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禺賵丕胤乇
Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Pense茅s is a collection of philosohical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in pscyhological, social, metaphysical and - above all - theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God's grace.
336 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1670
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February 16, 2023
De la Blaise Pascal cititorii au re葲inut c卯teva formule potrivite pentru conversa葲iile sub葲iri. Cea mai cunoscut膬 dintre ele e, desigur, aceea 卯n care omul e comparat cu o trestie firav膬, pentru a-i sublinia (a c卯ta oar膬?) fragilitatea.
脦n葲elepciunea popular膬 a produs 葯i al葲i termeni de compara葲ie: via葲a e ca iarba c卯mpului, ca o 鈥瀞crisoare鈥� pe nisip sau pe ap膬 etc. Dar Pascal g膬se葯te aici o consolare: 鈥濷mul este doar o trestie, cea mai firav膬 din natur膬, dar e o trestie g卯nditoare. Pentru a-l zdrobi, nu e nevoie ca 卯ntregul univers s膬 se 卯narmeze: un abur, o pic膬tur膬 de ap膬 ajung s膬-l ucid膬. Dar chiar dac膬 universul l-ar zdrobi, omul 卯nc膬 ar fi mai presus dec卯t ceea ce 卯l ucide, pentru c膬 el 葯tie c膬 moare..., dar universul nu 葯tie nimic鈥�. Bietul univers!
Nu cred c膬 omul se simte mai presus de natur膬 (葯i devine fericit) pe motivul c膬 doar el 葯tie c膬 e muritor. Con葯tiin葲a (葯i g卯ndirea) nu reprezint膬 卯ntotdeauna un avantaj. S卯nt mai degrab膬 o pedeaps膬. Noroc c膬 omul nu mediteaz膬 prea mult la sf卯r葯itul propriu, e destul de inteligent (sau destul de lene葯) s膬 nu fac膬 din asta o obsesie strivitoare.
Blaise Pascal inten葲iona s膬 redacteze o teodicee 葯i o apologie a cre葯tinismului. F膬cuse un plan aproximativ. Nota 卯n grab膬 pe foi izolate g卯nduri, opinii, citate din 鈥瀉utorit膬葲i鈥� (din sf卯ntul Augustin, de exemplu) 葯i spera c膬 va putea pune totul 卯ntr-o form膬 organizat膬. Din p膬cate, sf卯r葯itul prematur (卯n 19 august 1662, la doar 39 de ani) l-a 卯mpiedicat s膬-葯i realizeze scopul. A avut un suflet chinuit 葯i nu cred c膬 a fost un credincios perfect, de葯i comentatori (ca Chestov 葯i al葲ii) nu se 卯ndoiesc de asta. Dar pariul care a primit numele lui demonstreaz膬 c膬 el 卯nsu葯i accepta 葯i posibilitatea necredin葲ei (葯i, pe cale de consecin葲膬, a inexisten葲ei divine): dac膬 nu crezi 葯i Dumnezeu nu exist膬, n-ai pierdut nimic...
Un astfel de argument pragmatic nu e c卯tu葯i de pu葲in constr卯ng膬tor. Rostul lui e s膬 ofere m卯ng卯ere. Ce-i drept, c卯nd nu accep葲i argumentul ontologic al sf卯ntului Anselm (oricum nu e valid) 葯i cau葲i 鈥瀓ustific膬ri鈥� alternative ale credin葲ei, e v膬dit c膬 ai vrea s膬 crezi, iar cine vrea s膬 cread膬 de fapt nu crede. Totu葯i: 鈥濧 te 卯ndoi de existen葲a lui Dumnezeu 卯nseamn膬 deja a crede鈥�. Mai t卯rziu, James Beattie 葯i William James au propus 葯i ei astfel de argumente.
Prietenii janseni葯ti de la Port Royal i-au cenzurat drastic manuscrisele. Ei au intuit 卯naintea tuturor c膬 aveau de-a face cu un individ situat 卯n proximitatea ereziei. Editorii moderni au reconstituit textele 葯i au 卯ncercat s膬 le a葯eze 卯n ordinea inten葲ionat膬 de Pascal. Edi葲ia cea mai cunoscut膬 a fost realizat膬 de filosoful L茅on Brunschvicg 卯n 1904. Edi葲ia cea mai bun膬, 卯n opinia mea, este aceea a lui Louis Lafuma. Specialistul a lucrat la aceast膬 edi葲ie 卯ntre 1951 葯i 1964.
脦ntr-o vreme, eram 卯n facultate, 卯nv膬葲asem pe de rost un pasaj, e imposibil s膬-l uit: 鈥濼otul e o sfer膬 infinit膬 al c膬rei centru se afl膬 pretutindeni, iar circumferin葲a nic膬ieri. 脦nchipuirea noastr膬 se pierde la acest g卯nd鈥�.
脦n葲elepciunea popular膬 a produs 葯i al葲i termeni de compara葲ie: via葲a e ca iarba c卯mpului, ca o 鈥瀞crisoare鈥� pe nisip sau pe ap膬 etc. Dar Pascal g膬se葯te aici o consolare: 鈥濷mul este doar o trestie, cea mai firav膬 din natur膬, dar e o trestie g卯nditoare. Pentru a-l zdrobi, nu e nevoie ca 卯ntregul univers s膬 se 卯narmeze: un abur, o pic膬tur膬 de ap膬 ajung s膬-l ucid膬. Dar chiar dac膬 universul l-ar zdrobi, omul 卯nc膬 ar fi mai presus dec卯t ceea ce 卯l ucide, pentru c膬 el 葯tie c膬 moare..., dar universul nu 葯tie nimic鈥�. Bietul univers!
Nu cred c膬 omul se simte mai presus de natur膬 (葯i devine fericit) pe motivul c膬 doar el 葯tie c膬 e muritor. Con葯tiin葲a (葯i g卯ndirea) nu reprezint膬 卯ntotdeauna un avantaj. S卯nt mai degrab膬 o pedeaps膬. Noroc c膬 omul nu mediteaz膬 prea mult la sf卯r葯itul propriu, e destul de inteligent (sau destul de lene葯) s膬 nu fac膬 din asta o obsesie strivitoare.
Blaise Pascal inten葲iona s膬 redacteze o teodicee 葯i o apologie a cre葯tinismului. F膬cuse un plan aproximativ. Nota 卯n grab膬 pe foi izolate g卯nduri, opinii, citate din 鈥瀉utorit膬葲i鈥� (din sf卯ntul Augustin, de exemplu) 葯i spera c膬 va putea pune totul 卯ntr-o form膬 organizat膬. Din p膬cate, sf卯r葯itul prematur (卯n 19 august 1662, la doar 39 de ani) l-a 卯mpiedicat s膬-葯i realizeze scopul. A avut un suflet chinuit 葯i nu cred c膬 a fost un credincios perfect, de葯i comentatori (ca Chestov 葯i al葲ii) nu se 卯ndoiesc de asta. Dar pariul care a primit numele lui demonstreaz膬 c膬 el 卯nsu葯i accepta 葯i posibilitatea necredin葲ei (葯i, pe cale de consecin葲膬, a inexisten葲ei divine): dac膬 nu crezi 葯i Dumnezeu nu exist膬, n-ai pierdut nimic...
Un astfel de argument pragmatic nu e c卯tu葯i de pu葲in constr卯ng膬tor. Rostul lui e s膬 ofere m卯ng卯ere. Ce-i drept, c卯nd nu accep葲i argumentul ontologic al sf卯ntului Anselm (oricum nu e valid) 葯i cau葲i 鈥瀓ustific膬ri鈥� alternative ale credin葲ei, e v膬dit c膬 ai vrea s膬 crezi, iar cine vrea s膬 cread膬 de fapt nu crede. Totu葯i: 鈥濧 te 卯ndoi de existen葲a lui Dumnezeu 卯nseamn膬 deja a crede鈥�. Mai t卯rziu, James Beattie 葯i William James au propus 葯i ei astfel de argumente.
Prietenii janseni葯ti de la Port Royal i-au cenzurat drastic manuscrisele. Ei au intuit 卯naintea tuturor c膬 aveau de-a face cu un individ situat 卯n proximitatea ereziei. Editorii moderni au reconstituit textele 葯i au 卯ncercat s膬 le a葯eze 卯n ordinea inten葲ionat膬 de Pascal. Edi葲ia cea mai cunoscut膬 a fost realizat膬 de filosoful L茅on Brunschvicg 卯n 1904. Edi葲ia cea mai bun膬, 卯n opinia mea, este aceea a lui Louis Lafuma. Specialistul a lucrat la aceast膬 edi葲ie 卯ntre 1951 葯i 1964.
脦ntr-o vreme, eram 卯n facultate, 卯nv膬葲asem pe de rost un pasaj, e imposibil s膬-l uit: 鈥濼otul e o sfer膬 infinit膬 al c膬rei centru se afl膬 pretutindeni, iar circumferin葲a nic膬ieri. 脦nchipuirea noastr膬 se pierde la acest g卯nd鈥�.
May 19, 2016
Perhaps half of this was basically wasted on me. As an atheist, books providing proofs for the existence of God are perhaps 40 years or so too late. The problem here isn鈥檛 so much that he is trying to prove the existence of an entity that he himself admits particularly likes to hide 鈥� presumably you can see the problem here 鈥� but also that some of his proofs seemed utterly bizarre to me. One of my favourites was him saying that the Old Testament was the oldest book in the world. You see, it was written not terribly long after the world had been created. And, at that time there wasn鈥檛 a hell of a lot to talk about 鈥� science hadn鈥檛 really gotten going and that sort of thing 鈥� so people mostly sat around talking about their family tree. So, that is why you can pretty well rely on the fact that the first part of the Bible is 鈥� well 鈥� gospel. I know, you think I鈥檓 making this sound dafter than it actually is as one of those standard ploys atheist engage in. You are right to be cynical. So, here it is, quoted in full:
鈥�625
The longevity of the patriarchs, instead of causing the loss of past history, conduced, on the contrary, to its preservation. For the reason why we are sometimes insufficiently instructed in the history of our ancestors, is that we have never lived long with them, and that they are often dead before we have attained the age of reason. Now, when men lived so long, children lived long with their parents. They conversed long with them. But what else could be the subject of their talk save the history of their ancestors, since to that all history was reduced, and men did not study science or art, which now form a large part of daily conversation? We see also that in these days tribes took particular care to preserve their genealogies.鈥�
Other parts of this require a much closer knowledge of the Bible than I have to be able to follow. All the same, it didn鈥檛 exactly inspire me to go rushing off to look up Deut. xxx.
So, my advice, unless you are interested in these more or less iffy proofs of the existence of God, is to stop about halfway though this. You鈥檒l know when 鈥� it will become quite clear.
The only thing I would point to in the last half of this book is something I had always thought was said by an atheist.
鈥�894
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.鈥�
The reason why I read this was because Bourdieu calls himself a Pascallian and so I thought I had better see why. And there are lots of reasons why this might be the case and I think they are all in the first half of the book.
The first is the bit that almost completely reminds me of a couple of books on happiness I read a few years ago: both The Happiness Hypothesis and Stumbling on Happiness. The main lesson to be drawn from both of these books is that we humans are pathetically bad at knowing what it is that will make us happy. Pascal makes the point that we do things happily where the prize itself really isn鈥檛 what we are after. The example he gives is spending a day chasing a hare that you wouldn鈥檛 buy in the market or accept as a gift. The modern version of this is 鈥榠t鈥檚 about the journey, rather than the destination鈥� 鈥� and I think this is really true. I think the worst thing that can happen to you is to have an achievable goal in life and to reach that goal. He makes the point repeatedly that if you were given whatever you were likely to win at the beginning of the day and then told to enjoy your leisure for the rest of the day that nothing would be more likely to make you miserable. That activity with some form of reward provides us with the greatest source of happiness.
The other thing he says is his most quoted line: The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. This is one of the ideas that Bourdieu certainly borrows from Pascal, this whole notion of habit and embodied reasons that we justify afterwards with our mental reason. I kept thinking of Haidt鈥檚 elephant and elephant driver (reason and habit) and his saying that habit wins in the end (the elephant) because eventually reason needs to sleep. Pascal would have had no trouble accepting this idea.
The first half of this book is just brimming over with lovely thoughts 鈥� the meaning of the title of the book, after all 鈥� and that is possibly also true of the second half of the book, but as I鈥檝e said, a lot of that went over my head. A large part of this is designed to convince non-believers of the benefits of belief. But anyone who says things like - we laugh and cry about the same things 鈥� honestly, they can鈥檛 be all bad.
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October 24, 2023Pascal's philosophy is quite simple, far from being a conceptual or speculative exposition, as it would seem at first sight. It is an experience of thinking in meditation on human being, and on the christian faith, 脿 result of a passionate spirit, particularly sensitive to the turmoil and contradictions in man and in the age in which he lived.
I would place his thoughts on the line of a protestant or catholic theology, but also as an anticipation of a contemporary pragmatism or irrationalism.
The central problem of Pascal's philosophy is the harmonization of reason with faith, but everywhere the problem of man - a being difficult to define - follows him as a shadow, for he lets himself be guided by the heart, and " the heart has reasons which reason itself does not know ".
This edition is an abbreviated one, of only 92 pages, but so dense, that on any page I would open the book, it is full of strong sentences, it is practically a river of maxims of a staggering depth.
The general idea focuses on one statement : man is a heap of contradictions, contradictions between thought and deed, and as a true christian you must be able to recognize these contradictions. His misery comes from originar sin, and greatness from a divine vocation, but paradoxically, the source of these contradictions is Reason, because of it we are subject to originar sin, and at the same time, through it man can prove his greatness.
I could not say that I was overly enthusiastic about this volume, but as a reading it was an absolutely delightful one, each sentence making me reflect on my own self, in relation to the contradictions listed by Pascal :)
And I think, that, despite Pascal's apparent attempt to convert the reader religiously, the book can also be read without believing in God, but in the power of writing.
I would place his thoughts on the line of a protestant or catholic theology, but also as an anticipation of a contemporary pragmatism or irrationalism.
The central problem of Pascal's philosophy is the harmonization of reason with faith, but everywhere the problem of man - a being difficult to define - follows him as a shadow, for he lets himself be guided by the heart, and " the heart has reasons which reason itself does not know ".
This edition is an abbreviated one, of only 92 pages, but so dense, that on any page I would open the book, it is full of strong sentences, it is practically a river of maxims of a staggering depth.
The general idea focuses on one statement : man is a heap of contradictions, contradictions between thought and deed, and as a true christian you must be able to recognize these contradictions. His misery comes from originar sin, and greatness from a divine vocation, but paradoxically, the source of these contradictions is Reason, because of it we are subject to originar sin, and at the same time, through it man can prove his greatness.
I could not say that I was overly enthusiastic about this volume, but as a reading it was an absolutely delightful one, each sentence making me reflect on my own self, in relation to the contradictions listed by Pascal :)
And I think, that, despite Pascal's apparent attempt to convert the reader religiously, the book can also be read without believing in God, but in the power of writing.
May 13, 2023
This bushy and dense work is the last book of Jansenist Blaise Pascal, singing the praises of the Christian religion in the face of non-believers and skeptics in many reflections. For my part, this reading was compulsory in the academic baccalaureate program; since I only put two stars, it goes without saying that I did not stick at all to Pascalian ideas.
June 9, 2024
La que le铆 es una selecci贸n de los famosos Pensamientos de Pascal, uno de los grandes intelectuales de la historia cuyas ideas han permeado el acervo de nuestra cultura. Matem谩tico, f铆sico y fil贸sofo franc茅s del siglo XVII que, como curiosidad, invent贸 la calculadora, bautizada como 鈥減ascalina鈥�.
Pascal se hab铆a propuesto confeccionar una apolog茅tica de la religi贸n cristiana, pero la muerte toc贸 a su puerta antes de terminarla. Por suerte, el franc茅s dej贸 una ingente cantidad de reflexiones desperdigadas en cientos de papeles. De aquellas anotaciones nacieron sus Pensamientos, publicados p贸stumamente, en 1669.
El autor abord贸 la relaci贸n entre la fe y la raz贸n de una forma singular. Insist铆a en la relevancia de la experiencia personal y de la intuici贸n en la comprensi贸n de la fe. Para 茅l, la creencia religiosa es mucho m谩s que un mero ejercicio intelectual: es tambi茅n una experiencia profundamente sentida. Como dijo San Agust铆n: In interiore homine habitat veritas.
Una de las ideas m谩s conocidas de Pascal es su Apuesta, seg煤n la cual, desde un punto de vista puramente pragm谩tico, conviene creer que Dios existe:
No obstante, no es 茅sta una reflexi贸n que me guste del todo, ya que presenta la fe como un juego de ganar o perder, lo que, as铆, sin m谩s, sugerir铆a una creencia no genuina.
En definitiva, aquellas anotaciones de Pascal desaf铆an a explorar la hondura de la condici贸n humana al lector que las acoja con los ojos bien abiertos.
Pascal se hab铆a propuesto confeccionar una apolog茅tica de la religi贸n cristiana, pero la muerte toc贸 a su puerta antes de terminarla. Por suerte, el franc茅s dej贸 una ingente cantidad de reflexiones desperdigadas en cientos de papeles. De aquellas anotaciones nacieron sus Pensamientos, publicados p贸stumamente, en 1669.
El autor abord贸 la relaci贸n entre la fe y la raz贸n de una forma singular. Insist铆a en la relevancia de la experiencia personal y de la intuici贸n en la comprensi贸n de la fe. Para 茅l, la creencia religiosa es mucho m谩s que un mero ejercicio intelectual: es tambi茅n una experiencia profundamente sentida. Como dijo San Agust铆n: In interiore homine habitat veritas.
Conocemos la verdad, no solamente por la raz贸n, sino tambi茅n por el coraz贸n. De esta 煤ltima manera es como conocemos los primeros principios y es en vano que el razonamiento, que no tiene ninguna parte en ello, trate de combatirlos.
Una de las ideas m谩s conocidas de Pascal es su Apuesta, seg煤n la cual, desde un punto de vista puramente pragm谩tico, conviene creer que Dios existe:
Usted tiene dos cosas que perder: la verdad y el bien, y dos cosas que comprometer: su raz贸n y su voluntad, su conocimiento y su bienaventuranza; y su naturaleza posee dos cosas de las que debe huir: el error y la miseria. Su raz贸n no resulta m谩s perjudicada al elegir la una o la otra, puesto que es necesario elegir. 脡sta es una cuesti贸n vac铆a. Pero 驴su bienaventuranza? Vamos a sopesar la ganancia y la p茅rdida al eligir cruz (de cara o cruz) acerca del hecho de que Dios existe. Tomemos en consideraci贸n estos dos casos: si gana, lo gana todo; si pierde, no pierde nada. Apueste a que existe sin dudar.
No obstante, no es 茅sta una reflexi贸n que me guste del todo, ya que presenta la fe como un juego de ganar o perder, lo que, as铆, sin m谩s, sugerir铆a una creencia no genuina.
En definitiva, aquellas anotaciones de Pascal desaf铆an a explorar la hondura de la condici贸n humana al lector que las acoja con los ojos bien abiertos.
August 31, 2016
Religious Thoughts of a Mathematician
29 August 2016 - Paris, France
When I was learning French I was rather thrown by the way their numbers work after about 60, as is demonstrated by this picture, which shows how English, German, and French construct the number 98:
My first thought was 'this is absolutely ridiculous, how on Earth could the French have produced any mathematicians?鈥� Well, it turns out that they produced at least two 鈥� Rene Descartes (notable for Cartesian Geometry) and Blaise Pascal (who built his own calculator, most likely to assist him in deciphering the French numerical system). At least the Germans only switch their numbers around, it just seems like the French reached the number 60 and simply became too lazy to work out any beyond that (and if you look at the numbers 17, 18, and 19, you will see a similar pattern there). Anyway, I'm not writing this to bag the French (only the way they count), but to have another look at Pascal's Pensees.
This is the second time I have read this book, and I thought it was an appropriate book to read while travelling through France, and I have just managed to finish it off on my first day in Paris (while sitting out the front of a cafe drinking what was effectively an overpriced beer and an over priced bottle of Pine-apple juice, which is another oddity 鈥� the English refer to them and Pineapples while those on the continent refer to them as Annanas 鈥� but that is another story). As I have done previously, I have left my previous review below, though that was written back when I was studying Church History at a Bible college and having realised that I had already written a review on it I was about to move on to another book when I felt that I should read him again, just to see if I end up viewing him differently.
Well, I'm going to have to agree with what Trevor said in his review in that the first part of the book, namely the section where Pascal managed to order his Pensees, is actually pretty good, but when you get to the section where the editor has then tried to put them into some sort of order, and failing that just thrown the rest of them into a miscellaneous chapter, it does sort of start to go down hill. For instance you will find some that are simply huge chucks of the Bible, and not really ethical thoughts, but rather ideas on prophecies and their fulfilments. Like a lot of fundamentalist preachers these days he does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on the book of Daniel.
