Category: Pascal
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If you can accept that a particular man is God . . .
. . . then why can't you accept that the God of the philosophers is the God of the Bible? And isn't the second acceptance easier than the first? A question for Pascal.
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Do We Love the Person or Only Her Attributes?
Substack latest. Gleanings from a passage from Pascal. This supplements and deepens the recent discussion of subjective and objective views of death.
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The God Question and the Christian Proposition
A conversation between Alain Fikielkraut and Pierre Manent. Very French and very flabby, but here is an excerpt that I approve of (emphasis added): P.M. What is the nature of Islam’s challenge for us? And who is this “we” being challenged? The challenge lies in the fact that what is happening is that Islam is exerting…
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Can Evil be Eradicated?
Not by our own effort, as I argue at Substack.
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Pascal, Buber, and the God of the Philosophers
Substack latest. It is a mistake to oppose the God of the philosophers to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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Error Invincibilis
Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), #691: Spiritual blindness differs from physical blindness in this, that it is not conscious. That is the essence of error invincibilis. Compare Blaise Pascal, Pensees #98 (Krailsheimer tr., p. 55): How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does?…
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Pascal the Jansenist
Herewith, a note on Pascal inspired by Leszek Kolakowski's fascinating book, God Owes Us Nothing (University of Chicago, 1995). Faith is a divine gift, bestowed arbitrarily, not a reward for merit. We postlapsarians groaning under Adam's sin are wholly without merit. There is no way we can get right with God by our own efforts. …
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Reading Now: Leszek Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing
I'm on a Kolakowski binge. I've re-read Metaphysical Horror (Basil Blackwell, 1988) and Husserl and the Search for Certitude (U. of Chicago, 1975). I purchased the first at Dillon's Bookstore, Bloomsbury, London, near Russell's Square in late August, 1988. Auspicious, eh? I was in the U. K. to read a paper at the World Congress…
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Pascal Weighs in on the Wuhan Flu
"All of a man's problems derive from his inability to sit quietly alone in his room." An exaggeration, no doubt, but curiously apropos at the present time. More on Pascal in my Pascal category. Thomas Merton wrote a very good book, The Silent Life. Had he been more assiduous in the living of that life…
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Neither Angel nor Beast
Blaise Pascal, Pensées #329: Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast. The first half of the thought is unexceptionable: man is indeed neither angel nor beast, but, amphibious as he is between matter and spirit, a hybrid and a riddle to himself. The second…
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Some Questions About Animal Suffering and Religious Belief
This just in from Karl White: A couple of questions. 1. The gist of your posts seems to be that we can never know for sure that an evil is pointlessly evil, therefore no evil rules out definitively the potential existence of an omni-loving God. Yes, that's the gist of it, but strike…
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Adapted from Pascal
There is light enough for those who wish to see, and darkness enough for those who don't.
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To Understand the Religious Sensibility . . .
. . . two books are essential: Augustine's Confessions and Pascal's Pensées. If you read these books and they do not speak to you, if they do not move you, then it is a good bet that you don't have a religious bone in your body. It is not matter of intelligence but of sensibility. "He didn't have a…
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Another Uncompelling Argument in Illustration of Our Pascalian Predicament
This relates to my earlier discussion with Dr. Novak. See articles referenced infra. A reader thinks the following syllogism establishes its conclusion: a) What doesn't have necessity from itself is caused; b) The contingent does not have necessity from itself; Ergo c) The contingent is caused. An argument establishes its conclusion just in case: (i)…