Category: Pascal
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Do We Love the Person or Only Her Qualities?
The following ruminations belong among the metaphysical foundations of debates about tribalism, racism, and the differences between my brand of conservatism and the neo-reactionary variety. For example, I say things like, "We should aspire to treat individuals as individuals rather than reduce them to tokens of types or members of groups or instances of attributes." …
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On the Tombstone of the USSR
"Man is neither an angel nor a beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast." (Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Krailsheimer tr., p. 242) Related articles Pascal, Buber, and the God of the Philosophers The Extremism of Simone Weil Time Apportionment as Between Athens and Benares
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How Will Death Find Us?
We have it on good authority that death is the muse of philosophy. The muse reminds us that our time is short and to be well used. We ought to heed the following lines from St. Augustine's Confessions, Book VI, Chapter 11, Ryan trans.: Let us put away these vain and empty concerns. Let us turn…
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On Natural Science
Natural science pursued for its own sake is a magnificent and noble thing. But in the end one ought to consider whether it is but a high-minded diversion, an extremely high-level form of Pascalian divertissement.
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Pascal, Buber, and the God of the Philosophers
"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars." Thus exclaimed Blaise Pascal in the famous memorial in which he recorded the overwhelming religious/mystical experience of the night of 23 November 1654. Martin Buber comments (Eclipse of God, Humanity Books, 1952, p. 49): These words represent Pascal's change…
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Pascal on Materialism
"Atheists should say things that are perfectly clear. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material." (Krailsheimer, #161, p. 82) An atheist needn't be a mortalist, and a mortalist needn't be an atheist. But let that pass. Although the one does not logically require the other, or the other the one, atheism…
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Made for Thinking
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Krailsheimer #620: Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author, and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about…
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Memory and the Operations of Reason
"Memory is necessary for all the operations of reason." (Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Krailsheimer, #651) This seems right. Consider this quick little argument against scientism, the philosophical, not scientific, view that all knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge: 1. I know by reason alone, a priori, and not by any natural-scientific means, that addition has the associative and…
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Man’s Greatness Deducible From his Wretchedness
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662): Man's greatness is so obvious that it can even be deduced from his wretchedness, for what is nature in animals is wretchedness in man, thus recognizing that, if his nature is today like that of the animals, he must have fallen from some better state which was once his own. (Pensées, Penguin,…
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Pascal’s Wager: Minimalist Version
Believing in God and the soul incurs no costs and disbelieving brings no benefits.
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Pascal Again on the Immateriality of the Subject of Experience
It is surprising what different people will read into and read out of a text. A reader challenged me to find a valid argument in Blaise Pascal, Pensees #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): "What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial." Rising…
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Pascal on the Subject of Experience: A Non Sequitur?
I recently quoted Blaise Pascal, Pensees #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): "What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial." A reader comments, "Doesn't P. 108 strike you as a hopeless non-sequitur, if we take it as an argument at all? Just…
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What am I?
Blaise Pascal, Pensees #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial. Is it my eyeglasses that see yonder mountain? No, they are merely part of the instrumentality of vision. Is it my eyes that see the…
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Kerouac October Quotation #20: The Body So Thick and Carnal
Blaise Pascal says not to look to ourselves for the cure to misfortunes, but to God whose Providence is a foreordained thing in Eternity; that the foreordainment was that our lives be but sacrifices leading to purity in the after-existence in Heaven as souls disinvested of that rapish, rotten, carnal body — O the sweet…
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And Yet Again on the God of the Philosophers: A Summing Up
This topic is generating some interest. I 've gotten a good bit of e-mail on it. Herewith, a summing-up by way of commentary on an e-mail I received. Joshua Orsak writes: I wanted to email you to tell you how once again you have elevated the medium of the Internet blog with your recent threads…