The other thing is that Pascal spends a lot of time arguing that Christianity cannot be proved through reason, however the proceeds to use reason to try to prove Christianity. I remember my father telling me once that it is impossible to prove Christianity by using science namely because non-scientists generally don't understand the detailed scientific explanations, and non-Christian scientists have their own explanations as to why things happen. For instance, I asked my Dad why is it that the events at the Big Bang seems to go against the Law of Therodynamics, that is the scientific law that says that everything moves from a state of order to a state of disorder. Well, just like gravity (what goes up, must come down), there are exceptions (unless you have a really big rocket underneath you). The other thing with the Big Bang is that nobody was around to measure it so we don't actually know what went on. Also the universe is also constantly expanding, which once again seems to go against the law of entropy, though I think I'll leave it at that is it is starting to make my brain hurt.
Anyway, reading through the Pensees it seems as if Pascal was one of those guys who started off as a scientist (or rather a mathematician), discovered God, and then started to try to use science to prove God. It reminded me a lot of those Creation Scientists, the ones who go around claiming that if you don't believe in a six-day creation you are denying Christ, and if you deny Christ then you are going to hell. Well, I guess that is it for me then, but that is beside the point. The thing is that while I believe that they have some valid ideas, I do try to leave my mind open for other possibilities. However, as I was reading Pascal this time I simply found how his arguments simply didn't seem to work all that well, and while it might have worked with the people of his time period, these days it simply seems that his writings would probably only appeal to the fundamentalist sects (and even then they would probably end up rejecting him as a heretic namely because he is a Catholic).
Despite all that, I do feel that he does have a lot to say and I will touch on a couple of things here, the first being distractions. There is a lot of criticism of distractions in the modern world 鈥� such as sport, movies, Keeping up with the Kardasians, et al 鈥� and that these distractions serve to keep the actions of the power elite from being known by the common people. Well, Pascal suggests that this is not necessarily the case, and I sort of agree with him. The thing is that the common people generally don't care what the power elite are doing, and as long as they have their goodies they will be happy. It is not a question of human rights, nor is it a question of freedom of speech 鈥� people will do what they are prone to do 鈥� no it is a question of boredom. It is not as if the common person, if the truth is revealed to them, are suddenly going to take to the streets with pitchforks 鈥� the Peasants in France knew what the Aristocracy and the Church was all about, they only revolted when their own situation became so dire that they had nothing left to lose (and were also prodded on by a pretty powerful bourgeoisie). Rather, it is to prevent boredom. The thing is that if a person is bored they get up to mischief, and if a lot of people get up to mischief together then anarchy reigns.
The other thing about distraction is how it is used in relation to the monarch. Pascal suggests that the monarch is fed distractions by his advisors to prevent the monarch from establishing his (or her) own agenda. Mind you, that depends on how strong the monarch actually is 鈥� a strong monarch is going to do their own thing no matter what. However, in most cases, as is suggested by Pascal, it is the advisors and the inner circle that actually dictates how the country is administered. The king is fed distractions so that he will in effect relinquish his (or her) power to them. It could be said that it is the same with politicians today, especially career politicians who probably have no skill set outside of doing what politicians actually do (which is a question to which I an struggling to find an answer). The reality is that most politicians (and cabinet ministers) have no idea how to actually do their job and thus rely on advisors to help them make the decision. In the end the politician, seeing that it is all too hard, arranges for another overseas junket and gets the advisors to make the final decisions and simply signs on the dotted line.
One of the things that seems to get up Pascal's nose are vain people 鈥� namely those who think of themselves over others. Mind you, he is probably right because it is our vanity that seems to be the cause of a lot of problems that we face in the world, and it is not just the question of the rich not paying their taxes because many of us in the Western World (me included) generally think of our own happiness above the welfare and security of others. In fact it is coming to the point where many of our countries are doing everything that we can to close our borders to refugees and immigrants and blaming in influx of foreigners for all of our woahs. In a way one of the main reasons that the leave vote won out in Britain was because people believed that by voting leave they would get rid of all of the immigrants and return Britain to that of the Anglo-Saxons. In many cases we in the west are hoarders 鈥� sure, we might be generous to an extent, even the absurdly rich are pretty generous with their money 鈥� they give to charities and to cultural institutions 鈥� in fact on a proportionate basis they are probably more generous than many of us who can actually afford to be charitable (though I am not taking into account the reasons for their giving since many of us give for ulterior motives such as a tax deduction). However, when Pascal looked around he we would see an awful lot of vanity in the world, and even when people appeared to be kind and generous he tended to see something beyond that. As Jesus pointed out at the temple one day it was the poor widow who gave the single coin who was the more generous because while the rich gave out of their wealth she gave out of her poverty.
Which leads me to the concept of the inversion 鈥� people who consider themselves good and righteous end up being anything but. Mind you, this isn't something that Pascal comes up with himself but rather something that is a constant theme throughout the Bible and can best be seen in the Sermon on the Mount, in particular the beatitudes 鈥� the poor become rich, the weak become strong, the sorrowful become joyful. In a way it is not a question of outward appearances but inward appearances. Isn't it interesting that when somebody gives out of their wealth an organisation will reward them for that, which means that such people continue to give knowing that their generosity will be rewarded and they will be viewed as a generous person. As Jesus suggests these people have received their reward in full, especially if that is the reason for them giving generously. However those who give a small amount tend to never to be recognised. Well, they might get a thankyou (or a Merci Beaucoup) but a lot of organisations will tend to ignore them when they give and only say thankyou when tapping them for more money. This is another thing that I have noticed 鈥� when you start giving to these organisations they will continue to ask for money, and normally will ask for more and more 鈥� if I give them $500.00 within a month I will receive a letter asking for $750, $1000, or even $2000. In fact the only letters that I seem to get from them is 'can you make another donation and can you make it more this time'.
I should finish off with the idea of the wager, that is that life is a wager and the stakes are eternity, so you either have the choice to live a moral life or an immoral one. The results are that if you live a moral life but it turns out that God doesn't exist then you lose nothing because the moral life is always the better life, but if you live an immoral life and it turns out that God does exist then you lose out big time. Mind you, I have simplified it somewhat, especially since it should actually be 'Christian life' instead of 'moral life' but I'm sure you understand what I mean. The thing is that people outwardly parade their goodness to receive praise from those around them tend not to actually be moral people 鈥� sure, they may life immaculate lives in front of everybody but their private life may hold a huge number of dirty secrets. As far as I am concerned it is always going to be a heart things, you don't do things because you want people to say 'gee, what a good person' you do things because it is always better to live a moral life than an immoral life, especially since the immoral life always comes back and bites you.
A collection of Theological statements
11 May 2012 - Adelaide, Australia
Blaise Pascal is an enigma. He is a Catholic who in his book writes like an evangelical (or, more to the point, protestant as they were in those days). He is also a scientist/mathematician/engineer who writes what I must admit is an incredibly intense theological treatise. Well, not so much a treatise, but more a collection of sayings (some short, some quite long) exploring the nature of God, Jesus, the Bible, and our relationship with the Trinity. The book is not finished. He became too sick to continue the work and what we have now is a collection of the 'sayings' (if that is what you want to call them) in the order that he wanted them to be in, and a whole heap of others with no rhyme or reason (or at least they are not quite complete nor are they in any particular order). As such the later editors have done their best to attempt to put them where they think they best fit, but it is highly unlikely anybody would be able to know what Pascal's original intentions were.
This book does allow one to get into Pascal's mind and understand his theology and his response to it, though Pascal was one of those very rare individuals that appears to live in a world of his own, though through this book we do catch a glimpse of this world.
29 August 2016 - Paris, France
When I was learning French I was rather thrown by the way their numbers work after about 60, as is demonstrated by this picture, which shows how English, German, and French construct the number 98:
My first thought was 'this is absolutely ridiculous, how on Earth could the French have produced any mathematicians?鈥� Well, it turns out that they produced at least two 鈥� Rene Descartes (notable for Cartesian Geometry) and Blaise Pascal (who built his own calculator, most likely to assist him in deciphering the French numerical system). At least the Germans only switch their numbers around, it just seems like the French reached the number 60 and simply became too lazy to work out any beyond that (and if you look at the numbers 17, 18, and 19, you will see a similar pattern there). Anyway, I'm not writing this to bag the French (only the way they count), but to have another look at Pascal's Pensees.
This is the second time I have read this book, and I thought it was an appropriate book to read while travelling through France, and I have just managed to finish it off on my first day in Paris (while sitting out the front of a cafe drinking what was effectively an overpriced beer and an over priced bottle of Pine-apple juice, which is another oddity 鈥� the English refer to them and Pineapples while those on the continent refer to them as Annanas 鈥� but that is another story). As I have done previously, I have left my previous review below, though that was written back when I was studying Church History at a Bible college and having realised that I had already written a review on it I was about to move on to another book when I felt that I should read him again, just to see if I end up viewing him differently.
Well, I'm going to have to agree with what Trevor said in his review in that the first part of the book, namely the section where Pascal managed to order his Pensees, is actually pretty good, but when you get to the section where the editor has then tried to put them into some sort of order, and failing that just thrown the rest of them into a miscellaneous chapter, it does sort of start to go down hill. For instance you will find some that are simply huge chucks of the Bible, and not really ethical thoughts, but rather ideas on prophecies and their fulfilments. Like a lot of fundamentalist preachers these days he does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on the book of Daniel.
The other thing is that Pascal spends a lot of time arguing that Christianity cannot be proved through reason, however the proceeds to use reason to try to prove Christianity. I remember my father telling me once that it is impossible to prove Christianity by using science namely because non-scientists generally don't understand the detailed scientific explanations, and non-Christian scientists have their own explanations as to why things happen. For instance, I asked my Dad why is it that the events at the Big Bang seems to go against the Law of Therodynamics, that is the scientific law that says that everything moves from a state of order to a state of disorder. Well, just like gravity (what goes up, must come down), there are exceptions (unless you have a really big rocket underneath you). The other thing with the Big Bang is that nobody was around to measure it so we don't actually know what went on. Also the universe is also constantly expanding, which once again seems to go against the law of entropy, though I think I'll leave it at that is it is starting to make my brain hurt.
Anyway, reading through the Pensees it seems as if Pascal was one of those guys who started off as a scientist (or rather a mathematician), discovered God, and then started to try to use science to prove God. It reminded me a lot of those Creation Scientists, the ones who go around claiming that if you don't believe in a six-day creation you are denying Christ, and if you deny Christ then you are going to hell. Well, I guess that is it for me then, but that is beside the point. The thing is that while I believe that they have some valid ideas, I do try to leave my mind open for other possibilities. However, as I was reading Pascal this time I simply found how his arguments simply didn't seem to work all that well, and while it might have worked with the people of his time period, these days it simply seems that his writings would probably only appeal to the fundamentalist sects (and even then they would probably end up rejecting him as a heretic namely because he is a Catholic).
Despite all that, I do feel that he does have a lot to say and I will touch on a couple of things here, the first being distractions. There is a lot of criticism of distractions in the modern world 鈥� such as sport, movies, Keeping up with the Kardasians, et al 鈥� and that these distractions serve to keep the actions of the power elite from being known by the common people. Well, Pascal suggests that this is not necessarily the case, and I sort of agree with him. The thing is that the common people generally don't care what the power elite are doing, and as long as they have their goodies they will be happy. It is not a question of human rights, nor is it a question of freedom of speech 鈥� people will do what they are prone to do 鈥� no it is a question of boredom. It is not as if the common person, if the truth is revealed to them, are suddenly going to take to the streets with pitchforks 鈥� the Peasants in France knew what the Aristocracy and the Church was all about, they only revolted when their own situation became so dire that they had nothing left to lose (and were also prodded on by a pretty powerful bourgeoisie). Rather, it is to prevent boredom. The thing is that if a person is bored they get up to mischief, and if a lot of people get up to mischief together then anarchy reigns.
The other thing about distraction is how it is used in relation to the monarch. Pascal suggests that the monarch is fed distractions by his advisors to prevent the monarch from establishing his (or her) own agenda. Mind you, that depends on how strong the monarch actually is 鈥� a strong monarch is going to do their own thing no matter what. However, in most cases, as is suggested by Pascal, it is the advisors and the inner circle that actually dictates how the country is administered. The king is fed distractions so that he will in effect relinquish his (or her) power to them. It could be said that it is the same with politicians today, especially career politicians who probably have no skill set outside of doing what politicians actually do (which is a question to which I an struggling to find an answer). The reality is that most politicians (and cabinet ministers) have no idea how to actually do their job and thus rely on advisors to help them make the decision. In the end the politician, seeing that it is all too hard, arranges for another overseas junket and gets the advisors to make the final decisions and simply signs on the dotted line.
One of the things that seems to get up Pascal's nose are vain people 鈥� namely those who think of themselves over others. Mind you, he is probably right because it is our vanity that seems to be the cause of a lot of problems that we face in the world, and it is not just the question of the rich not paying their taxes because many of us in the Western World (me included) generally think of our own happiness above the welfare and security of others. In fact it is coming to the point where many of our countries are doing everything that we can to close our borders to refugees and immigrants and blaming in influx of foreigners for all of our woahs. In a way one of the main reasons that the leave vote won out in Britain was because people believed that by voting leave they would get rid of all of the immigrants and return Britain to that of the Anglo-Saxons. In many cases we in the west are hoarders 鈥� sure, we might be generous to an extent, even the absurdly rich are pretty generous with their money 鈥� they give to charities and to cultural institutions 鈥� in fact on a proportionate basis they are probably more generous than many of us who can actually afford to be charitable (though I am not taking into account the reasons for their giving since many of us give for ulterior motives such as a tax deduction). However, when Pascal looked around he we would see an awful lot of vanity in the world, and even when people appeared to be kind and generous he tended to see something beyond that. As Jesus pointed out at the temple one day it was the poor widow who gave the single coin who was the more generous because while the rich gave out of their wealth she gave out of her poverty.
Which leads me to the concept of the inversion 鈥� people who consider themselves good and righteous end up being anything but. Mind you, this isn't something that Pascal comes up with himself but rather something that is a constant theme throughout the Bible and can best be seen in the Sermon on the Mount, in particular the beatitudes 鈥� the poor become rich, the weak become strong, the sorrowful become joyful. In a way it is not a question of outward appearances but inward appearances. Isn't it interesting that when somebody gives out of their wealth an organisation will reward them for that, which means that such people continue to give knowing that their generosity will be rewarded and they will be viewed as a generous person. As Jesus suggests these people have received their reward in full, especially if that is the reason for them giving generously. However those who give a small amount tend to never to be recognised. Well, they might get a thankyou (or a Merci Beaucoup) but a lot of organisations will tend to ignore them when they give and only say thankyou when tapping them for more money. This is another thing that I have noticed 鈥� when you start giving to these organisations they will continue to ask for money, and normally will ask for more and more 鈥� if I give them $500.00 within a month I will receive a letter asking for $750, $1000, or even $2000. In fact the only letters that I seem to get from them is 'can you make another donation and can you make it more this time'.
I should finish off with the idea of the wager, that is that life is a wager and the stakes are eternity, so you either have the choice to live a moral life or an immoral one. The results are that if you live a moral life but it turns out that God doesn't exist then you lose nothing because the moral life is always the better life, but if you live an immoral life and it turns out that God does exist then you lose out big time. Mind you, I have simplified it somewhat, especially since it should actually be 'Christian life' instead of 'moral life' but I'm sure you understand what I mean. The thing is that people outwardly parade their goodness to receive praise from those around them tend not to actually be moral people 鈥� sure, they may life immaculate lives in front of everybody but their private life may hold a huge number of dirty secrets. As far as I am concerned it is always going to be a heart things, you don't do things because you want people to say 'gee, what a good person' you do things because it is always better to live a moral life than an immoral life, especially since the immoral life always comes back and bites you.
A collection of Theological statements
11 May 2012 - Adelaide, Australia
Blaise Pascal is an enigma. He is a Catholic who in his book writes like an evangelical (or, more to the point, protestant as they were in those days). He is also a scientist/mathematician/engineer who writes what I must admit is an incredibly intense theological treatise. Well, not so much a treatise, but more a collection of sayings (some short, some quite long) exploring the nature of God, Jesus, the Bible, and our relationship with the Trinity. The book is not finished. He became too sick to continue the work and what we have now is a collection of the 'sayings' (if that is what you want to call them) in the order that he wanted them to be in, and a whole heap of others with no rhyme or reason (or at least they are not quite complete nor are they in any particular order). As such the later editors have done their best to attempt to put them where they think they best fit, but it is highly unlikely anybody would be able to know what Pascal's original intentions were.
This book does allow one to get into Pascal's mind and understand his theology and his response to it, though Pascal was one of those very rare individuals that appears to live in a world of his own, though through this book we do catch a glimpse of this world.
