{"id":3546,"date":"2019-10-14T04:16:50","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T04:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/10\/14\/neither-angel-nor-beast-2\/"},"modified":"2019-10-14T04:16:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-14T04:16:50","slug":"neither-angel-nor-beast-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/10\/14\/neither-angel-nor-beast-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Neither Angel nor Beast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\" class=\"firstinpost\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Blaise Pascal,&#0160;<em>Pens\u00e9es<\/em>&#0160;#329:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">The second half of Pascal&#39;s thought, however, is unfair to the beasts. No beast can act the beast the way a man can. No beast is bestial in the way a man can be bestial. The difference is that while the beast acts according to his nature, man freely degrades himself contrary to his nature. Having done so, he allows his freely indulged passions to suborn his intellect: he constructs elaborate rationalizations for his self-degradation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">It is not our animality that corrupts us but our free misuse of our animality, a misuse that derives from our spirituality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Only a spiritual being can be bestial.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\"> <a class=\"asset-img-link\" href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0240a4ba2bc6200d-pi\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Pascal wth dates\" border=\"0\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c0240a4ba2bc6200d image-full img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0240a4ba2bc6200d-800wi\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" title=\"Pascal wth dates\" \/><\/a><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blaise Pascal,&#0160;Pens\u00e9es&#0160;#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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/10\/14\/neither-angel-nor-beast-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Neither Angel nor Beast&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,287,430],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-predicament","category-pascal","category-philosophical-anthropology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}