Pascal
Mathematical genius turned anguished believer. The heart has reasons, he wrote, that reason does not know.
Pascal invented a calculating machine as a teenager, helped found probability theory, and established the physics of the vacuum, then turned from science to the condition of the soul. His Pensees, fragments left at his early death, stare without flinching at human smallness against the silence of infinite space, and at the restlessness no distraction can cure. Faith, he held, is not the conclusion of an argument but a wager the whole person makes, and the heart has reasons reason cannot reach. He is the rare thinker equally at home with a theorem and with dread.
Places
Ideas
Words
“The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Clermont
Born in the Auvergne, a prodigy who proved theorems and built a calculating machine as a youth.
The Night of Fire
A two-hour mystical experience he recorded on a paper sewn into his coat, after which he turned from science toward faith.
The Pensées
Left fragments on human smallness against infinite space, the restlessness no distraction cures, and the heart's reasons beyond reason.
The Wager
Argued that faith is not the conclusion of proof but a wager the whole person makes when reason runs out.
Influence
Influenced by
- Montaigne
Pascal wrestled with Montaigne, borrowing the force of his skepticism while recoiling from its worldly calm.
- Tertullian
Pascal's insistence that the heart has reasons reason does not know continues the line Tertullian opened when he asked what Athens had to do with Jerusalem, though Pascal knew far better than Tertullian what the philosophers had actually argued.
- Augustine
Pascal wrote from within the Jansenist revival of Augustine, taking from it the conviction that human nature is disordered and that reason left to itself will not find its way to God.
- Descartes
Pascal met Descartes and remained unconvinced. Where Descartes built from a certainty available to anyone who thinks clearly, Pascal held that the questions that matter most are settled by the heart, and mocked the philosopher's God as useless.
Influenced
- Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard's insistence that faith is a decision made without sufficient reason, and that this is its nature rather than its defect, continues a line of thought Pascal had opened two centuries earlier.