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August 24, 2017鈥庁堌池з嗁� 诏乇丕賳賯丿乇貙 丿乇 丕蹖賳 趩乇鬲 賵 倬乇鬲 賳丕賲賴 讴賴 賳丕賲賽 丌賳 乇丕 讴鬲丕亘 賳賴丕丿賴 丕賳丿 賵 丌賳 乇丕 亘丕 毓賳賵丕賳賽 "鬲賮讴乇丕鬲" 賲蹖卮賳丕爻蹖賲貙 <倬丕爻讴丕賱> 亘賴 毓丕賱賲 賵 丌丿賲 鬲丕禺鬲賴 丕爻鬲 賵 鬲賳賴丕 賲爻蹖丨 賵 賲爻蹖丨蹖鬲 賵 讴丕鬲賵賱蹖讴 乇丕 禺賵亘 賵 賳蹖讴 賲蹖丿丕賳丿
鈥庂矩ж弛┴з� 鬲氐賵乇 讴乇丿賴 讴賴 鬲賲丕賲蹖賽 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賴賲趩賵賳 禺賵丿卮 亘蹖卮毓賵乇 賵 亘蹖禺乇丿 賴爻鬲賳丿
鈥庁关地� 亘賴 賲爻蹖丨蹖鬲貙 趩卮賲賽 禺乇丿賽 倬丕爻讴丕賱 乇丕 讴賵乇 讴乇丿賴 賵 丕爻鬲毓丿丕丿蹖 乇丕 讴賴 丕賵 丿乇 乇蹖丕囟蹖丕鬲 丿丕卮鬲賴 丕爻鬲 乇丕 賳丕亘賵丿 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲... 亘乇禺蹖 丕夭 丿蹖賳丿丕乇丕賳貙 丕賵 乇丕 亘丕 毓賳賵丕賳賽 賮蹖賱爻賵賮 賲蹖卮賳丕爻賳丿. 丕賲賾丕 丕蹖賳 亘賴 賳賵毓蹖 亘蹖 丕丨鬲乇丕賲蹖 亘賴 賮賱丕爻賮賴贁 丕賳丿蹖卮賲賳丿 賵 禺乇丿诏乇丕貙 丿乇 胤賵賱賽 鬲丕乇蹖禺 賲蹖亘丕卮丿... 倬丕爻讴丕賱 賮賯胤 賵 賮賯胤 賲丿丕賮毓賽 賲爻蹖丨蹖鬲 亘賵丿賴 賵 賴蹖趩 丕乇鬲亘丕胤蹖 賲蹖丕賳賽 賮賱爻賮賴 賵 丕賳丿蹖卮賴 亘丕 賳賵卮鬲賴 賴丕蹖賽 亘蹖禺乇丿丕賳賴贁 丕賵貙 丿蹖丿賴 賳賲蹖卮賵丿
鈥庂矩ж弛┴з� 鬲丕 丌賳 丕賳丿丕夭賴 亘賴 丿蹖賳賽 禺賵丿 賲鬲毓氐亘 亘賵丿 讴賴 賲蹖賳賵蹖爻丿: 亘丿賵賳賽 禺丿丕賵賳丿貙 賲丕 丿賯蹖賯丕賸 賴賲趩賵賳 趩賴丕乇倬丕蹖丕賳賽 亘蹖禺乇丿 賴爻鬲蹖賲... 毓夭蹖夭丕賳賲貙 倬丕爻讴丕賱 賳賲蹖丿丕賳爻鬲賴 讴賴 趩賴丕乇倬丕蹖丕賳 賳蹖夭 卮毓賵乇卮丕賳 賳爻亘鬲 亘賴 丕蹖賳 噩賴丕賳 賵 胤亘蹖毓鬲 賵 賴爻鬲蹖貙 丕夭 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲丕賳蹖 賴賲趩賵賳 倬丕爻讴丕賱 賵 丕賲孬丕賱賽 丕賵 亘蹖卮鬲乇 亘賵丿賴 丕爻鬲
鈥庁й屬� 賲賵噩賵丿 亘蹖禺乇丿 賲蹖賳賵蹖爻丿: 亘丿賵賳賽 禺丿丕貙 賲丕 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賳賴 鬲賳賴丕 卮丕丿 賳蹖爻鬲蹖賲貙 亘賱讴賴 丿乇爻鬲讴丕乇 賵 賳蹖讴賵讴丕乇 賳蹖夭 賳賲蹖亘丕卮蹖賲 賵 鬲丕 丌禺乇賽 毓賲乇 賲丨讴賵賲 亘賴 亘丿讴丕乇蹖 賵 賳丕丿丕賳蹖 賵 爻蹖丕賴 乇賵夭蹖 賲蹖亘丕卮蹖賲
鈥庁堌�.. 丿賵爻鬲丕賳賽 賲賳貙 亘賴 賳馗乇賽 卮賲丕 賲蹖鬲賵丕賳 趩賳蹖賳 賲賵噩賵丿賽 亘蹖禺乇丿蹖 乇丕 賮蹖賱爻賵賮 賵 丕賳丿蹖卮賲賳丿 賳丕賲蹖丿!責責責 亘賴 賲丕 孬丕亘鬲 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丿蹖賳 賵 賲匕賴亘 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 乇丕 睾賲诏蹖賳 賵 賲乇丿賴 倬乇爻鬲 賵 賳丕丕賲蹖丿 爻丕禺鬲賴 丕爻鬲貙 讴噩丕 賵 讴蹖 爻乇丕睾 丿丕乇蹖丿 讴賴 丿蹖賳 卮丕丿賲丕賳蹖 丌賵乇丿賴 亘丕卮丿!責 丕蹖乇丕賳 夭賲蹖賳 讴賴 賮爻鬲蹖賵丕賱賴丕 賵 噩卮賳賴丕蹖卮 亘蹖卮鬲乇 丕夭 爻賵乇丕禺 賴丕蹖 睾乇亘丕賱 亘賵丿貙 丕讴賳賵賳 丕爻賱丕賲 趩賴 亘賴 乇賵夭卮 丌賵乇丿賴 丕爻鬲責 賲乇丿賲蹖 丕賮爻乇丿賴 賵 賯亘乇 倬乇爻鬲 賵 賳丕賱賴 讴賳 賵 亘蹖趩丕乇賴 賵 倬乇禺丕卮噩賵... 丿蹖賳 賵 賲匕賴亘 賯丕賳賵賳 乇丕 丕夭 賲蹖丕賳 賲蹖亘乇丿 賵 賯丕賳賵賳 讴賴 丕夭 賲蹖丕賳 亘乇賵丿 丿蹖诏乇 丕禺賱丕賯賽 賳蹖讴 賵 禺賵亘 賳蹖夭 賲毓賳丕 賳丿丕卮鬲賴 賵 賴賲賴 亘乇丕蹖 賱賴 讴乇丿賳賽 胤乇賮賽 賲賯丕亘賱 丌賲丕丿賴 賴爻鬲賳丿
鈥庁и� 丕賲孬丕賱賽 <賵蹖讴鬲賵乇 賴賵诏賵> 賳亘賵丿賳丿貙 丿乇 丨丕賱 丨丕囟乇 丿乇 賮乇丕賳爻賴貙 丕賮讴丕乇賽 賮丕爻丿 賵 讴乇賲 禺賵乇丿賴贁 賲賵噩賵丿丕鬲蹖 賴賲趩賵賳 倬丕爻讴丕賱貙 乇丕賴 倬蹖卮乇賮鬲賽 賮乇丕賳爻賴 賵 噩賵丕賳丕賳賽 賮乇丕賳爻賵蹖 乇丕 亘爻鬲賴 亘賵丿 賵 賲睾夭 丕蹖賳 噩賵丕賳丕賳賽 亘蹖趩丕乇賴 乇丕 賮丕爻丿 讴乇丿賴 亘賵丿
鈥庂矩ж弛┴з勜� 鬲丕 丌賳噩丕蹖蹖 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲 賵 亘蹖禺乇丿 卮丿賴 亘賵丿 讴賴 丨鬲蹖 丕夭 噩丕賳亘賽 丌賳 禺丿丕蹖賽 賲賵賴賵賲 賵 賳丕賲乇卅蹖 禺賵丿 賳蹖夭 爻禺賳 賲蹖诏賵蹖丿 賵 賲蹖賳賵蹖爻丿: 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賲蹖禺賵丕賴賳丿 禺賵蹖卮 乇丕 丿乇 讴丕賳賵賳賽 鬲賵噩賴 賯乇丕乇 丿賴賳丿 賵 丕夭 賲賳 胤賱亘賽 讴賲讴 賵 蹖丕乇蹖 賳丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮賳丿.. 丌賳賴丕 禺賵丿卮丕賳 乇丕 丕夭 賮乇賲丕賳 乇賵丕蹖蹖賽 賲賳 丿賵乇 讴乇丿賴 賵 卮丕丿讴丕賲蹖 乇丕 丿乇 賲亘丕乇夭賴 亘乇 毓賱蹖賴賽 賲賳 蹖丕賮鬲賴 丕賳丿.. 賲賳 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 乇丕 亘賴 丨丕賱賽 禺賵丿卮丕賳 乇賴丕 賳賲蹖锟斤拷賳賲.. 賲賳 亘蹖賳賽 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 丿卮賲賳蹖 丕賳丿丕禺鬲賴 丕賲 賵 丌賳賴丕 賲丿丕賲 亘丕 蹖讴丿蹖诏乇 丿乇 噩賳诏 賴爻鬲賳丿 賵 丕胤乇丕賮卮丕賳 乇丕 丕夭 丨蹖賵丕賳丕鬲賽 丿蹖诏乇 禺丕賱蹖 讴乇丿賴 丕賲... 亘丿賵賳賽 賲賳貙 丕賲乇賵夭賴 夭賳丿诏蹖賽 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賴賲趩賵賳 夭賳丿诏蹖賽 丨蹖賵丕賳丕鬲賽 賵丨卮蹖 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲
鈥庁关槽屫藏з� 賵 丿賵爻鬲丕賳賽 亘丕卮毓賵乇貙 亘亘蹖賳蹖丿 丿蹖賳 賵 賲匕賴亘 亘丕 賲睾夭賽 丕賳爻丕賳 趩賴 賲蹖讴賳丿! 丕蹖賳 賲鬲賵賴賲丕賳賽 亘蹖賲丕乇 賵 禺胤乇賳丕讴貙 丕夭 噩丕賳亘賽 禺丿丕蹖卮丕賳 爻禺賳 賲蹖诏賵蹖賳丿 賵 賳鬲蹖噩賴贁 丌賳 賲蹖卮賵丿 鬲乇賵乇蹖爻鬲賴丕蹖賽 丨乇丕賲 夭丕丿賴 丕蹖 賴賲趩賵賳 丿丕毓卮 賵 丨夭亘 丕賱賱賴 賵 丕禺賵丕賳 丕賱賲爻賱賲蹖賳 賵 丿蹖诏乇 诏乇賵賴 賴丕蹖賽 讴孬蹖賮賽 囟丿賽 丕賳爻丕賳蹖 .. 亘毓丿 賳丕賲賽 丕蹖賳 乇賵丕賳蹖 賴丕蹖 賲鬲賵賴賲 乇丕 賮蹖賱爻賵賮 賲蹖诏匕丕乇賳丿!!! 倬丕爻讴丕賱 蹖丕丿卮 乇賮鬲賴 讴賴 亘丕 賳丕賲賽 賲爻蹖丨貙 讴賱蹖爻丕 趩賴 亘乇 爻乇賽 丿丕賳卮賲賳丿丕賳 賵 賮賱丕爻賮賴 丌賵乇丿.. 賲丕 賳禺賵丕賴蹖賲 禺丿丕蹖賽 卮賲丕 乇丕 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮蹖賲貙 亘丕蹖丿 亘賴 讴噩丕 賮乇丕乇 讴賳蹖賲!!.. 賲丕 賳禺賵丕賴蹖賲 讴賴 卮賲丕 丿蹖賳丿丕乇丕賳 禺賵丿 乇丕 賵丕乇丿 賲爻蹖乇賽 丿丕賳卮 乇賵夭賽 亘卮乇蹖 讴賳蹖丿貙 亘丕蹖丿 趩賴 讴爻蹖 乇丕 亘亘蹖賳蹖賲責責 賲丕 亘賴卮鬲賽 卮賲丕 賲鬲賵賴賲丕賳賽 亘蹖賲丕乇 乇丕 賳禺賵丕賴蹖賲貙 亘丕蹖丿 亘賴 趩賴 讴爻蹖 賮乇蹖丕丿 亘夭賳蹖賲責責
鈥庁堌池з嗁� 亘夭乇诏賵丕乇貙 倬丕爻讴丕賱貙 禺夭毓亘賱丕鬲卮 乇丕 亘賴 乇蹖丕囟蹖丕鬲 賵 丕丨鬲賲丕賱丕鬲 賳蹖夭 讴卮丕賳丿賴 丕爻鬲 賵 亘丿賵賳 丕賳丿讴蹖 賮賴賲 賵 丿乇讴貙 賲蹖賳賵蹖爻丿: 賲丕 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 亘賴 讴丿丕賲 爻賵 诏乇丕蹖卮 丿丕乇蹖賲責 禺乇丿 丿乇 賲賵乇丿賽 賵噩賵丿賽 禺丿丕 賵 丿乇 丕蹖賳 賲蹖丕賳 賳賲蹖鬲賵丕賳丿 賴蹖趩 丕賳鬲禺丕亘蹖 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿.. 丌卮賮鬲诏蹖 賲丕 乇丕 丕夭 蹖讴丿蹖诏乇 噩丿丕 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲... 丿乇 丌賳 爻賵蹖賽 丕蹖賳 賮丕氐賱賴贁 亘蹖讴乇丕賳貙 蹖讴 亘丕夭蹖 賵 賯賲丕乇 亘乇 倬丕 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲 賵 爻讴賴 丕蹖 亘賴 賲賳馗賵乇賽 卮蹖乇 蹖丕 禺胤 丌賵乇丿賳貙 亘賴 倬丕蹖蹖賳 倬乇鬲丕亘 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲.. 趩賴 賲賯丿丕乇 亘乇 乇賵蹖賽 丌賳 卮乇胤 賲蹖亘賳丿蹖丿責責 禺乇丿 賳賲蹖鬲賵丕賳丿 卮賲丕 乇丕 賵丕丿丕乇 亘賴 亘乇诏夭蹖丿賳賽 卮蹖乇 蹖丕 禺胤貙 賳賲丕蹖丿... 禺乇丿 賳賲蹖鬲賵丕賳丿 卮賲丕 乇丕 賵丕丿丕乇 亘賴 倬卮鬲蹖亘丕賳蹖 丕夭 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 丕蹖賳 丿賵 丨丕賱鬲賽 賲賲讴賳 讴賳丿.. 賵賱蹖 丕诏乇 卮賲丕 亘賴 乇賵蹖賽 亘賵丿賳賽 禺丿丕賵賳丿貙 卮乇胤 亘亘賳丿蹖丿貙 丕蹖賳 鬲賳賴丕 卮乇胤 亘爻鬲賳賽 禺乇丿賲賳丿丕賳賴 賲蹖亘丕卮丿... 丕诏乇 賯蹖丕賲鬲 賵噩賵丿 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿貙 丌賳讴爻蹖 亘乇丿 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲 讴賴 卮乇胤卮 乇丕 亘乇 乇賵蹖賽 賵噩賵丿 禺丿丕 亘爻鬲賴 丕爻鬲
鈥庁关槽屫藏з嗁呚� 卮賲丕 賲鬲賵噩賴 卮丿蹖丿 讴賴 丕蹖賳 亘蹖禺乇丿 趩賴 诏賮鬲 賵 趩诏賵賳賴 亘丕 賳丕賲 亘乇丿賳 丕夭 丕丨鬲賲丕賱丕鬲 賲睾賱胤賴 讴乇丿!! 卮乇胤 亘爻鬲賳 亘賴 乇賵蹖賽 丕丨鬲賲丕賱賽 卮蹖乇 蹖丕 禺胤 亘賵丿賳貙 趩賴 丕乇鬲亘丕胤蹖 亘丕 禺乇丿 丿丕乇丿責責 爻讴賴 讴賴 蹖讴 噩爻賲 丕爻鬲貙 趩賴 丕乇鬲亘丕胤蹖 亘賴 賲賵噩賵丿蹖 賳丕賲乇卅蹖 亘賴 賳丕賲賽 禺丿丕 丿丕乇丿 讴賴 鬲丕 讴賳賵賳 亘賴 讴賲讴賽 賴蹖趩 乇賵卮 毓賱賲蹖 賵 禺乇丿賲賳丿丕賳賴貙 賵噩賵丿卮 孬丕亘鬲 賳卮丿賴 丕爻鬲!! 丕鬲賮丕賯丕賸 賴乇趩賴 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 禺乇丿賲賳丿鬲乇 賲蹖卮賵賳丿 賵 丕夭 賲賵賴賵賲丕鬲 賮丕氐賱賴 賲蹖诏蹖乇賳丿貙 丿乇 賲蹖丕亘賳丿 讴賴 賯賵丕賳蹖賳賽 胤亘蹖毓鬲 賴蹖趩 丕乇鬲亘丕胤蹖 亘賴 禺丿丕 賵 蹖丕 賴乇 賲賵噩賵丿賽 賳丕賲乇卅蹖 丿蹖诏乇 賳丿丕乇丿... 噩丕賱亘 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丿乇 胤賵賱賽 鬲丕乇蹖禺 丕蹖賳 亘蹖卮毓賵乇賴丕蹖賽 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲貙 禺賵丿 乇丕 禺乇丿賲賳丿 丿丕賳爻鬲賴 賵 賴乇讴賴 乇丕 讴賴 亘賴 丌賳賴丕 賵 丿蹖賳 賵 禺丿丕蹖卮丕賳 亘丕賵乇 賳丿丕乇丿貙 亘蹖禺乇丿 賵 賳丕丿丕賳 賵 讴丕賮乇 賯賱賲丿丕丿 讴乇丿賴 丕賳丿 賵 賲丕賳毓賽 倬蹖卮乇賮鬲賽 丿丕賳卮 卮丿賴 丕賳丿 賵 丿丕賳卮賲賳丿丕賳 乇丕 亘賴 賳丕賲賽 讴丕賮乇 賵 賲賱丨丿貙 丕毓丿丕賲 讴乇丿賴 賵 丌鬲卮 夭丿賴 丕賳丿.. 亘毓丿 丕蹖賳 丨蹖賵丕賳 氐賮鬲 賴丕蹖賽 賵丨卮蹖 丕夭 卮丕丿賲丕賳蹖 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賵 趩賴丕乇倬丕 亘賵丿賳 賵 賵丨卮蹖 诏乇蹖 賵 乇賮鬲丕乇 丕賳爻丕賳蹖 爻禺賳 賲蹖诏賵蹖賳丿.. 丨乇丕賲蹖 賴丕貙 卮賲丕 丿爻鬲鬲丕賳 丿乇 鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘乇丕蹖賽 賴乇 丕賳爻丕賳賽 亘丕卮毓賵乇 賵 禺乇丿蹖 乇賵 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲 賵 賳蹖丕夭 亘賴 賴蹖趩 丕丨鬲賲丕賱 賵 卮蹖乇 蹖丕 禺胤 丌賵乇丿賳 賳蹖爻鬲... 賵丕賯毓蹖鬲 賵 丨賯蹖賯鬲 賳蹖丕夭 亘賴 丕丨鬲賲丕賱 賵 卮乇胤 亘賳丿蹖 賳丿丕乇丿... 鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳卮丕賳 丿丕丿賴 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丿蹖賳 賵 賲匕賴亘 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 乇丕 賵丨卮蹖 賵 丿乇賳丿賴 禺賵 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲
鈥庂矩ж弛┴з� 賲蹖诏賵蹖丿: 丕诏乇 丌禺乇鬲蹖 賵噩賵丿 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿貙 賲丕 丿蹖賳丿丕乇丕賳 爻賵丿 讴乇丿賴 丕蹖賲 賵 卮賲丕 賳丕亘丕賵乇丕賳 夭蹖丕賳 亘乇丿賴 丕蹖丿
鈥庁关槽屫藏з嗁呚� 亘诏匕丕乇蹖丿 鬲丕 丕蹖賳 卮丕丿賲丕賳蹖 噩丕賵丿丕賳賴 丿乇 丌賳 噩賴丕賳賽 賲賵賴賵賲 賵 亘賴卮鬲賽 禺蹖丕賱蹖 賵 睾蹖乇 賵丕賯毓蹖貙 亘乇丕蹖賽 丕蹖賳 亘蹖禺乇丿賴丕蹖賽 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲 亘丕卮丿.. 賲丕 夭賳丿诏蹖 禺賵丿賲丕賳 乇丕 丿乇 丕蹖賳 噩賴丕賳 賵 胤亘蹖毓鬲 夭蹖亘丕 亘丕 鬲賲丕賲賽 爻禺鬲蹖 賴丕蹖卮 丕賳噩丕賲 賲蹖丿賴蹖賲.. 亘賴卮鬲 丿乇 噩丕蹖 噩丕蹖賽 丕蹖賳 讴乇賴贁 禺丕讴蹖 丿蹖丿賴 賲蹖卮賵丿... 賲丕 亘丕 讴賲讴 亘賴 丿丕賳卮貙 乇賵夭 亘賴 乇賵夭 亘賴 卮賳丕禺鬲賽 亘蹖卮鬲乇賽 丕蹖賳 噩賴丕賳 丿爻鬲 賲蹖丕亘蹖賲 賵 賳蹖丕夭蹖 亘賴 賴蹖趩 賲賵賴賵賲丕鬲 賵 禺夭毓亘賱丕鬲 睾蹖乇 毓賯賱丕賳蹖 賳丿丕卮鬲賴 賵 賳丿丕乇蹖賲... 賴蹖趩 丕賳爻丕賳賽 禺乇丿賲賳丿 賵 亘丕 卮乇賮蹖貙 丨丕囟乇 賳蹖爻鬲 丿乇 亘賴卮鬲賽 賲賵賴賵賲 賵 丌賳 賮丕丨卮賴 禺丕賳賴 丿乇 讴賳丕乇 鬲丕夭蹖丕賳賽 賵丨卮蹖 賵 賯丕鬲賱 賵 夭賳亘丕乇賴 賵 讴卮蹖卮丕賳賽 亘趩賴 亘丕夭 賵 睾丕乇鬲诏乇丕賳 賵 丿乇賵睾诏賵蹖丕賳賽 倬爻鬲 亘丕卮丿.. 賲丕 亘賴卮鬲賲丕賳 乇丕 丿乇 賴賲蹖賳 丿賳蹖丕蹖賽 賵丕賯毓蹖 賲蹖爻丕夭蹖賲 鬲丕 丌蹖賳丿诏丕賳賲丕賳 丕夭 丌賳 亘賴乇賴 賲賳丿 卮賵賳丿... 丕丨鬲賲丕賱丕鬲賽 倬賵趩 賵 亘蹖 丕爻丕爻賽 賯賲丕乇亘丕夭 賵 丿丕卅賲 丕賱禺賲乇蹖 賴賲趩賵賳 倬丕爻讴丕賱 賴賲 亘賲丕賳丿 亘乇丕蹖 倬蹖乇賵丕賳卮 賵 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲丕賳賽 亘蹖禺乇丿
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鈥庁з呟屫堌ж辟� 丕蹖賳 乇蹖賵蹖賵 亘乇丕蹖賽 賮乇夭賳丿丕賳賽 禺乇丿诏乇丕蹖賽 爻乇夭賲蹖賳賲貙 賲賮蹖丿 亘賵丿賴 亘丕卮賴
