Peter. Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées Edited,
Outlined, and Explained. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993. Print.
• Lewis, C. S. “The Weight of Glory.” The Weight of Glory and Other
Addresses. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan, 1980. Print.
• New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, The. Samuel
Macauley Jackson, Editor in Chief. Reprint. Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1977. Print.
• Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. London: Penguin, 1966.
Print.