Blaise Pascal
Measure reason by what exceeds it.
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, experimental physicist, inventor and Christian writer. After work on conic sections, a calculating machine, the vacuum and probability, a religious experience in 1654 drew him close to Port-Royal. His Provincial Letters attack lax casuistry, and the fragments of his unfinished apology, the Pensées, probe human greatness and misery, the limits of reason and the wager.
What can a fragile thinking being know, and on what should it stake its life?
Biography
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, experimental physicist, inventor and Christian writer. After work on conic sections, a calculating machine, the vacuum and probability, a religious experience in 1654 drew him close to Port-Royal. His Provincial Letters attack lax casuistry, and the fragments of his unfinished apology, the Pensées, probe human greatness and misery, the limits of reason and the wager.
02 /Philosophy
Bodies, minds and charity form three orders separated by infinite distances: physical power cannot measure intellectual greatness, and genius cannot measure the holiness of charity.
03 /Reading guides
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
04 /Bibliography
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
A first reading.
Misery, diversion and the wager
Follow the Pensées from the analysis of human restlessness to the argument that one must wager.
PenséesCasuistry and irony
Study how the Provincial Letters turn quotations from moral theologians into a public argument about conscience.
The Provincial LettersExperiment against authority
Reconstruct the experiments on the vacuum and Pascal’s rules for testing a hypothesis against the phenomena.
Writings on the Vacuum and the Weight of Air