鈥�<倬蹖乇賵夭 亘丕卮蹖丿 賵 丕蹖乇丕賳蹖>
鈥庂矩ж弛┴з� 鬲氐賵乇 讴乇丿賴 讴賴 鬲賲丕賲蹖賽 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賴賲趩賵賳 禺賵丿卮 亘蹖卮毓賵乇 賵 亘蹖禺乇丿 賴爻鬲賳丿
鈥庁关地� 亘賴 賲爻蹖丨蹖鬲貙 趩卮賲賽 禺乇丿賽 倬丕爻讴丕賱 乇丕 讴賵乇 讴乇丿賴 賵 丕爻鬲毓丿丕丿蹖 乇丕 讴賴 丕賵 丿乇 乇蹖丕囟蹖丕鬲 丿丕卮鬲賴 丕爻鬲 乇丕 賳丕亘賵丿 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲... 亘乇禺蹖 丕夭 丿蹖賳丿丕乇丕賳貙 丕賵 乇丕 亘丕 毓賳賵丕賳賽 賮蹖賱爻賵賮 賲蹖卮賳丕爻賳丿. 丕賲賾丕 丕蹖賳 亘賴 賳賵毓蹖 亘蹖 丕丨鬲乇丕賲蹖 亘賴 賮賱丕爻賮賴贁 丕賳丿蹖卮賲賳丿 賵 禺乇丿诏乇丕貙 丿乇 胤賵賱賽 鬲丕乇蹖禺 賲蹖亘丕卮丿... 倬丕爻讴丕賱 賮賯胤 賵 賮賯胤 賲丿丕賮毓賽 賲爻蹖丨蹖鬲 亘賵丿賴 賵 賴蹖趩 丕乇鬲亘丕胤蹖 賲蹖丕賳賽 賮賱爻賮賴 賵 丕賳丿蹖卮賴 亘丕 賳賵卮鬲賴 賴丕蹖賽 亘蹖禺乇丿丕賳賴贁 丕賵貙 丿蹖丿賴 賳賲蹖卮賵丿
鈥庂矩ж弛┴з� 鬲丕 丌賳 丕賳丿丕夭賴 亘賴 丿蹖賳賽 禺賵丿 賲鬲毓氐亘 亘賵丿 讴賴 賲蹖賳賵蹖爻丿: 亘丿賵賳賽 禺丿丕賵賳丿貙 賲丕 丿賯蹖賯丕賸 賴賲趩賵賳 趩賴丕乇倬丕蹖丕賳賽 亘蹖禺乇丿 賴爻鬲蹖賲... 毓夭蹖夭丕賳賲貙 倬丕爻讴丕賱 賳賲蹖丿丕賳爻鬲賴 讴賴 趩賴丕乇倬丕蹖丕賳 賳蹖夭 卮毓賵乇卮丕賳 賳爻亘鬲 亘賴 丕蹖賳 噩賴丕賳 賵 胤亘蹖毓鬲 賵 賴爻鬲蹖貙 丕夭 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲丕賳蹖 賴賲趩賵賳 倬丕爻讴丕賱 賵 丕賲孬丕賱賽 丕賵 亘蹖卮鬲乇 亘賵丿賴 丕爻鬲
鈥庁й屬� 賲賵噩賵丿 亘蹖禺乇丿 賲蹖賳賵蹖爻丿: 亘丿賵賳賽 禺丿丕貙 賲丕 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賳賴 鬲賳賴丕 卮丕丿 賳蹖爻鬲蹖賲貙 亘賱讴賴 丿乇爻鬲讴丕乇 賵 賳蹖讴賵讴丕乇 賳蹖夭 賳賲蹖亘丕卮蹖賲 賵 鬲丕 丌禺乇賽 毓賲乇 賲丨讴賵賲 亘賴 亘丿讴丕乇蹖 賵 賳丕丿丕賳蹖 賵 爻蹖丕賴 乇賵夭蹖 賲蹖亘丕卮蹖賲
鈥庁堌�.. 丿賵爻鬲丕賳賽 賲賳貙 亘賴 賳馗乇賽 卮賲丕 賲蹖鬲賵丕賳 趩賳蹖賳 賲賵噩賵丿賽 亘蹖禺乇丿蹖 乇丕 賮蹖賱爻賵賮 賵 丕賳丿蹖卮賲賳丿 賳丕賲蹖丿!責責責 亘賴 賲丕 孬丕亘鬲 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丿蹖賳 賵 賲匕賴亘 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 乇丕 睾賲诏蹖賳 賵 賲乇丿賴 倬乇爻鬲 賵 賳丕丕賲蹖丿 爻丕禺鬲賴 丕爻鬲貙 讴噩丕 賵 讴蹖 爻乇丕睾 丿丕乇蹖丿 讴賴 丿蹖賳 卮丕丿賲丕賳蹖 丌賵乇丿賴 亘丕卮丿!責 丕蹖乇丕賳 夭賲蹖賳 讴賴 賮爻鬲蹖賵丕賱賴丕 賵 噩卮賳賴丕蹖卮 亘蹖卮鬲乇 丕夭 爻賵乇丕禺 賴丕蹖 睾乇亘丕賱 亘賵丿貙 丕讴賳賵賳 丕爻賱丕賲 趩賴 亘賴 乇賵夭卮 丌賵乇丿賴 丕爻鬲責 賲乇丿賲蹖 丕賮爻乇丿賴 賵 賯亘乇 倬乇爻鬲 賵 賳丕賱賴 讴賳 賵 亘蹖趩丕乇賴 賵 倬乇禺丕卮噩賵... 丿蹖賳 賵 賲匕賴亘 賯丕賳賵賳 乇丕 丕夭 賲蹖丕賳 賲蹖亘乇丿 賵 賯丕賳賵賳 讴賴 丕夭 賲蹖丕賳 亘乇賵丿 丿蹖诏乇 丕禺賱丕賯賽 賳蹖讴 賵 禺賵亘 賳蹖夭 賲毓賳丕 賳丿丕卮鬲賴 賵 賴賲賴 亘乇丕蹖 賱賴 讴乇丿賳賽 胤乇賮賽 賲賯丕亘賱 丌賲丕丿賴 賴爻鬲賳丿
鈥庁и� 丕賲孬丕賱賽 <賵蹖讴鬲賵乇 賴賵诏賵> 賳亘賵丿賳丿貙 丿乇 丨丕賱 丨丕囟乇 丿乇 賮乇丕賳爻賴貙 丕賮讴丕乇賽 賮丕爻丿 賵 讴乇賲 禺賵乇丿賴贁 賲賵噩賵丿丕鬲蹖 賴賲趩賵賳 倬丕爻讴丕賱貙 乇丕賴 倬蹖卮乇賮鬲賽 賮乇丕賳爻賴 賵 噩賵丕賳丕賳賽 賮乇丕賳爻賵蹖 乇丕 亘爻鬲賴 亘賵丿 賵 賲睾夭 丕蹖賳 噩賵丕賳丕賳賽 亘蹖趩丕乇賴 乇丕 賮丕爻丿 讴乇丿賴 亘賵丿
鈥庂矩ж弛┴з勜� 鬲丕 丌賳噩丕蹖蹖 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲 賵 亘蹖禺乇丿 卮丿賴 亘賵丿 讴賴 丨鬲蹖 丕夭 噩丕賳亘賽 丌賳 禺丿丕蹖賽 賲賵賴賵賲 賵 賳丕賲乇卅蹖 禺賵丿 賳蹖夭 爻禺賳 賲蹖诏賵蹖丿 賵 賲蹖賳賵蹖爻丿: 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賲蹖禺賵丕賴賳丿 禺賵蹖卮 乇丕 丿乇 讴丕賳賵賳賽 鬲賵噩賴 賯乇丕乇 丿賴賳丿 賵 丕夭 賲賳 胤賱亘賽 讴賲讴 賵 蹖丕乇蹖 賳丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮賳丿.. 丌賳賴丕 禺賵丿卮丕賳 乇丕 丕夭 賮乇賲丕賳 乇賵丕蹖蹖賽 賲賳 丿賵乇 讴乇丿賴 賵 卮丕丿讴丕賲蹖 乇丕 丿乇 賲亘丕乇夭賴 亘乇 毓賱蹖賴賽 賲賳 蹖丕賮鬲賴 丕賳丿.. 賲賳 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 乇丕 亘賴 丨丕賱賽 禺賵丿卮丕賳 乇賴丕 賳賲蹖锟斤拷賳賲.. 賲賳 亘蹖賳賽 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 丿卮賲賳蹖 丕賳丿丕禺鬲賴 丕賲 賵 丌賳賴丕 賲丿丕賲 亘丕 蹖讴丿蹖诏乇 丿乇 噩賳诏 賴爻鬲賳丿 賵 丕胤乇丕賮卮丕賳 乇丕 丕夭 丨蹖賵丕賳丕鬲賽 丿蹖诏乇 禺丕賱蹖 讴乇丿賴 丕賲... 亘丿賵賳賽 賲賳貙 丕賲乇賵夭賴 夭賳丿诏蹖賽 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賴賲趩賵賳 夭賳丿诏蹖賽 丨蹖賵丕賳丕鬲賽 賵丨卮蹖 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲
鈥庁关槽屫藏з� 賵 丿賵爻鬲丕賳賽 亘丕卮毓賵乇貙 亘亘蹖賳蹖丿 丿蹖賳 賵 賲匕賴亘 亘丕 賲睾夭賽 丕賳爻丕賳 趩賴 賲蹖讴賳丿! 丕蹖賳 賲鬲賵賴賲丕賳賽 亘蹖賲丕乇 賵 禺胤乇賳丕讴貙 丕夭 噩丕賳亘賽 禺丿丕蹖卮丕賳 爻禺賳 賲蹖诏賵蹖賳丿 賵 賳鬲蹖噩賴贁 丌賳 賲蹖卮賵丿 鬲乇賵乇蹖爻鬲賴丕蹖賽 丨乇丕賲 夭丕丿賴 丕蹖 賴賲趩賵賳 丿丕毓卮 賵 丨夭亘 丕賱賱賴 賵 丕禺賵丕賳 丕賱賲爻賱賲蹖賳 賵 丿蹖诏乇 诏乇賵賴 賴丕蹖賽 讴孬蹖賮賽 囟丿賽 丕賳爻丕賳蹖 .. 亘毓丿 賳丕賲賽 丕蹖賳 乇賵丕賳蹖 賴丕蹖 賲鬲賵賴賲 乇丕 賮蹖賱爻賵賮 賲蹖诏匕丕乇賳丿!!! 倬丕爻讴丕賱 蹖丕丿卮 乇賮鬲賴 讴賴 亘丕 賳丕賲賽 賲爻蹖丨貙 讴賱蹖爻丕 趩賴 亘乇 爻乇賽 丿丕賳卮賲賳丿丕賳 賵 賮賱丕爻賮賴 丌賵乇丿.. 賲丕 賳禺賵丕賴蹖賲 禺丿丕蹖賽 卮賲丕 乇丕 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮蹖賲貙 亘丕蹖丿 亘賴 讴噩丕 賮乇丕乇 讴賳蹖賲!!.. 賲丕 賳禺賵丕賴蹖賲 讴賴 卮賲丕 丿蹖賳丿丕乇丕賳 禺賵丿 乇丕 賵丕乇丿 賲爻蹖乇賽 丿丕賳卮 乇賵夭賽 亘卮乇蹖 讴賳蹖丿貙 亘丕蹖丿 趩賴 讴爻蹖 乇丕 亘亘蹖賳蹖賲責責 賲丕 亘賴卮鬲賽 卮賲丕 賲鬲賵賴賲丕賳賽 亘蹖賲丕乇 乇丕 賳禺賵丕賴蹖賲貙 亘丕蹖丿 亘賴 趩賴 讴爻蹖 賮乇蹖丕丿 亘夭賳蹖賲責責
鈥庁堌池з嗁� 亘夭乇诏賵丕乇貙 倬丕爻讴丕賱貙 禺夭毓亘賱丕鬲卮 乇丕 亘賴 乇蹖丕囟蹖丕鬲 賵 丕丨鬲賲丕賱丕鬲 賳蹖夭 讴卮丕賳丿賴 丕爻鬲 賵 亘丿賵賳 丕賳丿讴蹖 賮賴賲 賵 丿乇讴貙 賲蹖賳賵蹖爻丿: 賲丕 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 亘賴 讴丿丕賲 爻賵 诏乇丕蹖卮 丿丕乇蹖賲責 禺乇丿 丿乇 賲賵乇丿賽 賵噩賵丿賽 禺丿丕 賵 丿乇 丕蹖賳 賲蹖丕賳 賳賲蹖鬲賵丕賳丿 賴蹖趩 丕賳鬲禺丕亘蹖 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿.. 丌卮賮鬲诏蹖 賲丕 乇丕 丕夭 蹖讴丿蹖诏乇 噩丿丕 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲... 丿乇 丌賳 爻賵蹖賽 丕蹖賳 賮丕氐賱賴贁 亘蹖讴乇丕賳貙 蹖讴 亘丕夭蹖 賵 賯賲丕乇 亘乇 倬丕 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲 賵 爻讴賴 丕蹖 亘賴 賲賳馗賵乇賽 卮蹖乇 蹖丕 禺胤 丌賵乇丿賳貙 亘賴 倬丕蹖蹖賳 倬乇鬲丕亘 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲.. 趩賴 賲賯丿丕乇 亘乇 乇賵蹖賽 丌賳 卮乇胤 賲蹖亘賳丿蹖丿責責 禺乇丿 賳賲蹖鬲賵丕賳丿 卮賲丕 乇丕 賵丕丿丕乇 亘賴 亘乇诏夭蹖丿賳賽 卮蹖乇 蹖丕 禺胤貙 賳賲丕蹖丿... 禺乇丿 賳賲蹖鬲賵丕賳丿 卮賲丕 乇丕 賵丕丿丕乇 亘賴 倬卮鬲蹖亘丕賳蹖 丕夭 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 丕蹖賳 丿賵 丨丕賱鬲賽 賲賲讴賳 讴賳丿.. 賵賱蹖 丕诏乇 卮賲丕 亘賴 乇賵蹖賽 亘賵丿賳賽 禺丿丕賵賳丿貙 卮乇胤 亘亘賳丿蹖丿貙 丕蹖賳 鬲賳賴丕 卮乇胤 亘爻鬲賳賽 禺乇丿賲賳丿丕賳賴 賲蹖亘丕卮丿... 丕诏乇 賯蹖丕賲鬲 賵噩賵丿 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿貙 丌賳讴爻蹖 亘乇丿 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲 讴賴 卮乇胤卮 乇丕 亘乇 乇賵蹖賽 賵噩賵丿 禺丿丕 亘爻鬲賴 丕爻鬲
鈥庁关槽屫藏з嗁呚� 卮賲丕 賲鬲賵噩賴 卮丿蹖丿 讴賴 丕蹖賳 亘蹖禺乇丿 趩賴 诏賮鬲 賵 趩诏賵賳賴 亘丕 賳丕賲 亘乇丿賳 丕夭 丕丨鬲賲丕賱丕鬲 賲睾賱胤賴 讴乇丿!! 卮乇胤 亘爻鬲賳 亘賴 乇賵蹖賽 丕丨鬲賲丕賱賽 卮蹖乇 蹖丕 禺胤 亘賵丿賳貙 趩賴 丕乇鬲亘丕胤蹖 亘丕 禺乇丿 丿丕乇丿責責 爻讴賴 讴賴 蹖讴 噩爻賲 丕爻鬲貙 趩賴 丕乇鬲亘丕胤蹖 亘賴 賲賵噩賵丿蹖 賳丕賲乇卅蹖 亘賴 賳丕賲賽 禺丿丕 丿丕乇丿 讴賴 鬲丕 讴賳賵賳 亘賴 讴賲讴賽 賴蹖趩 乇賵卮 毓賱賲蹖 賵 禺乇丿賲賳丿丕賳賴貙 賵噩賵丿卮 孬丕亘鬲 賳卮丿賴 丕爻鬲!! 丕鬲賮丕賯丕賸 賴乇趩賴 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 禺乇丿賲賳丿鬲乇 賲蹖卮賵賳丿 賵 丕夭 賲賵賴賵賲丕鬲 賮丕氐賱賴 賲蹖诏蹖乇賳丿貙 丿乇 賲蹖丕亘賳丿 讴賴 賯賵丕賳蹖賳賽 胤亘蹖毓鬲 賴蹖趩 丕乇鬲亘丕胤蹖 亘賴 禺丿丕 賵 蹖丕 賴乇 賲賵噩賵丿賽 賳丕賲乇卅蹖 丿蹖诏乇 賳丿丕乇丿... 噩丕賱亘 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丿乇 胤賵賱賽 鬲丕乇蹖禺 丕蹖賳 亘蹖卮毓賵乇賴丕蹖賽 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲貙 禺賵丿 乇丕 禺乇丿賲賳丿 丿丕賳爻鬲賴 賵 賴乇讴賴 乇丕 讴賴 亘賴 丌賳賴丕 賵 丿蹖賳 賵 禺丿丕蹖卮丕賳 亘丕賵乇 賳丿丕乇丿貙 亘蹖禺乇丿 賵 賳丕丿丕賳 賵 讴丕賮乇 賯賱賲丿丕丿 讴乇丿賴 丕賳丿 賵 賲丕賳毓賽 倬蹖卮乇賮鬲賽 丿丕賳卮 卮丿賴 丕賳丿 賵 丿丕賳卮賲賳丿丕賳 乇丕 亘賴 賳丕賲賽 讴丕賮乇 賵 賲賱丨丿貙 丕毓丿丕賲 讴乇丿賴 賵 丌鬲卮 夭丿賴 丕賳丿.. 亘毓丿 丕蹖賳 丨蹖賵丕賳 氐賮鬲 賴丕蹖賽 賵丨卮蹖 丕夭 卮丕丿賲丕賳蹖 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 賵 趩賴丕乇倬丕 亘賵丿賳 賵 賵丨卮蹖 诏乇蹖 賵 乇賮鬲丕乇 丕賳爻丕賳蹖 爻禺賳 賲蹖诏賵蹖賳丿.. 丨乇丕賲蹖 賴丕貙 卮賲丕 丿爻鬲鬲丕賳 丿乇 鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘乇丕蹖賽 賴乇 丕賳爻丕賳賽 亘丕卮毓賵乇 賵 禺乇丿蹖 乇賵 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲 賵 賳蹖丕夭 亘賴 賴蹖趩 丕丨鬲賲丕賱 賵 卮蹖乇 蹖丕 禺胤 丌賵乇丿賳 賳蹖爻鬲... 賵丕賯毓蹖鬲 賵 丨賯蹖賯鬲 賳蹖丕夭 亘賴 丕丨鬲賲丕賱 賵 卮乇胤 亘賳丿蹖 賳丿丕乇丿... 鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳卮丕賳 丿丕丿賴 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丿蹖賳 賵 賲匕賴亘 丕賳爻丕賳賴丕 乇丕 賵丨卮蹖 賵 丿乇賳丿賴 禺賵 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲
鈥庂矩ж弛┴з� 賲蹖诏賵蹖丿: 丕诏乇 丌禺乇鬲蹖 賵噩賵丿 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿貙 賲丕 丿蹖賳丿丕乇丕賳 爻賵丿 讴乇丿賴 丕蹖賲 賵 卮賲丕 賳丕亘丕賵乇丕賳 夭蹖丕賳 亘乇丿賴 丕蹖丿
鈥庁关槽屫藏з嗁呚� 亘诏匕丕乇蹖丿 鬲丕 丕蹖賳 卮丕丿賲丕賳蹖 噩丕賵丿丕賳賴 丿乇 丌賳 噩賴丕賳賽 賲賵賴賵賲 賵 亘賴卮鬲賽 禺蹖丕賱蹖 賵 睾蹖乇 賵丕賯毓蹖貙 亘乇丕蹖賽 丕蹖賳 亘蹖禺乇丿賴丕蹖賽 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲 亘丕卮丿.. 賲丕 夭賳丿诏蹖 禺賵丿賲丕賳 乇丕 丿乇 丕蹖賳 噩賴丕賳 賵 胤亘蹖毓鬲 夭蹖亘丕 亘丕 鬲賲丕賲賽 爻禺鬲蹖 賴丕蹖卮 丕賳噩丕賲 賲蹖丿賴蹖賲.. 亘賴卮鬲 丿乇 噩丕蹖 噩丕蹖賽 丕蹖賳 讴乇賴贁 禺丕讴蹖 丿蹖丿賴 賲蹖卮賵丿... 賲丕 亘丕 讴賲讴 亘賴 丿丕賳卮貙 乇賵夭 亘賴 乇賵夭 亘賴 卮賳丕禺鬲賽 亘蹖卮鬲乇賽 丕蹖賳 噩賴丕賳 丿爻鬲 賲蹖丕亘蹖賲 賵 賳蹖丕夭蹖 亘賴 賴蹖趩 賲賵賴賵賲丕鬲 賵 禺夭毓亘賱丕鬲 睾蹖乇 毓賯賱丕賳蹖 賳丿丕卮鬲賴 賵 賳丿丕乇蹖賲... 賴蹖趩 丕賳爻丕賳賽 禺乇丿賲賳丿 賵 亘丕 卮乇賮蹖貙 丨丕囟乇 賳蹖爻鬲 丿乇 亘賴卮鬲賽 賲賵賴賵賲 賵 丌賳 賮丕丨卮賴 禺丕賳賴 丿乇 讴賳丕乇 鬲丕夭蹖丕賳賽 賵丨卮蹖 賵 賯丕鬲賱 賵 夭賳亘丕乇賴 賵 讴卮蹖卮丕賳賽 亘趩賴 亘丕夭 賵 睾丕乇鬲诏乇丕賳 賵 丿乇賵睾诏賵蹖丕賳賽 倬爻鬲 亘丕卮丿.. 賲丕 亘賴卮鬲賲丕賳 乇丕 丿乇 賴賲蹖賳 丿賳蹖丕蹖賽 賵丕賯毓蹖 賲蹖爻丕夭蹖賲 鬲丕 丌蹖賳丿诏丕賳賲丕賳 丕夭 丌賳 亘賴乇賴 賲賳丿 卮賵賳丿... 丕丨鬲賲丕賱丕鬲賽 倬賵趩 賵 亘蹖 丕爻丕爻賽 賯賲丕乇亘丕夭 賵 丿丕卅賲 丕賱禺賲乇蹖 賴賲趩賵賳 倬丕爻讴丕賱 賴賲 亘賲丕賳丿 亘乇丕蹖 倬蹖乇賵丕賳卮 賵 賲賵賴賵賲 倬乇爻鬲丕賳賽 亘蹖禺乇丿
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鈥庁з呟屫堌ж辟� 丕蹖賳 乇蹖賵蹖賵 亘乇丕蹖賽 賮乇夭賳丿丕賳賽 禺乇丿诏乇丕蹖賽 爻乇夭賲蹖賳賲貙 賲賮蹖丿 亘賵丿賴 亘丕卮賴
鈥�<倬蹖乇賵夭 亘丕卮蹖丿 賵 丕蹖乇丕賳蹖>
June 8, 2021
鈥淢an is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.鈥�
Originally intended to be an Apology for Christianism, this book comes out as a unique mashup of casual notes, musings, ethical, logical and metaphysical observations put together by Pascal's family.
