10.8 Pascal — Pensées — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read about 1,750 words of Blaise Pascal's Pensées : man between two infinities, diversion, the reasons of the heart, and the thinking reed. Follow an argument that works by contrasts and paradoxes rather than by a chain of deductions. Recognise the devices of Pascal's prose: antithesis, the striking formula, the imperative addressed to the reader, the sudden question. Compare Pascal's view of reason with that of Descartes in 10.7 Argument . Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Pensée fait la grandeur de l’homme. Thought makes the greatness of man. Un néant à l’égard de l’infini, un tout à l’égard du néant, un milieu entre rien et tout. A nothing compared with the infinite, an everything compared with nothingness, a middle between nothing and everything. Que l’homme contemple donc la nature entière dans sa haute et pleine majesté, Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in its high and full majesty, j’ai découvert que tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre. I have found that all the unhappiness of men comes from one single thing, which is not knowing how to stay quietly in a room. Je veux lui faire voir là-dedans un abîme nouveau. I want to show him a new abyss within it. s’il est sans ce qu’on appelle divertissement, le voilà malheureux, if he is without what is called diversion, there he is, unhappy, Prerequisites : 10.7 — this lesson follows 10.7 Argument . The philosophy and religion words of 5.20 Vocabulary and the figures of speech of 5.24 Vocabulary , especially antithesis and paradox, will help. About this text Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a mathematical prodigy: he wrote on conic sections at sixteen, built one of the first calculating machines at nineteen, worked on the pressure of air and the vacuum, and founded with Fermat the calculus of probability. In 1654 a night of religious experience, recorded on a paper he kept sewn into his coat, turned him towards faith. He became close to the Jansenists of Port-Royal , a strict Catholic movement, and defended them in the brilliant satirical letters called Les Provinciales . In his last years he worked on a great defence of the Christian religion, addressed to the sceptical, worldly men of his time. He died at thirty-nine, leaving hundreds of fragments, some polished, some only notes. His friends published a selection in 1670 under the title Pensées . Every editor since has had to decide how to order them; the numbering of Léon Brunschvicg, used here, is still widely cited. The text here gives fragments 72 (the disproportion of man), 139 (diversion), 277, 278 and 282 (the heart), and 346 to 348 (the thinking reed), about 1,750 words, from the edition of Léon Brunschvicg, volumes XII and XIII of his edition of Pascal's works, published in Paris by Hachette (printings of 1925 and 1921), as transcribed in French Wikisource. Passages left out are marked […]. Square brackets in the text are the editor's: they mark words that Pascal crossed out, or words the editor supplied. Two misprints of the transcription, a stray full stop and a wrong circumflex accent, have been corrected, and two short manuscript marks at the head of fragments have been left out. One spelling is kept as the edition prints it: la fin des choses et leur principes , where today one writes leurs principes . The plan The fragments together sketch Pascal's picture of the human condition. Step Fragment What Pascal does The infinitely great 72 He asks the reader to contemplate the universe until the earth becomes a point and imagination fails. The infinitely small 72 Then to look into the smallest creature, a mite, and find in it new universes without end. Man in the middle 72 Man is un milieu entre rien et tout , unable to know either the beginning or the end of things. Diversion 139 All human agitation comes from one thing: we cannot stay quietly in a room, because alone we would think of our condition. The heart 277, 278, 282 Reason is not our only way of knowing: first principles are felt by the heart, and faith is God felt by the heart. The thinking reed 346–348 Man is the weakest thing in nature, but he knows that he dies: his whole dignity lies in thought. Misery and greatness. Pascal wanted to show that man is both wretched and great, and that only the Christian religion explains this double nature. These fragments show the two sides: lost between two infinities and unable to bear his own company, yet greater than the universe that crushes him, because he knows it. Worked example How Pascal builds the fragment of the thinking reed. The image. L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature : the restriction ne … que lowers man at once to the humblest of plants, a reed that bends in every wind. The turn. mais c'est un roseau pensant : one adjective after mais reverses everything. The same noun is repeated, so that the whole difference rests on the single word pensant . The hypothesis. quand l'univers l'écraserait : Pascal imagines the worst, in the conditional, and keeps his conclusion: l'homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue . The reason. parce qu'il sait qu'il meurt ; l'univers n'en sait rien . Knowledge against ignorance, a short antithesis that closes the fragment. The play on words. In fragment 348, par l'espace, l'univers me comprend et m'engloutit comme un point ; par la pensée, je le comprends . The verb comprendre has two senses, to contain and to understand; the universe contains me, but I understand it. A whole philosophy fits into this chiasmus. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. Thoughts The disproportion of man. — [This is where natural knowledge leads us. If it is not true, there is no tru