As it is, it is mainly about two unsplittable halves : the vanity of Man, the greatness of Man.
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鈥淟鈥檋omme n鈥檈st qu鈥檜n roseau, le plus faible de la nature; mais c鈥檈st un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l鈥檜nivers entier s鈥檃rme pour l鈥櫭ヽraser : une vapeur, une goutte d鈥檈au suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l鈥檜nivers l鈥櫭ヽraserait, l鈥檋omme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu鈥檌l sait qu鈥檌l meurt, et l鈥檃vantage que l鈥檜nivers a sur lui, l鈥檜nivers n鈥檈n sait rien鈥�
Comme le nom l'indique, vous tenez une collection h茅t茅roclite de pens茅es sur l'茅thique, le droit, la puissance de l'habitude et de l'imagination chez l'homme. Ce qui devait former les fondations d'une apologie de la Chr茅tient茅 par Blaise Pascal, d'ob茅dience jans茅niste.
Originally intended to be an Apology for Christianism, this book comes out as a unique mashup of casual notes, musings, ethical, logical and metaphysical observations put together by Pascal's family.
As it is, it is mainly about two unsplittable halves : the vanity of Man, the greatness of Man.
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鈥淟鈥檋omme n鈥檈st qu鈥檜n roseau, le plus faible de la nature; mais c鈥檈st un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l鈥檜nivers entier s鈥檃rme pour l鈥櫭ヽraser : une vapeur, une goutte d鈥檈au suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l鈥檜nivers l鈥櫭ヽraserait, l鈥檋omme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu鈥檌l sait qu鈥檌l meurt, et l鈥檃vantage que l鈥檜nivers a sur lui, l鈥檜nivers n鈥檈n sait rien鈥�
Comme le nom l'indique, vous tenez une collection h茅t茅roclite de pens茅es sur l'茅thique, le droit, la puissance de l'habitude et de l'imagination chez l'homme. Ce qui devait former les fondations d'une apologie de la Chr茅tient茅 par Blaise Pascal, d'ob茅dience jans茅niste.
June 28, 2019
Pascal seems to have been born for greatness. At a young age he displayed an intense talent for mathematics, apparently deducing a few propositions of Euclid by himself; and he matured into one of the great mathematical minds of Europe, making fundamental contributions to the science of probability. While he was at it, he invented an adding machine: the beginning of our adventures in computing.
Later on in his short life, after narrowly escaping a carriage accident, the young man had an intense conversion experience; and he devoted the rest of his energies to religion. A committed Jansenist (a sect of Catholics deeply influenced by Calvinism), he set out to defend his community from the hostile Jesuits. This resulted in his Provincial Letters, a series of polemical epistles now considered a model and a monument of French prose. This was not all. His most ambitious project was a massive apology for the Christian faith. But disease struck him down before he could bring his book to term; and now all we are left with are fragments鈥攕cattered bits of thought.
Strangely, it is this unfinished book鈥攏ot his polished prose, not his contributions to mathematics鈥攚hich has become Pascal鈥檚 most lasting work. It is a piece of extraordinary passion and riveting eloquence. Yet it is also disorganized, tortured, incomplete, uneven, abrupt鈥攁t times laconic to the point of inscrutability, at times rambling, diffuse, and obscure. How are we to judge such a book?
Pascal alternates between two fundamental moods in the text: the tortured doubter, and the zealous convert. Inevitably I found the former sections to be far more compelling. Pascal was an avid reader of Montaigne, and seems to have taken that French sage鈥檚 skepticism to heart. Yet Pascal could never simulate Montaigne鈥檚 easy acceptance of his own ignorance; the mathematician wanted certainty, and was driven to despair by Montaigne鈥檚 gnawing doubt. Thus, though Pascal often echoes Montaigne鈥檚 thoughts, the tone is completely different: anguish rather than acceptance.
Montaigne鈥檚 influence runs very deep in Pascal. Harold Bloom famously called the 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 鈥渁 bad case indigestion in regard to Montaigne,鈥� and notes the many passages of Pascal which directly echo Montaigne鈥檚 words. Will Durant goes even further, writing that Pascal was driven nearly to madness by Montaigne鈥檚 skepticism. There is, indeed, a shadow of mania and mental imbalance that falls over this work. Pascal gives the impression of one who is profoundly unhappy; and this despair both propels him to his heights and drags him to his depths.
At his best, Pascal strikes one as a kind of depressed charismatic genius, writing in the mood of a Hamlet. Cynicism at times overwhelms him, as he notes how our vanity leads us to choose our professions and our habits just to receive praise from other people. He can also be a pessimist鈥攏oting, like Schopenhauer, that all earthly pleasures are unsatisfactory and vain. Pascal had a morbid streak, too.
We also have the misanthrope, in which mood he most nearly approached the Danish prince:
But I think even more moving that these moods is Pascal鈥檚 metaphysical despair. He wants certainty with every inch of his soul, and yet the universe only inspires doubt and anguish: 鈥淭he eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.鈥� As a scientist during the age of Galileo, Pascal is painfully aware of humanity鈥檚 smallness in relation to the vast void of the universe. He struggles to establish our dignity: 鈥淢an is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.鈥� Yet his existential desperation continually reasserts itself, no matter how often he defends himself against it:
He finds neither negative nor positive confirmation, however, and so must resort to a frenzied effort. Perhaps this is where the famous idea of the wager arose. Pascal鈥檚 Wager is simple: if you choose to be religious you have very much to gain and comparatively little to lose, so it is an intelligent bet. Of course there are many problems with this line of thinking. For one, would not an omniscient God know that you are choosing religion for calculated self-interest? Pascal鈥檚 solution is that, if you force yourself to undergo the rituals of religion鈥攆asting, confession, mass, and the rest鈥攖he belief will gradually become genuine.
Perhaps. Yet there are many other problems with the wager. Most noticeable, nowadays, is Pascal鈥檚 treatment of the religious problem as a binary choice鈥攂elief or unbelief鈥攚hereas now we have hundreds of options to choose from as regards religions. Further, Pascal鈥檚 insistence that we have everything to gain and nothing to lose is difficult to accept. For we do have something to lose: our life. Living a strictly religious life is no easy thing, after all. Also, his insistence that the finite existence of our life is nothing compared to the potential infinity of heavenly life leaves out one crucial thing: If there is no afterlife, than our finite existence is infinitely more valuable than the nothingness that awaits. So the wager does not clarify anything.
In any case, it is unclear what use Pascal wished to make of his wager. The rest of this book does not make any mention of this kind of strategic belief. Indeed, at times Pascal seems to directly contradict this idea of an intellectually driven faith, particularly in his emphasis on the role of emotion: 鈥淚t is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.鈥� Or, more pithily: 鈥淭he heart has its reasons of which the reason knows nothing.鈥�
This, for me, summarizes the more enjoyable sections of the book. But there is a great deal to criticize. Many of the arguments that Pascal makes for belief are frankly bad. He notes, for example, that Christianity has been around since the beginning of the world鈥攕omething that only a convinced young-earther could believe nowadays. There are many passages about the Jews, most of which are difficult to read. One of his most consistent themes is that God hardened the hearts of the Jews against Christ, in order that they be unwilling 鈥渨itnesses鈥� to future generations. But what kind of divine justice is it to sacrifice a whole people, intentionally blinding them to the truth?
Indeed, virtually every statement Pascal makes about other religions reveals both an ignorance and a hostility greatly unbecoming of the man. And his explanation of the existence of other religions, as a kind of specious temptation, is both absurd and disrespectful: 鈥淚f God had permitted only one religion, it would have been too easily recognizable. But, if we look closely, it is easy to distinguish the true religion amidst all this confusion.鈥�
I suppose this is one of the great paradoxes of any kind of religious faith: Why did God allow so many to go astray? But conceiving of other religions as snares deliberately placed by God seems extremely cruel on God鈥檚 part (as well as wholly dismissive of other faiths). In any case, it is just one example of Pascal鈥檚 pitiless piety. He himself warns of the danger of the moral sense armed with certainty: 鈥淲e never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.鈥� And yet his own religious convictions can seem cruel, at least psychologically: dwelling obsessively on the need to hate oneself, and insisting that 鈥淚 am culpable if I make anyone love me.鈥�
Pascal also has a habit of dwelling on prophesy, repeatedly noting that the Old Testament prefigured the coming and the life of Jesus鈥攚hich is clear if we interpret the text in the 鈥渞ight鈥� way. Of course, this is open to the obvious objection that any text can predict anything if it is interpreted in the 鈥渞ight鈥� way. Pascal鈥檚 response to this is that God is intentionally mysterious, and it would have been too obvious to have literally predicted Jesus and his works. The ability to see the prophesy differentiates those to whom God sheds light, and those whom God blinds. Once again, therefore, we have this strangely cruel conception of God, as a Being which arbitrarily prevents His creatures from seeing the truth.
As I think is clear from the frantic tone, and the many different and contradictory ways that Pascal tries to justify belief, he himself was not fully convinced by any of them. His final desperate intellectual move is to abandon the principle of logical consistency altogether. As he says: 鈥淎 hundred contradictions might be true.鈥� Or elsewhere he tells us: 鈥淎ll their principles are true, skeptics, stoics, atheists, etc. 鈥� but their conclusions are false, because the contrary principles are also true.鈥� Yet if he had taken this idea seriously, he would have seen that it completely erodes the possibility of justifying any belief. All we have left is to go where the 鈥渉eart鈥� guides us; but what if my heart guides me towards Chinese ancestor worship?
Another reviewer on this site noted Pascal鈥檚 power to convince religious skeptics. But, as you can see, I found the opposite to be true. Pascal鈥檚 morbid unhappiness, his frantic doubt, his shoddy reasoning, do not inspire any wish to join him. To the contrary, one regrets that such a fine mind was driven to such a self-destructive fixation. Still, this book deserves its canonical status. Though at times nearly unreadable, in its finest passages the 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 is as sublime as anything in literature. And, though Pascal falls short of Montaigne in many respects, he is able to capture the one element of experience forbidden to the benign essayist: an all-consuming despair.
Later on in his short life, after narrowly escaping a carriage accident, the young man had an intense conversion experience; and he devoted the rest of his energies to religion. A committed Jansenist (a sect of Catholics deeply influenced by Calvinism), he set out to defend his community from the hostile Jesuits. This resulted in his Provincial Letters, a series of polemical epistles now considered a model and a monument of French prose. This was not all. His most ambitious project was a massive apology for the Christian faith. But disease struck him down before he could bring his book to term; and now all we are left with are fragments鈥攕cattered bits of thought.
Strangely, it is this unfinished book鈥攏ot his polished prose, not his contributions to mathematics鈥攚hich has become Pascal鈥檚 most lasting work. It is a piece of extraordinary passion and riveting eloquence. Yet it is also disorganized, tortured, incomplete, uneven, abrupt鈥攁t times laconic to the point of inscrutability, at times rambling, diffuse, and obscure. How are we to judge such a book?
Pascal alternates between two fundamental moods in the text: the tortured doubter, and the zealous convert. Inevitably I found the former sections to be far more compelling. Pascal was an avid reader of Montaigne, and seems to have taken that French sage鈥檚 skepticism to heart. Yet Pascal could never simulate Montaigne鈥檚 easy acceptance of his own ignorance; the mathematician wanted certainty, and was driven to despair by Montaigne鈥檚 gnawing doubt. Thus, though Pascal often echoes Montaigne鈥檚 thoughts, the tone is completely different: anguish rather than acceptance.
Montaigne鈥檚 influence runs very deep in Pascal. Harold Bloom famously called the 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 鈥渁 bad case indigestion in regard to Montaigne,鈥� and notes the many passages of Pascal which directly echo Montaigne鈥檚 words. Will Durant goes even further, writing that Pascal was driven nearly to madness by Montaigne鈥檚 skepticism. There is, indeed, a shadow of mania and mental imbalance that falls over this work. Pascal gives the impression of one who is profoundly unhappy; and this despair both propels him to his heights and drags him to his depths.
At his best, Pascal strikes one as a kind of depressed charismatic genius, writing in the mood of a Hamlet. Cynicism at times overwhelms him, as he notes how our vanity leads us to choose our professions and our habits just to receive praise from other people. He can also be a pessimist鈥攏oting, like Schopenhauer, that all earthly pleasures are unsatisfactory and vain. Pascal had a morbid streak, too.
Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.
We also have the misanthrope, in which mood he most nearly approached the Danish prince:
What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe!
But I think even more moving that these moods is Pascal鈥檚 metaphysical despair. He wants certainty with every inch of his soul, and yet the universe only inspires doubt and anguish: 鈥淭he eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.鈥� As a scientist during the age of Galileo, Pascal is painfully aware of humanity鈥檚 smallness in relation to the vast void of the universe. He struggles to establish our dignity: 鈥淢an is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.鈥� Yet his existential desperation continually reasserts itself, no matter how often he defends himself against it:
This is what I see and what troubles me. I look around in every direction and all I see is darkness. Nature has nothing to offer me that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety. If I saw no sign there of a Divinity I should decide on a negative solution: if I saw signs of a Creator everywhere I should peacefully settle down in the faith.
He finds neither negative nor positive confirmation, however, and so must resort to a frenzied effort. Perhaps this is where the famous idea of the wager arose. Pascal鈥檚 Wager is simple: if you choose to be religious you have very much to gain and comparatively little to lose, so it is an intelligent bet. Of course there are many problems with this line of thinking. For one, would not an omniscient God know that you are choosing religion for calculated self-interest? Pascal鈥檚 solution is that, if you force yourself to undergo the rituals of religion鈥攆asting, confession, mass, and the rest鈥攖he belief will gradually become genuine.
Perhaps. Yet there are many other problems with the wager. Most noticeable, nowadays, is Pascal鈥檚 treatment of the religious problem as a binary choice鈥攂elief or unbelief鈥攚hereas now we have hundreds of options to choose from as regards religions. Further, Pascal鈥檚 insistence that we have everything to gain and nothing to lose is difficult to accept. For we do have something to lose: our life. Living a strictly religious life is no easy thing, after all. Also, his insistence that the finite existence of our life is nothing compared to the potential infinity of heavenly life leaves out one crucial thing: If there is no afterlife, than our finite existence is infinitely more valuable than the nothingness that awaits. So the wager does not clarify anything.
In any case, it is unclear what use Pascal wished to make of his wager. The rest of this book does not make any mention of this kind of strategic belief. Indeed, at times Pascal seems to directly contradict this idea of an intellectually driven faith, particularly in his emphasis on the role of emotion: 鈥淚t is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.鈥� Or, more pithily: 鈥淭he heart has its reasons of which the reason knows nothing.鈥�
This, for me, summarizes the more enjoyable sections of the book. But there is a great deal to criticize. Many of the arguments that Pascal makes for belief are frankly bad. He notes, for example, that Christianity has been around since the beginning of the world鈥攕omething that only a convinced young-earther could believe nowadays. There are many passages about the Jews, most of which are difficult to read. One of his most consistent themes is that God hardened the hearts of the Jews against Christ, in order that they be unwilling 鈥渨itnesses鈥� to future generations. But what kind of divine justice is it to sacrifice a whole people, intentionally blinding them to the truth?
Indeed, virtually every statement Pascal makes about other religions reveals both an ignorance and a hostility greatly unbecoming of the man. And his explanation of the existence of other religions, as a kind of specious temptation, is both absurd and disrespectful: 鈥淚f God had permitted only one religion, it would have been too easily recognizable. But, if we look closely, it is easy to distinguish the true religion amidst all this confusion.鈥�
I suppose this is one of the great paradoxes of any kind of religious faith: Why did God allow so many to go astray? But conceiving of other religions as snares deliberately placed by God seems extremely cruel on God鈥檚 part (as well as wholly dismissive of other faiths). In any case, it is just one example of Pascal鈥檚 pitiless piety. He himself warns of the danger of the moral sense armed with certainty: 鈥淲e never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.鈥� And yet his own religious convictions can seem cruel, at least psychologically: dwelling obsessively on the need to hate oneself, and insisting that 鈥淚 am culpable if I make anyone love me.鈥�
Pascal also has a habit of dwelling on prophesy, repeatedly noting that the Old Testament prefigured the coming and the life of Jesus鈥攚hich is clear if we interpret the text in the 鈥渞ight鈥� way. Of course, this is open to the obvious objection that any text can predict anything if it is interpreted in the 鈥渞ight鈥� way. Pascal鈥檚 response to this is that God is intentionally mysterious, and it would have been too obvious to have literally predicted Jesus and his works. The ability to see the prophesy differentiates those to whom God sheds light, and those whom God blinds. Once again, therefore, we have this strangely cruel conception of God, as a Being which arbitrarily prevents His creatures from seeing the truth.
As I think is clear from the frantic tone, and the many different and contradictory ways that Pascal tries to justify belief, he himself was not fully convinced by any of them. His final desperate intellectual move is to abandon the principle of logical consistency altogether. As he says: 鈥淎 hundred contradictions might be true.鈥� Or elsewhere he tells us: 鈥淎ll their principles are true, skeptics, stoics, atheists, etc. 鈥� but their conclusions are false, because the contrary principles are also true.鈥� Yet if he had taken this idea seriously, he would have seen that it completely erodes the possibility of justifying any belief. All we have left is to go where the 鈥渉eart鈥� guides us; but what if my heart guides me towards Chinese ancestor worship?
Another reviewer on this site noted Pascal鈥檚 power to convince religious skeptics. But, as you can see, I found the opposite to be true. Pascal鈥檚 morbid unhappiness, his frantic doubt, his shoddy reasoning, do not inspire any wish to join him. To the contrary, one regrets that such a fine mind was driven to such a self-destructive fixation. Still, this book deserves its canonical status. Though at times nearly unreadable, in its finest passages the 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 is as sublime as anything in literature. And, though Pascal falls short of Montaigne in many respects, he is able to capture the one element of experience forbidden to the benign essayist: an all-consuming despair.
June 10, 2020
"We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does.
Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so." (# 47)
======
"Living for today.....yooh, ooh"
still my favorite song....
Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so." (# 47)
======
"Living for today.....yooh, ooh"
still my favorite song....
October 17, 2024
Una din c膬r葲ile de seam膬 ale culturii, umanit膬葲ii 葯i filosofiei. Mare p膬cat c膬 nu a avut privilegiul de a o finaliza.
October 27, 2022
On the human nature:
'What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm of the earth; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.'
'This twofold nature of man is so evident that some have thought that we had two souls. A single subject seemed to them incapable of such sudden variations from unmeasured presumption to a dreadful dejection of heart.'
'There is internal war in man between reason and the passions. If he had only reason without passions. If he had only passions without reason. But having both, he cannot be without strife, being unable to be at peace with the one without being at war with the other. Thus he is always divided against, and opposed to himself.'
'The grandeur of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable.'
'The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.'
On faith:
'There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.'
'What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm of the earth; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.'
'This twofold nature of man is so evident that some have thought that we had two souls. A single subject seemed to them incapable of such sudden variations from unmeasured presumption to a dreadful dejection of heart.'
'There is internal war in man between reason and the passions. If he had only reason without passions. If he had only passions without reason. But having both, he cannot be without strife, being unable to be at peace with the one without being at war with the other. Thus he is always divided against, and opposed to himself.'
'The grandeur of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable.'
'The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.'
On faith:
'There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.'
August 8, 2020
Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
Pascal maintains a certain antipathy to Montaigne throughout this collection. Despite my assertion being a specious argument, feel free to embrace that fact to avoid this. It is is clear why the essayist so unnerved Pascal: the self is always multitudes.
My response to The Wager is but a sigh.
I just responded to someone asking about my health, I'm incredibly drawn these days to Coriolanus and Antigone: I'm an asshole, but one for proper reasons.
Pascal maintains a certain antipathy to Montaigne throughout this collection. Despite my assertion being a specious argument, feel free to embrace that fact to avoid this. It is is clear why the essayist so unnerved Pascal: the self is always multitudes.
My response to The Wager is but a sigh.
I just responded to someone asking about my health, I'm incredibly drawn these days to Coriolanus and Antigone: I'm an asshole, but one for proper reasons.
February 16, 2009
Pascal's classic thoughts on numerous topics related to Christianity. This book is at times difficult to read, since he died before he finished it thus leaving many sections only outlined in note form. But slogging through those portions is worthwhile when you get to the good, thought-provoking parts. In some ways Pascal reminds me of Kierkegaard since both were reasonable men who realized that it takes more than just reason alone to come to faith in Christ. Pascal's apologetic reflects this. He is most famous for his Wager, which is often castigated, probably because it is misunderstood. Pascal's Wager does not state, as some seem to think, that you should just believe in God because he might exist, even though such belief is unreasonable. Rather, Pascal's argument was that it is just as reasonable to believe as not to believe; reason cannot prove faith yet faith is not unreasonable. Since reason alone places us in the middle, it is better to take the step in faith and trust in God.
May 8, 2019
鈥淒o you wish people to believe good of you? Don鈥檛 speak.鈥�
Pascal was the master of the one liner. 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 is laced with aphorisms. It also overflows with serious considerations. Not to be read fast or superficially. (Unfortunately my first reading in the 1960s was both.) Therefore, this review will be in sections, as I read the major subdivisions of the text.
鈥淭he last thing one settles in a book is what one should put in first.鈥�
Since 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 was not published before Pascal died in 1662, textual inclusion and order are disputed. This 1958 English translation (available free on Project Gutenberg) includes an excellent Introduction by Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot.
Part Two.
鈥淭he last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our heads, and that is the end forever.鈥�
The first two sections of Pascal鈥檚 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 is filled with disconnected thoughts and aphorisms generally pointing to man鈥檚 misery separate from God. Now Pascal turns to his infamous wager. Here his argument becomes dense and philosophic. The casual reader is tempted to think, 鈥淚 can skim this. Everyone knows what Pascal鈥檚 Wager is.鈥� No, you don鈥檛. In simplifying Pascal鈥檚 argument, modern scholars miss his point, and mislead you as well. If you read only one section on 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉, read Section Three. Here his avowed purpose was 鈥渢o incite the search after God.鈥�
In brief, Pascal reasons why you should make the wager, only secondarily how you should make it. He was surrounded by mature, intelligent people who spent their entire life diverting themselves from the most important issue of life. The following are key thoughts, in his own words:
鈥淢en despise religion; they hate it; and fear it is true.鈥�
鈥淸God] will only be perceived by those who seek him with all their heart.鈥�
鈥淭hey believe they have made great efforts for their instruction, when they have spent a few hours in reading some book of scripture, and have questioned some priest on the truths of the faith. After that, they boast of having made vain search in books and among men. This negligence is insufferable.鈥�
鈥淭hey did not find within themselves the lights which convince them of it [and] neglect to seek them elsewhere.鈥�
鈥淚t is a great evil thus to be in doubt. The doubter 鈥� is altogether completely unhappy and completely wrong.鈥�
鈥淎ll I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.鈥�
鈥淚t is not natural that there should be men indifferent to the loss of their existence.鈥�
鈥淟et them at least be honest men, if they cannot be Christians. There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him.鈥�
鈥淟et us imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows, and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men.鈥�
鈥淲e seek the truth without hesitation.鈥�
鈥淏etween us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.鈥�
鈥淥ur soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls nature, necessity, and can believe nothing else.鈥�
鈥淚t is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist.鈥�
鈥淵ou can defend neither of the propositions. Do not reprove then those who have made a choice. The true course is not to wager at all.鈥�
鈥淵es, but you must wager. It is not optional.鈥�
鈥淚f you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.鈥�
鈥淚t is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that point which ought to be our ultimate end.鈥�
鈥淓very play stakes a certainty to gain an uncertainty.鈥�
鈥淎t least learn your inability to believe. Endeavor then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Follow by acting as if [you] believed. What have you to lose?鈥�
鈥淵ou will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing.鈥�
鈥淚f we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But 鈥� there is more certainty in religion than there is as to whether we see tomorrow.鈥�
鈥淎ccording to the doctrine of chance, you ought to put yourself to the trouble of searching for the truth; for if you die without worshipping the True Cause, you are lost--鈥楤ut,鈥� you say, 鈥榠f He had wished me to worship Him, He would have left me sign of His will.鈥� He had done so, but you neglect them.鈥�
Did you notice how current some of that was? Moderns don鈥檛 even go so far as to read a little Bible and talk to a clergy, they read someone like Richard Dawkins and think they understand the whole issue. Tell me, do you believe what politicians claim their opponent believes or intends? Of course not. Then why do you accept the hatchet job of an unbeliever as definitive?
His argument is flawed, but deserves better treatment than it鈥檚 gotten. One problem is with his comparing infinities. He was supposed to be the greatest mathematician of his age, but equating mathematical infinities with supernatural ones appears unreliable.
Quibble: All that untranslated Latin was acceptable in 1660, when all educated people read Latin. It is not acceptable in a 1958 translation, when few read Latin, to not render the Latin into English. (Yes, the language and punctuation is archaic; blame that on the translators, too, not Pascal.)
So you see, Pascal鈥檚 wager is not believing or not believing, but on making a serious inquiry into the truth claims of Christianity. His argument was with his contemporaries (and ours) who amused themselves to death trying to avoid the most critical decision of their lives. Because, as he says, 鈥淲e [all] die alone.鈥�
鈥淚t is far better to know something about everything, than to know all about one thing.鈥�
Being an unfinished work, inconsistency of flow and expression are not surprising. What is unexpected is that he beat the Enlightenment by a century and even anticipated some modern thinking.
鈥淲ho doubts that our soul, being accustomed to see number, space, motion believes that and nothing else?鈥�
One of the greatest mathematical and scientific theorists of his time, Pascal intended 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 to be a defense of the Christian religion, but boldly admitted the case of the skeptic. Pascal鈥檚 other great work, Provincial Letters, addressed abuses of contemporary Catholicism even though Pascal remained a communicant his whole life. He died in Paris at age 39.
鈥淲hat is a man in the infinite?鈥�
(Part Three)
鈥淭rue nature being lost, everything becomes its own nature; and the true good being lost, everything becomes its own true good.鈥� 露 426
A significant effort on the part of a troubled Catholic in 17th century France. At odds with his church, especially the Society of Jesus, on one hand and the secular humanist, such as Voltaire and Montaigne, on the other. That he carried his manuscript sewed inside his coat is indicative of how heretical he knew his Jansenist thoughts to be. (The thoughts of the Jansenists were condemned by Pope Innocent IX in 1653.)
鈥淣ature confutes the sceptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists.鈥� 露 430
I have reviewed the opening sections of this tome in two previous review. This will try to review the rest of the book and summarize my thoughts. Without a doubt, Pascal was an original and creative thinker, one of the first mathematicians worthy of the term. He was also an orthodox Christian, whatever the Catholic hierarchy of the day thought of him.
鈥淲e must love a being who is in us, and is not ourselves.鈥� 露 485
Therefore, much of his sections on Fundamentals, Perpetuity, Typology, Prophecies, Proofs of Jesus Christ, and Miracles will be only of interest to students of theology. His last section, however, Polemical Fragments is a hodgepodge of thoughts on a variety of topics which strata yield the occasional gem of a quote, as follows (referenced by their paragraph within the larger work):
露 832. 鈥淎s it is certain that these are exceptions to the rule, our judgment must though strict, be just.鈥�
露 860. 鈥淭he Church is in an excellent state, when it is sustained by God only.鈥�
露 861. 鈥淔aith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other. The source of all heresies is the exclusion of some of these truths.鈥�
露 863. 鈥淭ruth is so more obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.鈥�
露 875. 鈥淕od does not perform miracles in the ordinary conduct of the Church.鈥�
露 894. 鈥淢en never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.鈥�
Concerning this text, my primary criticism is that, even in the 1950s, few would have been fluent in Latin and Greek to read all the quotes as rendered. Fortunately, nearly half were Biblical citations, easy enough to obtain an English translation.
鈥淭here are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous.鈥� 露 533
As I said in my opening review, Pascal is worth reading in his own words if only because the great mass of humanity regularly misrepresent his famous 鈥渨ager.鈥� (I was among them.) He was not saying one should gamble on believing that God exists because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, but that you should gamble on investigating whether God exists because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. A difference in far more than semantics.
鈥淲e cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing at the same time both God and our own wretchedness.鈥� 露 555
Pascal was the master of the one liner. 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 is laced with aphorisms. It also overflows with serious considerations. Not to be read fast or superficially. (Unfortunately my first reading in the 1960s was both.) Therefore, this review will be in sections, as I read the major subdivisions of the text.
鈥淭he last thing one settles in a book is what one should put in first.鈥�
Since 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 was not published before Pascal died in 1662, textual inclusion and order are disputed. This 1958 English translation (available free on Project Gutenberg) includes an excellent Introduction by Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot.
Part Two.
鈥淭he last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our heads, and that is the end forever.鈥�
The first two sections of Pascal鈥檚 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 is filled with disconnected thoughts and aphorisms generally pointing to man鈥檚 misery separate from God. Now Pascal turns to his infamous wager. Here his argument becomes dense and philosophic. The casual reader is tempted to think, 鈥淚 can skim this. Everyone knows what Pascal鈥檚 Wager is.鈥� No, you don鈥檛. In simplifying Pascal鈥檚 argument, modern scholars miss his point, and mislead you as well. If you read only one section on 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉, read Section Three. Here his avowed purpose was 鈥渢o incite the search after God.鈥�
In brief, Pascal reasons why you should make the wager, only secondarily how you should make it. He was surrounded by mature, intelligent people who spent their entire life diverting themselves from the most important issue of life. The following are key thoughts, in his own words:
鈥淢en despise religion; they hate it; and fear it is true.鈥�
鈥淸God] will only be perceived by those who seek him with all their heart.鈥�
鈥淭hey believe they have made great efforts for their instruction, when they have spent a few hours in reading some book of scripture, and have questioned some priest on the truths of the faith. After that, they boast of having made vain search in books and among men. This negligence is insufferable.鈥�
鈥淭hey did not find within themselves the lights which convince them of it [and] neglect to seek them elsewhere.鈥�
鈥淚t is a great evil thus to be in doubt. The doubter 鈥� is altogether completely unhappy and completely wrong.鈥�
鈥淎ll I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.鈥�
鈥淚t is not natural that there should be men indifferent to the loss of their existence.鈥�
鈥淟et them at least be honest men, if they cannot be Christians. There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him.鈥�
鈥淟et us imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows, and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men.鈥�
鈥淲e seek the truth without hesitation.鈥�
鈥淏etween us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.鈥�
鈥淥ur soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls nature, necessity, and can believe nothing else.鈥�
鈥淚t is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist.鈥�
鈥淵ou can defend neither of the propositions. Do not reprove then those who have made a choice. The true course is not to wager at all.鈥�
鈥淵es, but you must wager. It is not optional.鈥�
鈥淚f you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.鈥�
鈥淚t is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that point which ought to be our ultimate end.鈥�
鈥淓very play stakes a certainty to gain an uncertainty.鈥�
鈥淎t least learn your inability to believe. Endeavor then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Follow by acting as if [you] believed. What have you to lose?鈥�
鈥淵ou will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing.鈥�
鈥淚f we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But 鈥� there is more certainty in religion than there is as to whether we see tomorrow.鈥�
鈥淎ccording to the doctrine of chance, you ought to put yourself to the trouble of searching for the truth; for if you die without worshipping the True Cause, you are lost--鈥楤ut,鈥� you say, 鈥榠f He had wished me to worship Him, He would have left me sign of His will.鈥� He had done so, but you neglect them.鈥�
Did you notice how current some of that was? Moderns don鈥檛 even go so far as to read a little Bible and talk to a clergy, they read someone like Richard Dawkins and think they understand the whole issue. Tell me, do you believe what politicians claim their opponent believes or intends? Of course not. Then why do you accept the hatchet job of an unbeliever as definitive?
His argument is flawed, but deserves better treatment than it鈥檚 gotten. One problem is with his comparing infinities. He was supposed to be the greatest mathematician of his age, but equating mathematical infinities with supernatural ones appears unreliable.
Quibble: All that untranslated Latin was acceptable in 1660, when all educated people read Latin. It is not acceptable in a 1958 translation, when few read Latin, to not render the Latin into English. (Yes, the language and punctuation is archaic; blame that on the translators, too, not Pascal.)
So you see, Pascal鈥檚 wager is not believing or not believing, but on making a serious inquiry into the truth claims of Christianity. His argument was with his contemporaries (and ours) who amused themselves to death trying to avoid the most critical decision of their lives. Because, as he says, 鈥淲e [all] die alone.鈥�
鈥淚t is far better to know something about everything, than to know all about one thing.鈥�
Being an unfinished work, inconsistency of flow and expression are not surprising. What is unexpected is that he beat the Enlightenment by a century and even anticipated some modern thinking.
鈥淲ho doubts that our soul, being accustomed to see number, space, motion believes that and nothing else?鈥�
One of the greatest mathematical and scientific theorists of his time, Pascal intended 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 to be a defense of the Christian religion, but boldly admitted the case of the skeptic. Pascal鈥檚 other great work, Provincial Letters, addressed abuses of contemporary Catholicism even though Pascal remained a communicant his whole life. He died in Paris at age 39.
鈥淲hat is a man in the infinite?鈥�
(Part Three)
鈥淭rue nature being lost, everything becomes its own nature; and the true good being lost, everything becomes its own true good.鈥� 露 426
A significant effort on the part of a troubled Catholic in 17th century France. At odds with his church, especially the Society of Jesus, on one hand and the secular humanist, such as Voltaire and Montaigne, on the other. That he carried his manuscript sewed inside his coat is indicative of how heretical he knew his Jansenist thoughts to be. (The thoughts of the Jansenists were condemned by Pope Innocent IX in 1653.)
鈥淣ature confutes the sceptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists.鈥� 露 430
I have reviewed the opening sections of this tome in two previous review. This will try to review the rest of the book and summarize my thoughts. Without a doubt, Pascal was an original and creative thinker, one of the first mathematicians worthy of the term. He was also an orthodox Christian, whatever the Catholic hierarchy of the day thought of him.
鈥淲e must love a being who is in us, and is not ourselves.鈥� 露 485
Therefore, much of his sections on Fundamentals, Perpetuity, Typology, Prophecies, Proofs of Jesus Christ, and Miracles will be only of interest to students of theology. His last section, however, Polemical Fragments is a hodgepodge of thoughts on a variety of topics which strata yield the occasional gem of a quote, as follows (referenced by their paragraph within the larger work):
露 832. 鈥淎s it is certain that these are exceptions to the rule, our judgment must though strict, be just.鈥�
露 860. 鈥淭he Church is in an excellent state, when it is sustained by God only.鈥�
露 861. 鈥淔aith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other. The source of all heresies is the exclusion of some of these truths.鈥�
露 863. 鈥淭ruth is so more obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.鈥�
露 875. 鈥淕od does not perform miracles in the ordinary conduct of the Church.鈥�
露 894. 鈥淢en never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.鈥�
Concerning this text, my primary criticism is that, even in the 1950s, few would have been fluent in Latin and Greek to read all the quotes as rendered. Fortunately, nearly half were Biblical citations, easy enough to obtain an English translation.
鈥淭here are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous.鈥� 露 533
As I said in my opening review, Pascal is worth reading in his own words if only because the great mass of humanity regularly misrepresent his famous 鈥渨ager.鈥� (I was among them.) He was not saying one should gamble on believing that God exists because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, but that you should gamble on investigating whether God exists because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. A difference in far more than semantics.
鈥淲e cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing at the same time both God and our own wretchedness.鈥� 露 555
February 25, 2019
O livro "Pensamentos", de Blaise Pascal, nunca existiu enquanto tal, 脿 semelhan莽a do "Livro do Desassossego" foi compilado por quem encontrou milhares de notas soltas depois da sua morte. Diferentemente do livro de Pessoa, e provavelmente por ter sido descoberto noutro tempo, a sua primeira vers茫o, e mais amplamente reproduzida, opta por apresentar apenas uma parte dos documentos deixados por Pascal. Catalogado como edi莽茫o Port-Royal (1670), apresenta-se como um livro de cap铆tulos completos, reescrito por familiares e organizadores, todos em defesa dos elementos da religi茫o crist茫 - Deus, Jesus, Igreja, o C茅u e o Inferno. S贸 em 1897 茅 publicada a edi莽茫o de Brunschvicg, a qual apresenta, de forma numerada, todos os textos de Pascal, cerca de 900. Mais tarde, em 1935, descobre-se que a primeira parte destes textos tinha j谩 sido ordenada por Pascal para a escrita de um livro, j谩 a segunda parte eram textos pensados para um livro que estava a escrever quando morreu, "Apologia da Religi茫o Crist茫". Exposta a forma, temos dois livros, ou dois grandes temas num mesmo livro, mem贸rias autobiogr谩ficas e o questionamento de si, e na segunda parte, uma defesa ac茅rrima da religi茫o crist茫.
Imagem de Blaise Pascal (1623 鈥� 1662)
Sobre a primeira parte, senti um Pascal reflexivo, em busca de respostas, com muitas d煤vidas e vontade aprofundar o que lhe ia na alma. Contudo na segunda parte 茅 como se Pascal desistisse dessa senda, abra莽asse a religi茫o crist茫, e deixasse simplesmente de pensar, para seguir apenas e s贸 o que a religi茫o tinha para lhe oferecer. Se a primeira parte consegue ser instigante, a segunda 茅 desoladora, principalmente se tivermos em conta que Pascal foi uma das mentes mais brilhantes que j谩 passou por este planeta. Contudo, como venho verificando no estudo de v谩rios destes homens do renascimento, apesar de terem tocado em muitas 谩reas, dificilmente as dominaram, o que deita um pouco por terra o mito dos pol铆matas renascentistas. Pascal foi um grande matem谩tico, mas nem por isso um grande fil贸sofo, e os ataques caricatos que faz a Montaigne s茫o disso a maior prova.
Em certos momentos quase consigo compreender o desespero de Pascal, pegando no infinito que a matem谩tica nos oferece para tentar explicar o infinito que s贸 Deus poderia criar. Ou seja, a nossa incapacidade para compreender e abarcar a matem谩tica em toda a sua extens茫o reduz-nos a algo insignificante. Mas 茅 por isso que n茫o devemos submeter o nosso pensamento a uma ci锚ncia 煤nica. A matem谩tica 茅 uma das mais importantes ci锚ncias alguma vez criadas pelo ser-humano, mas n茫o pode responder a todos os nossos dilemas. Por outro lado, n茫o posso deixar de condenar veemente a atitude discriminat贸ria e autorit谩ria de Pascal ao longo de toda a segunda parte, procurando impor as ideias da religi茫o crist茫 como as 煤nicas capazes, ao que sem pejo junto o medo como figura persuasora. Deixo como resposta a Pascal, um excerto de Bertrand Russell:
"Devemo-nos manter de p茅 com os nossos pr贸prios meios e olhar francamente para o mundo 鈥� ver os seus aspectos bons, seus aspectos maus, suas belezas e suas fealdades; olhar para o mundo tal qual ele 茅, sem pavor. Conquistar o mundo pela intelig锚ncia e n茫o nos deixarmos subjugar como escravos do terror. Todo o conceito de Deus 茅 tirado do velho despotismo oriental. 脡 uma concep莽茫o absolutamente indigna de homens livres. Quando sei de pessoas que se curvam nas igrejas confessando-se miser谩veis pecadoras, e tudo o mais, tenho isso como desprez铆vel, incompat铆vel com o respeito que devemos a n贸s pr贸prios. Devemos, ao contr谩rio, olhar o mundo francamente e no seu rosto. Devemos melhorar este mundo e, se ele n茫o 茅 t茫o bom quanto desej谩vamos, que ele seja melhor do que o constru铆do no passado pelos outros. Um mundo 脿 nossa medida exige saber, bondade e coragem; n茫o exige uma intensa nostalgia do passado, nem o acorrentar da livre intelig锚ncia aos entraves impostos pelas f贸rmulas que os antigos ignorantes inventaram. O que uma perspectiva do futuro desligada do terror exige 茅 uma vis茫o clara das realidades. O que exige a esperan莽a no futuro n茫o 茅 o refluxo constante a um passado morto, que, estamos certos, ser谩 em muito ultrapassado pelo futuro que a nossa intelig锚ncia 茅 capaz de criar."
Bertrand Russell, (1927). Por que n茫o sou crist茫o. Retirado de Critica na Rede. Podem ainda ouvir as respostas de Russel j谩 na velhice, em v铆deo.
Sabendo que "Pensamentos" versaria tanto, e desta forma desenfreada, sobre a defesa da religi茫o crist茫, n茫o o teria lido. No entanto o que me fez chegar a esta obra foi o seu surgimento em v谩rias listas de grandes obras de n茫o-fic莽茫o. Quase no final encontrei um texto de TS Elliot defendendo todo o pensamento e filosofia de Pascal, surpreendido, fui depois descobrir que Elliot era ele pr贸prio um ac茅rrimo defensor da religi茫o crist茫, o que responde 脿s raz玫es porque o livro surge ami煤de em algumas listas. Deixo, ainda assim, alguns excertos da primeira parte que me tocaram de algum modo, com a refer锚ncia ao n煤mero da edi莽茫o de Brunschvicg:
"Quando penso na pequena dura莽茫o da minha vida. Absorvida na eternidade anterior, no pequeno espa莽o que ocupa, fundido na imensidade dos espa莽os que ignora, aterro-me e me assombro de ver-me aqui e n茫o alhures, pois n茫o h谩 raz茫o alguma para que esteja aqui e n茫o alhures, agora e n茫o em outro qualquer momento. Quem me colocou nessas condi莽玫es? Por onde e obra e necessidade de quem me foram designados esse lugar e esse momento? A lembran莽a de hospede de um dia que passa." (B.67)
"Por que s茫o limitados meus conhecimentos, minha estatura, a dura莽茫o de minha vida a cem anos e n茫o a mil? Que motivos levaram a natureza a fazer-me assim, a escolher esse n煤mero em lugar de outro qualquer, desde que na infinidade dos n煤meros n茫o h谩 raz玫es para tal prefer锚ncia, nem nada que seja prefer铆vel a nada?" (B.49)
"A vida humana 茅 apenas uma ilus茫o perp茅tua; o que fazemos 茅 enganar-nos e iludir-nos mutuamente. Ningu茅m fala de n贸s na nossa presen莽a como na nossa aus锚ncia. A uni茫o que existe entre os homens 茅 fundada sobre este m煤tuo embuste; e poucas amizades subsistiriam se cada um soubesse o que o seu amigo diz dele quando n茫o est谩 presente, ainda que ele fale ent茫o sinceramente e sem paix茫o. O homem 茅 apenas disfarce, engano e hipocrisia em si mesmo e para com os outros." (B.100)
鈥淚magine-se um certo n煤mero de homens presos e todos condenados 脿 morte, sendo todos os dias uns degolados 脿 vista de outros, os que ficam v锚em a sua pr贸pria condi莽茫o na dos seus semelhantes, e, olhando-se uns aos outros com dor e sem esperan莽a, esperam a sua vez. 脡 a imagem da condi莽茫o dos homens.鈥� (B.199)
鈥淭茅dio. 鈥� Nada 茅 mais insuport谩vel para o homem do que estar em pleno repouso, sem paix玫es, sem afazeres, sem divertimento, sem aplica莽茫o. Ele sente ent茫o todo o seu nada, o seu abandono, a sua insufici锚ncia, a sua depend锚ncia, a sua impot锚ncia, o seu vazio. Imediatamente nascer茫o do fundo da sua alma o t茅dio, o negrume, a tristeza, a m谩goa, o despeito, o desespero.鈥� (B.131)
鈥淥 煤nico bem dos homens consiste, pois, em divertir o pensamento de sua condi莽茫o, ou por uma ocupa莽茫o que dele os desvie, ou por alguma paix茫o agrad谩vel e nova que os ocupe, ou pelo jogo, a ca莽a, algum espet谩culo atraente e finalmente por aquilo a que se chama divertimento.
Da铆 vem que o jogo e o entretenimento com mulheres, a guerra, os grandes empregos sejam t茫o procurados. N茫o 茅 que neles haja realmente felicidade, nem que imaginemos que a verdadeira beatitude consista em se ter o dinheiro que se pode ganhar no jogo, ou na lebre que se persegue; n茫o se quereria nada disso se fosse dado de m茫o beijada. [...] Raz茫o pela qual se gosta mais da ca莽ada do que da presa.
Da铆 resulta que os homens gostem tanto do barulho e do reboli莽o; da铆 resulta que a
pris茫o seja um supl铆cio t茫o horr铆vel; da铆 resulta que o prazer da solid茫o seja uma coisa
incompreens铆vel E, finalmente, que o maior motivo de felicidade da condi莽茫o dos reis
consista em procurar diverti-los sem cessar e proporcionar-lhes todas as variedades de
prazeres. 鈥� (B.139)
"O homem n茫o passa de um cani莽o, o mais fraco da natureza, mas 茅 um cani莽o pensante. N茫o 茅 preciso que o universo inteiro se arme para esmag谩-lo: um vapor, uma gota de 谩gua bastam para mat谩-lo. Mas, mesmo que o universo o esmagasse, o homem seria ainda mais nobre do que quem o mata, porque sabe que morre e a vantagem que o universo tem sobre ele; o universo desconhece tudo isso. Toda a nossa dignidade consiste, pois, no pensamento. Da铆 que 茅 preciso nos elevarmos, e n茫o do espa莽o e da dura莽茫o, que n茫o podemos preencher. Trabalhemos, pois, para bem pensar; eis o princ铆pio da moral. (B.347)
"N茫o 茅 no espa莽o que devo buscar minha dignidade, mas na ordena莽茫o de meu pensamento. N茫o terei mais, possuindo terras; pelo espa莽o, o universo me abarca e traga como um ponto; pelo pensamento, eu o abarco". (B.348)
Publicado no VI com links e formata莽茫o:
Imagem de Blaise Pascal (1623 鈥� 1662)
Sobre a primeira parte, senti um Pascal reflexivo, em busca de respostas, com muitas d煤vidas e vontade aprofundar o que lhe ia na alma. Contudo na segunda parte 茅 como se Pascal desistisse dessa senda, abra莽asse a religi茫o crist茫, e deixasse simplesmente de pensar, para seguir apenas e s贸 o que a religi茫o tinha para lhe oferecer. Se a primeira parte consegue ser instigante, a segunda 茅 desoladora, principalmente se tivermos em conta que Pascal foi uma das mentes mais brilhantes que j谩 passou por este planeta. Contudo, como venho verificando no estudo de v谩rios destes homens do renascimento, apesar de terem tocado em muitas 谩reas, dificilmente as dominaram, o que deita um pouco por terra o mito dos pol铆matas renascentistas. Pascal foi um grande matem谩tico, mas nem por isso um grande fil贸sofo, e os ataques caricatos que faz a Montaigne s茫o disso a maior prova.
Em certos momentos quase consigo compreender o desespero de Pascal, pegando no infinito que a matem谩tica nos oferece para tentar explicar o infinito que s贸 Deus poderia criar. Ou seja, a nossa incapacidade para compreender e abarcar a matem谩tica em toda a sua extens茫o reduz-nos a algo insignificante. Mas 茅 por isso que n茫o devemos submeter o nosso pensamento a uma ci锚ncia 煤nica. A matem谩tica 茅 uma das mais importantes ci锚ncias alguma vez criadas pelo ser-humano, mas n茫o pode responder a todos os nossos dilemas. Por outro lado, n茫o posso deixar de condenar veemente a atitude discriminat贸ria e autorit谩ria de Pascal ao longo de toda a segunda parte, procurando impor as ideias da religi茫o crist茫 como as 煤nicas capazes, ao que sem pejo junto o medo como figura persuasora. Deixo como resposta a Pascal, um excerto de Bertrand Russell:
"Devemo-nos manter de p茅 com os nossos pr贸prios meios e olhar francamente para o mundo 鈥� ver os seus aspectos bons, seus aspectos maus, suas belezas e suas fealdades; olhar para o mundo tal qual ele 茅, sem pavor. Conquistar o mundo pela intelig锚ncia e n茫o nos deixarmos subjugar como escravos do terror. Todo o conceito de Deus 茅 tirado do velho despotismo oriental. 脡 uma concep莽茫o absolutamente indigna de homens livres. Quando sei de pessoas que se curvam nas igrejas confessando-se miser谩veis pecadoras, e tudo o mais, tenho isso como desprez铆vel, incompat铆vel com o respeito que devemos a n贸s pr贸prios. Devemos, ao contr谩rio, olhar o mundo francamente e no seu rosto. Devemos melhorar este mundo e, se ele n茫o 茅 t茫o bom quanto desej谩vamos, que ele seja melhor do que o constru铆do no passado pelos outros. Um mundo 脿 nossa medida exige saber, bondade e coragem; n茫o exige uma intensa nostalgia do passado, nem o acorrentar da livre intelig锚ncia aos entraves impostos pelas f贸rmulas que os antigos ignorantes inventaram. O que uma perspectiva do futuro desligada do terror exige 茅 uma vis茫o clara das realidades. O que exige a esperan莽a no futuro n茫o 茅 o refluxo constante a um passado morto, que, estamos certos, ser谩 em muito ultrapassado pelo futuro que a nossa intelig锚ncia 茅 capaz de criar."
Bertrand Russell, (1927). Por que n茫o sou crist茫o. Retirado de Critica na Rede. Podem ainda ouvir as respostas de Russel j谩 na velhice, em v铆deo.
Sabendo que "Pensamentos" versaria tanto, e desta forma desenfreada, sobre a defesa da religi茫o crist茫, n茫o o teria lido. No entanto o que me fez chegar a esta obra foi o seu surgimento em v谩rias listas de grandes obras de n茫o-fic莽茫o. Quase no final encontrei um texto de TS Elliot defendendo todo o pensamento e filosofia de Pascal, surpreendido, fui depois descobrir que Elliot era ele pr贸prio um ac茅rrimo defensor da religi茫o crist茫, o que responde 脿s raz玫es porque o livro surge ami煤de em algumas listas. Deixo, ainda assim, alguns excertos da primeira parte que me tocaram de algum modo, com a refer锚ncia ao n煤mero da edi莽茫o de Brunschvicg:
"Quando penso na pequena dura莽茫o da minha vida. Absorvida na eternidade anterior, no pequeno espa莽o que ocupa, fundido na imensidade dos espa莽os que ignora, aterro-me e me assombro de ver-me aqui e n茫o alhures, pois n茫o h谩 raz茫o alguma para que esteja aqui e n茫o alhures, agora e n茫o em outro qualquer momento. Quem me colocou nessas condi莽玫es? Por onde e obra e necessidade de quem me foram designados esse lugar e esse momento? A lembran莽a de hospede de um dia que passa." (B.67)
"Por que s茫o limitados meus conhecimentos, minha estatura, a dura莽茫o de minha vida a cem anos e n茫o a mil? Que motivos levaram a natureza a fazer-me assim, a escolher esse n煤mero em lugar de outro qualquer, desde que na infinidade dos n煤meros n茫o h谩 raz玫es para tal prefer锚ncia, nem nada que seja prefer铆vel a nada?" (B.49)
"A vida humana 茅 apenas uma ilus茫o perp茅tua; o que fazemos 茅 enganar-nos e iludir-nos mutuamente. Ningu茅m fala de n贸s na nossa presen莽a como na nossa aus锚ncia. A uni茫o que existe entre os homens 茅 fundada sobre este m煤tuo embuste; e poucas amizades subsistiriam se cada um soubesse o que o seu amigo diz dele quando n茫o est谩 presente, ainda que ele fale ent茫o sinceramente e sem paix茫o. O homem 茅 apenas disfarce, engano e hipocrisia em si mesmo e para com os outros." (B.100)
鈥淚magine-se um certo n煤mero de homens presos e todos condenados 脿 morte, sendo todos os dias uns degolados 脿 vista de outros, os que ficam v锚em a sua pr贸pria condi莽茫o na dos seus semelhantes, e, olhando-se uns aos outros com dor e sem esperan莽a, esperam a sua vez. 脡 a imagem da condi莽茫o dos homens.鈥� (B.199)
鈥淭茅dio. 鈥� Nada 茅 mais insuport谩vel para o homem do que estar em pleno repouso, sem paix玫es, sem afazeres, sem divertimento, sem aplica莽茫o. Ele sente ent茫o todo o seu nada, o seu abandono, a sua insufici锚ncia, a sua depend锚ncia, a sua impot锚ncia, o seu vazio. Imediatamente nascer茫o do fundo da sua alma o t茅dio, o negrume, a tristeza, a m谩goa, o despeito, o desespero.鈥� (B.131)
鈥淥 煤nico bem dos homens consiste, pois, em divertir o pensamento de sua condi莽茫o, ou por uma ocupa莽茫o que dele os desvie, ou por alguma paix茫o agrad谩vel e nova que os ocupe, ou pelo jogo, a ca莽a, algum espet谩culo atraente e finalmente por aquilo a que se chama divertimento.
Da铆 vem que o jogo e o entretenimento com mulheres, a guerra, os grandes empregos sejam t茫o procurados. N茫o 茅 que neles haja realmente felicidade, nem que imaginemos que a verdadeira beatitude consista em se ter o dinheiro que se pode ganhar no jogo, ou na lebre que se persegue; n茫o se quereria nada disso se fosse dado de m茫o beijada. [...] Raz茫o pela qual se gosta mais da ca莽ada do que da presa.
Da铆 resulta que os homens gostem tanto do barulho e do reboli莽o; da铆 resulta que a
pris茫o seja um supl铆cio t茫o horr铆vel; da铆 resulta que o prazer da solid茫o seja uma coisa
incompreens铆vel E, finalmente, que o maior motivo de felicidade da condi莽茫o dos reis
consista em procurar diverti-los sem cessar e proporcionar-lhes todas as variedades de
prazeres. 鈥� (B.139)
"O homem n茫o passa de um cani莽o, o mais fraco da natureza, mas 茅 um cani莽o pensante. N茫o 茅 preciso que o universo inteiro se arme para esmag谩-lo: um vapor, uma gota de 谩gua bastam para mat谩-lo. Mas, mesmo que o universo o esmagasse, o homem seria ainda mais nobre do que quem o mata, porque sabe que morre e a vantagem que o universo tem sobre ele; o universo desconhece tudo isso. Toda a nossa dignidade consiste, pois, no pensamento. Da铆 que 茅 preciso nos elevarmos, e n茫o do espa莽o e da dura莽茫o, que n茫o podemos preencher. Trabalhemos, pois, para bem pensar; eis o princ铆pio da moral. (B.347)
"N茫o 茅 no espa莽o que devo buscar minha dignidade, mas na ordena莽茫o de meu pensamento. N茫o terei mais, possuindo terras; pelo espa莽o, o universo me abarca e traga como um ponto; pelo pensamento, eu o abarco". (B.348)
Publicado no VI com links e formata莽茫o:
December 23, 2022
A very famous book. It largely consists out of small passages, some aphoristic, not unlike Wittgenstein or Lichtenberg. And you can find great wisdom in it if you are prepared. But at the same time one must say that Pascal did live in an intellectual world that is very hard for me (and probably most modern readers) to comprehend.
You must love only God and hate yourself. That is the philosophy in a nutshell. His favorite word is
concupiscence, a technical term unknown to me, that describes the desire of man to sin.
Maybe a different way to say what is different in his thinking and very hard to grasp is his conviction that the question of the immortality of the soul determines the morality of society. This is something that I never understood but seems to be a truism for some Christians to this very day (i.e. Jordan Peterson.)
Nothing, says Pascal is more indignant to our reason than the notion of original sin. But, he says, without it, we would be incomprehensible to ourselves without it. Which means, we must totally surrender our reason.
But he is very rational all the same. When he criticizes Descartes, for example, one gets the impression, that he knows exactly what he is talking about. Just one example that shows how intellectual superior he was to modern Christian fundamentalists is his claim that, of course, there are contradictions in the Bible. Sometimes it is heretical to understand "all" as everyone, and sometimes it is heretical to understand it as not meaning everyone. (Bibite ex hoc omnes. - In quo omnes peccaverunt.) One has to rely on the Church Fathers.
The question is why was he so obsessed with sin? And grace? Why did he feel he had to write an apology of Christianity? I do not know. The arguments he gives are for the most part ridiculous, especially the arguments against the Muslim religion.
Pascal was a Jansenist (although he says at one point it is a lie). But what Jansenism really is, does not become very clear. Most of the things Jansenism is supposed to teach is propaganda designed by the Jesuits. (When I read Voltaire as a young man I learned to despise both, but Jansenism a bit more.) It is fair to say probably though, that Jansenism is a kind of Calvinistic Catholocism. Meaning, he took the worst of both worlds as his doctrine. Just amazing.
And the most amazing thing to me is that he says that miracles are the most important thing about Christianity. Without Miracles, one does not have to believe in Christ. - This is what my teacher of Religion taught me when I was 11. I found this appalling then and I still do. It seemed and seems to me that either the teachings in itself make sense or not. But this is obviously wrong. And heretical.
When Moses (with God鈥檚 help) transformed the sticks to snakes it was a miracle. And the fact that the Egyptian priest did the same was to me prove that the belief in miracles is nonsense. We are supposed to believe that our God is the true God because his snakes were larger! And Pascal actually says so. (Our) God performs the bigger Miracles.
"Wenn man nicht wei脽, wie es um etwas in Wahrheit bestellt ist dann ist es gut, wenn es einen allgemein geglaubten Irrtum gibt, der das Denken der Menschen festlegt, etwa zum Beispiel, der Mond, dem man der Wechsel der Jahreszeiten und den Fortschritt der Krankeiten usw. zuschreibt." (18)
"Es gibt Gelegenheiten, wo man Paris Paris nennen und andere wo man es Hauptstadt des Reiches nennen mu脽" (49)
"Die Wahrheit ist dem von Nutzen, dem man sie sagt, aber sch盲dlich f眉r die, die sie sagen, weil sie sich verhasst machen" (100)
Andere Moral je nachdem Seele sterblich oder unsterblich 218
"Atheismus ist das Kennzeichen eines starken Geistes, aber nur bis zu einem gewissen Grade"(225)
Wette 233
"Das Herz hat Gr眉nde, die die Vernunft nicht kennt" (277)
"Nichts kann l盲cherlicher sein, als da脽 ein Mensch das Recht hat mich zu t枚ten, weil er jenseits des Wassers wohnt..." (294)
"Also liebt man niemals die Person, sondern immer nur Eigenschaften" 323
"Der Widerspruch ist weder Zeichen des Falschen, noch die Widerspruchsfreiheit Zeichen des Wahren." 384
Was ist wahrhaft gut, die Keuschheit? 385
"Denn fraglos, nichts gibt es, was unsere Vernunft mehr emp枚rt, als die Aussage, da脽 die S眉nde des ersten Menschen alle die schuldig gemacht haben soll, die das sie so entfernt von diesem Ursprung sind unf盲hig zu sein scheinen, daran teilzuhaben." .." sind wir uns selbst ohne dies Mysterium unbegreifbar" darum " schlichte Unterwerfung der Vernunft"
Nur Gott muss man lieben, sich selbst hassen.
"Alle Menschen hassen sich untereinander" (451)
"Es ist h盲retisch, wenn man immer unter omnes 'alle' versteht, und h盲retisch, wenn man es nicht mitunter als 'alle' erkl盲rt." 775
"Ohne Wunder w盲re es keine S眉nde gewesen, wenn man nicht an Jesus Christus geglaubt h盲tte." 811
"Drei Kennzeichen der Religion: Best盲ndigkeit, sittliches Leben, Wunder." 844
Gott wird falsche Wunder nicht zulassen oder gr枚脽ere vollbringen 846
Luther, v枚llig au脽erhalb der Wahrheit 926
"Ihr sagt, ich sei Jansenist und Port-Royal verteidige die f眉nf Lehrs盲tze und deshalb verteidige ich sie. Drei L眉gen." 929
You must love only God and hate yourself. That is the philosophy in a nutshell. His favorite word is
concupiscence, a technical term unknown to me, that describes the desire of man to sin.
Maybe a different way to say what is different in his thinking and very hard to grasp is his conviction that the question of the immortality of the soul determines the morality of society. This is something that I never understood but seems to be a truism for some Christians to this very day (i.e. Jordan Peterson.)
Nothing, says Pascal is more indignant to our reason than the notion of original sin. But, he says, without it, we would be incomprehensible to ourselves without it. Which means, we must totally surrender our reason.
But he is very rational all the same. When he criticizes Descartes, for example, one gets the impression, that he knows exactly what he is talking about. Just one example that shows how intellectual superior he was to modern Christian fundamentalists is his claim that, of course, there are contradictions in the Bible. Sometimes it is heretical to understand "all" as everyone, and sometimes it is heretical to understand it as not meaning everyone. (Bibite ex hoc omnes. - In quo omnes peccaverunt.) One has to rely on the Church Fathers.
The question is why was he so obsessed with sin? And grace? Why did he feel he had to write an apology of Christianity? I do not know. The arguments he gives are for the most part ridiculous, especially the arguments against the Muslim religion.
Pascal was a Jansenist (although he says at one point it is a lie). But what Jansenism really is, does not become very clear. Most of the things Jansenism is supposed to teach is propaganda designed by the Jesuits. (When I read Voltaire as a young man I learned to despise both, but Jansenism a bit more.) It is fair to say probably though, that Jansenism is a kind of Calvinistic Catholocism. Meaning, he took the worst of both worlds as his doctrine. Just amazing.
And the most amazing thing to me is that he says that miracles are the most important thing about Christianity. Without Miracles, one does not have to believe in Christ. - This is what my teacher of Religion taught me when I was 11. I found this appalling then and I still do. It seemed and seems to me that either the teachings in itself make sense or not. But this is obviously wrong. And heretical.
When Moses (with God鈥檚 help) transformed the sticks to snakes it was a miracle. And the fact that the Egyptian priest did the same was to me prove that the belief in miracles is nonsense. We are supposed to believe that our God is the true God because his snakes were larger! And Pascal actually says so. (Our) God performs the bigger Miracles.
"Wenn man nicht wei脽, wie es um etwas in Wahrheit bestellt ist dann ist es gut, wenn es einen allgemein geglaubten Irrtum gibt, der das Denken der Menschen festlegt, etwa zum Beispiel, der Mond, dem man der Wechsel der Jahreszeiten und den Fortschritt der Krankeiten usw. zuschreibt." (18)
"Es gibt Gelegenheiten, wo man Paris Paris nennen und andere wo man es Hauptstadt des Reiches nennen mu脽" (49)
"Die Wahrheit ist dem von Nutzen, dem man sie sagt, aber sch盲dlich f眉r die, die sie sagen, weil sie sich verhasst machen" (100)
Andere Moral je nachdem Seele sterblich oder unsterblich 218
"Atheismus ist das Kennzeichen eines starken Geistes, aber nur bis zu einem gewissen Grade"(225)
Wette 233
"Das Herz hat Gr眉nde, die die Vernunft nicht kennt" (277)
"Nichts kann l盲cherlicher sein, als da脽 ein Mensch das Recht hat mich zu t枚ten, weil er jenseits des Wassers wohnt..." (294)
"Also liebt man niemals die Person, sondern immer nur Eigenschaften" 323
"Der Widerspruch ist weder Zeichen des Falschen, noch die Widerspruchsfreiheit Zeichen des Wahren." 384
Was ist wahrhaft gut, die Keuschheit? 385
"Denn fraglos, nichts gibt es, was unsere Vernunft mehr emp枚rt, als die Aussage, da脽 die S眉nde des ersten Menschen alle die schuldig gemacht haben soll, die das sie so entfernt von diesem Ursprung sind unf盲hig zu sein scheinen, daran teilzuhaben." .." sind wir uns selbst ohne dies Mysterium unbegreifbar" darum " schlichte Unterwerfung der Vernunft"
Nur Gott muss man lieben, sich selbst hassen.
"Alle Menschen hassen sich untereinander" (451)
"Es ist h盲retisch, wenn man immer unter omnes 'alle' versteht, und h盲retisch, wenn man es nicht mitunter als 'alle' erkl盲rt." 775
"Ohne Wunder w盲re es keine S眉nde gewesen, wenn man nicht an Jesus Christus geglaubt h盲tte." 811
"Drei Kennzeichen der Religion: Best盲ndigkeit, sittliches Leben, Wunder." 844
Gott wird falsche Wunder nicht zulassen oder gr枚脽ere vollbringen 846
Luther, v枚llig au脽erhalb der Wahrheit 926
"Ihr sagt, ich sei Jansenist und Port-Royal verteidige die f眉nf Lehrs盲tze und deshalb verteidige ich sie. Drei L眉gen." 929
Read
July 28, 2015I'm the wrong person for this, the wrong person entirely. It's hard to fault Pascal's prose, and while a lot of these little aphorisms are rather wonderful, melancholy mutterings. But he just keeps getting bogged down in the 鈥減roofs of Jesus,鈥� which are really just Pascal grabbing at straws, what's wrong with the Jews, and other hallmarks of the big game of pinball that was 17th Century theology. And in fact, it comes off as rather desperate towards the end, which, perhaps can be expected from the father of fake-it-til-you-make-it theology. Some beautiful bits though, especially earlier on.
October 24, 2023
Ultra-apologetic pro-Christianity, with criticism on islam and Judaism (but at the same time a lot of appreciation for Judaism). Faith has to come by heart, not by reason; God hides and reveals himself at the same time; criticism on scepticism. Also strong criticism on scientific rationalism (Descartes), but at the same time Pascal also appreciates the use of reason. Pascal is a man of contrast and paradoxes.
June 28, 2023
鈥淭he profoundest and least exhausted books will probably always have something of the aphoristic and unexpected character of Pascal's 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉.鈥�
鈥旻riedrich Nietzsche
鈥旻riedrich Nietzsche
September 2, 2018
Imagine keeping a journal of your private thoughts, opinions, and deep philosophical and theological musings --- collected snippets and notes never intended for publication in any way --- and then having them appear in book form for three and a half centuries after your death. That, basically, is how the Pensees ("thoughts expressed in literary form") of Blaise Pascal came to exist.
This was a fascinating read, filled with many short, sometimes cryptic aphorisms, a good number of which -- but not all -- concern theological topics. Pascal was a devout Christian, a Catholic much influenced by Augustine as well as the Jansenists (think deeply committed Catholic Calvinists) with whom he met for worship. His temperment also clearly seems to lean toward the melancholy side, but doesn't diminish his writing.
Occasionally, a passage in Pensees can seem a little obscure or confusing, and there are sections where he dwells on one particular subject or another at length. There are also moments of unexpected humor, and also prosaic sections that are suddenly deeply profound. I happened to read an article about the structure and background of Pensees before I tackled it, which was very helpful! This is the sort of volume that is as enjoyable to review later for all the quotes you inevitably underlined, as it is to read initially.
A couple of typical passages:
"Some seek their good in authority, some in intellectual inquiry and knowledge, some in pleasure."
"How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping"
A solid classic worthy of being acquainted with!
This was a fascinating read, filled with many short, sometimes cryptic aphorisms, a good number of which -- but not all -- concern theological topics. Pascal was a devout Christian, a Catholic much influenced by Augustine as well as the Jansenists (think deeply committed Catholic Calvinists) with whom he met for worship. His temperment also clearly seems to lean toward the melancholy side, but doesn't diminish his writing.
Occasionally, a passage in Pensees can seem a little obscure or confusing, and there are sections where he dwells on one particular subject or another at length. There are also moments of unexpected humor, and also prosaic sections that are suddenly deeply profound. I happened to read an article about the structure and background of Pensees before I tackled it, which was very helpful! This is the sort of volume that is as enjoyable to review later for all the quotes you inevitably underlined, as it is to read initially.
A couple of typical passages:
"Some seek their good in authority, some in intellectual inquiry and knowledge, some in pleasure."
"How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping"
A solid classic worthy of being acquainted with!
July 27, 2018
陌lk alt谋 b枚l眉m眉yle Montaigne鈥檌n "Denemeler"i gibi ba艧ucu kitab谋 niteli臒i ta艧谋yan Pascal鈥櫮眓 "顿眉艧眉苍肠别濒别谤颈"nin geriye kalan b枚l眉mleri i莽in ne yaz谋k ki ayn谋 艧eyi s枚ylemek 莽ok zor. Ke艧ke kitap ikiye b枚l眉n眉p o 艧ekilde okuyucuya sunulsaym谋艧 莽眉nk眉 Hristiyan Dininin Savunmas谋 olan 350 sayfal谋k k谋s谋m Pascal鈥櫮眓 kendini nas谋l Tanr谋鈥檡a adad谋臒谋n谋n g枚stergesi olmakla beraber okuyucuya da yararl谋 hi莽bir 艧ey sunmuyor. Sadece Pascal鈥櫮� daha iyi tan谋mam谋za yard谋mc谋 olan bu k谋s谋m y眉z眉nden kitab谋n ilk 150 sayfas谋n谋 枚neriyorum. Gen莽 ya艧谋nda kansere yenilen 眉nl眉 Frans谋z matematik莽inin insanlar谋n ne kadar sefil varl谋klar oldu臒unu alt谋n谋 莽izdi臒i eserde her ne kadar Montaigne鈥檌 ele艧tirse de onun izinden giderek hayata dair 枚nemli vurgular yapmaktan kendini alamam谋艧. Neredeyse her sat谋r谋n alt谋n谋 莽izebilece臒iniz ilk alt谋 b枚l眉m眉yle Pascal鈥櫮眓 filozof ki艧ili臒ine hayran kal谋yorsunuz; fakat yava艧 yava艧 din savunmas谋na d枚nen kitap bir yerden sonra kendini tekrar ederek yazara kar艧谋 ilginizin kaybolmas谋na neden oluyor.
24.07.2018
陌stanbul, T眉rkiye
Alp Turgut
24.07.2018
陌stanbul, T眉rkiye
Alp Turgut
February 28, 2024
Blaise Pascal must not have been very fun at parties.听 But like Schopenhauer, this 17th Century philosopher and mathematician has provided a ray of hope and light for many readers despite his bleak and depressing pessimism.
Poor Pascal was sickly much of his life, and during protracted periods of convalescence, he had plenty of time to think about how miserable life could be.听 So we get pages and pages of this kind of cheerful stuff:
"The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end for ever."
Geez, that reminds me of the time I scared the hell out of my high school English teacher when he read my poetry submission that I wrote while binging on Joy Division after my girlfriend broke up with me, and I was feeling particularly goth.听
But Pascal was a genius, so he wasn't going to just sit in his bed and whine.听 His mind tried to find meaning in it all.听 He came to the conclusion that the human condition is quite a dichotomy between incredible greatness and astounding lowliness.听 Hegel obviously wasn't the first to use a dialectic to reach conclusions about the mysteries of our existence.
And from this conclusion, Pascal became incredulous at how many people, even in his day, stumbled through life willfully ignorant to matters of the soul and the infinite.听 After all, he can't think of anything of greater importance to ourselves than our own ultimate end, and so he assumes you must be absolutely brainless to have no interest in knowing more about it.听 He says he has little patience for people who are content to say, "Oh, I don't believe in all that God stuff, or eternal life, or a soul, because there's no proof anyway," then spend their lives immersed with work and diversions so as not to think anymore about it.听 What do they mean by there's no proof?听 Did they even bother to look for any?听 Or did they just read a few pages of scripture and found it too preachy, or did they have a bored football coach teaching them religious studies in school, or some neurotic Bible-thumping parent who turned them off to the whole idea of active spirituality?
"We know that there is an infinite, and are ignorant of its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is an infinity in number. But we do not know what it is. It is false that it is even, it is false that it is odd; for the addition of a unit can make no change in its nature. Yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this is certainly true of every finite number). So we may well know that there is a God without knowing what He is."
Remember, Pascal was, after all, a mathematician.听听So he tried to appeal to the rational side of the unbeliever, even though ultimately God's existence cannot be proven by reason.听 "If you were the bettin' kind," he would say in his own 17th Century vernacular, "and if you had about a 50/50 chance of winning infinite money or losing nothing by believing in God, but a 100% probability of getting zilch by not believing in God, wouldn't you take the odds of believing in at least the possibility of God?"听
This is known as Pascal's Wager, and if it sounds familiar, well, it came from this book.听听
Of course, when Pascal was talking about "God," he meant the Christian God.听 Catholic, in fact.听 The same odds didn't apply to "false" religions.听 Now, I personally have all kinds of issues with this whole idea which I won't get into here.听 But his philosophy is hardly universal.听 At least I don't think he was necessarily trying to convert anyone, if I take his words at face value.听 Rather, he wanted to stimulate interest within the agnostic or the sceptic to spend more time trying to enlighten themselves on the subject and to maybe try living a more moral life rather than going hunting for wabbits or whatever else people did when there were no smart phones, flat screen TVs, or video games, "so strength be given to lowliness."
I have some other quibbles with the book overall.听 Part of it may be attributable to the fact that it is unfinished.听 His thoughts are often very disjointed, he repeats himself often, some sentences are not even complete statements, and he tries to organize his wisdom into some sort of number system which is ultimately arbitrary and useless.听 It does make it easy to refer back to specific lines, however.听听
But not all the lines are worth remembering.听 He and his sister, Jacqueline, had to split their inheritance, but she wanted to join a convent in Port-Royal and pressured him to sign over her portion of the money to the nuns.听 Not only did he consider the sisters of Port-Royal a "cult," but to give them so much of the family estate left him quite pissed off.听 So he couldn't help but give them a little dig in this book.
"The children of Port-Royal, who do not receive this stimulus of envy and glory, fall into carelessness."
That's philosophy at its most analytic and finest, right there.
We also get some other gems like, "Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul..." Okay, that's taken a little out of context, but after reading the whole section multiple times, I can't figure out for the life of me what he meant.听听
This book is often hailed as one of the greatest examples of literature in the French language, but I can't get fully behind that assessment.听 I do appreciate what Pascal was trying to do, and there is a lot of what he says that is very poignant, but his talent was in inventing calculators and prooving Euclidean propositions, not necessarily in theology.
But should you read it?听 Absolutely.听 See for yourself what you think.听 It's not terribly long and is rather easy to read.听 And who knows?听 He might just make a believer out of you.
SCORE: 3.5, rounded to 4 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 out of 5
Poor Pascal was sickly much of his life, and during protracted periods of convalescence, he had plenty of time to think about how miserable life could be.听 So we get pages and pages of this kind of cheerful stuff:
"The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end for ever."
Geez, that reminds me of the time I scared the hell out of my high school English teacher when he read my poetry submission that I wrote while binging on Joy Division after my girlfriend broke up with me, and I was feeling particularly goth.听
But Pascal was a genius, so he wasn't going to just sit in his bed and whine.听 His mind tried to find meaning in it all.听 He came to the conclusion that the human condition is quite a dichotomy between incredible greatness and astounding lowliness.听 Hegel obviously wasn't the first to use a dialectic to reach conclusions about the mysteries of our existence.
And from this conclusion, Pascal became incredulous at how many people, even in his day, stumbled through life willfully ignorant to matters of the soul and the infinite.听 After all, he can't think of anything of greater importance to ourselves than our own ultimate end, and so he assumes you must be absolutely brainless to have no interest in knowing more about it.听 He says he has little patience for people who are content to say, "Oh, I don't believe in all that God stuff, or eternal life, or a soul, because there's no proof anyway," then spend their lives immersed with work and diversions so as not to think anymore about it.听 What do they mean by there's no proof?听 Did they even bother to look for any?听 Or did they just read a few pages of scripture and found it too preachy, or did they have a bored football coach teaching them religious studies in school, or some neurotic Bible-thumping parent who turned them off to the whole idea of active spirituality?
"We know that there is an infinite, and are ignorant of its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is an infinity in number. But we do not know what it is. It is false that it is even, it is false that it is odd; for the addition of a unit can make no change in its nature. Yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this is certainly true of every finite number). So we may well know that there is a God without knowing what He is."
Remember, Pascal was, after all, a mathematician.听听So he tried to appeal to the rational side of the unbeliever, even though ultimately God's existence cannot be proven by reason.听 "If you were the bettin' kind," he would say in his own 17th Century vernacular, "and if you had about a 50/50 chance of winning infinite money or losing nothing by believing in God, but a 100% probability of getting zilch by not believing in God, wouldn't you take the odds of believing in at least the possibility of God?"听
This is known as Pascal's Wager, and if it sounds familiar, well, it came from this book.听听
Of course, when Pascal was talking about "God," he meant the Christian God.听 Catholic, in fact.听 The same odds didn't apply to "false" religions.听 Now, I personally have all kinds of issues with this whole idea which I won't get into here.听 But his philosophy is hardly universal.听 At least I don't think he was necessarily trying to convert anyone, if I take his words at face value.听 Rather, he wanted to stimulate interest within the agnostic or the sceptic to spend more time trying to enlighten themselves on the subject and to maybe try living a more moral life rather than going hunting for wabbits or whatever else people did when there were no smart phones, flat screen TVs, or video games, "so strength be given to lowliness."
I have some other quibbles with the book overall.听 Part of it may be attributable to the fact that it is unfinished.听 His thoughts are often very disjointed, he repeats himself often, some sentences are not even complete statements, and he tries to organize his wisdom into some sort of number system which is ultimately arbitrary and useless.听 It does make it easy to refer back to specific lines, however.听听
But not all the lines are worth remembering.听 He and his sister, Jacqueline, had to split their inheritance, but she wanted to join a convent in Port-Royal and pressured him to sign over her portion of the money to the nuns.听 Not only did he consider the sisters of Port-Royal a "cult," but to give them so much of the family estate left him quite pissed off.听 So he couldn't help but give them a little dig in this book.
"The children of Port-Royal, who do not receive this stimulus of envy and glory, fall into carelessness."
That's philosophy at its most analytic and finest, right there.
We also get some other gems like, "Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul..." Okay, that's taken a little out of context, but after reading the whole section multiple times, I can't figure out for the life of me what he meant.听听
This book is often hailed as one of the greatest examples of literature in the French language, but I can't get fully behind that assessment.听 I do appreciate what Pascal was trying to do, and there is a lot of what he says that is very poignant, but his talent was in inventing calculators and prooving Euclidean propositions, not necessarily in theology.
But should you read it?听 Absolutely.听 See for yourself what you think.听 It's not terribly long and is rather easy to read.听 And who knows?听 He might just make a believer out of you.
SCORE: 3.5, rounded to 4 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉 out of 5
September 15, 2023
Primul lucru pe care l-am 卯nv膬葲at a fost c膬 sunt om prin excelen葲膬, 'nici 卯nger, nici jivin膬'. Pascal a葯az膬 omul de la bun 卯nceput la mijlocul celor dou膬 extreme - neantul 葯i infinitul: "M膬rgini葲i cum suntem 卯n tot felul, starea aceasta de mijloc 卯ntre dou膬 extreme, se reg膬se葯te 卯n toate facult膬葲ile noastre."
S膬 ne cunoa葯tem a葯adar puterile: "suntem ceva, dar nu suntem totul; pentru c膬 suntem ceva, principiile primordiale, care purced din neant, scap膬 cunoa葯terii noastre; iar pentru c膬 suntem numai ceva, priveli葯tea nem膬rginirii ne este ascuns膬. Odat膬 bine 卯n葲elese toate acestea, cred c膬 fiecare se va 卯mp膬ca cu starea pe care i-a randuit-o natura. Condi葲ia aceasta de mijloc care ne-a fost h膬r膬zit膬, fiind mereu departat膬 de extreme, ce mai conteaz膬 c膬 omul pricepe lucrurile o idee mai bine?
Dac膬 omul s-ar cerceta mai 卯nt芒i pe sine, ar vedea c芒t este de neputincios s膬 treac膬 dincolo de el. Cum s-ar putea ca o parte s膬 cunoasc膬 卯ntregul?"
葮tim unde 葯i c芒t suntem, dar ce suntem? - O trestie g芒nditoare- "Demnitatea nu trebuie s膬 mi-o caut nicidecum prin 卯ntindere, ci prin buna r芒nduial膬 a g芒ndirii mele. St膬p芒nind p膬m芒nturi nu voi avea niciun avantaj. 脦n 卯ntindere, universul m膬 cuprinde 葯i m膬 卯nghite ca pe o nimica toat膬; prin g芒ndire, eu il cuprind.
A葯adar, toat膬 demnitatea noastr膬 卯葯i are temeiul 卯n g芒ndire. S膬 ne str膬duim s膬 g芒ndim curat."
Deci, 卯n calitate de ceva, am libertatea s膬 m膬 av芒nt 卯ncotro doresc, s膬 fug c芒t doresc spre extremele de neatins "E bine s膬 fii sleit 葯i istovit de c膬utarea zadarnic膬 a adev膬ratei fericiri, pentru ca s膬 implori ajutorul M芒ntuitorului."
S膬 ne cunoa葯tem a葯adar puterile: "suntem ceva, dar nu suntem totul; pentru c膬 suntem ceva, principiile primordiale, care purced din neant, scap膬 cunoa葯terii noastre; iar pentru c膬 suntem numai ceva, priveli葯tea nem膬rginirii ne este ascuns膬. Odat膬 bine 卯n葲elese toate acestea, cred c膬 fiecare se va 卯mp膬ca cu starea pe care i-a randuit-o natura. Condi葲ia aceasta de mijloc care ne-a fost h膬r膬zit膬, fiind mereu departat膬 de extreme, ce mai conteaz膬 c膬 omul pricepe lucrurile o idee mai bine?
Dac膬 omul s-ar cerceta mai 卯nt芒i pe sine, ar vedea c芒t este de neputincios s膬 treac膬 dincolo de el. Cum s-ar putea ca o parte s膬 cunoasc膬 卯ntregul?"
葮tim unde 葯i c芒t suntem, dar ce suntem? - O trestie g芒nditoare- "Demnitatea nu trebuie s膬 mi-o caut nicidecum prin 卯ntindere, ci prin buna r芒nduial膬 a g芒ndirii mele. St膬p芒nind p膬m芒nturi nu voi avea niciun avantaj. 脦n 卯ntindere, universul m膬 cuprinde 葯i m膬 卯nghite ca pe o nimica toat膬; prin g芒ndire, eu il cuprind.
A葯adar, toat膬 demnitatea noastr膬 卯葯i are temeiul 卯n g芒ndire. S膬 ne str膬duim s膬 g芒ndim curat."
Deci, 卯n calitate de ceva, am libertatea s膬 m膬 av芒nt 卯ncotro doresc, s膬 fug c芒t doresc spre extremele de neatins "E bine s膬 fii sleit 葯i istovit de c膬utarea zadarnic膬 a adev膬ratei fericiri, pentru ca s膬 implori ajutorul M芒ntuitorului."
December 30, 2013
賯丿 毓乇賮鬲 亘丕爻賰丕賱 丕賱毓丕賱賲 賵丕賱賲禺鬲乇毓 賱賱丌賱賴 丕賱丨丕爻亘丞 賵賯賵丕賳賷賳 亘丕爻賰丕賱 亘丕賷丕賲 丕賱賲丿乇爻丞
賵丕賱丌賳 賳賯乇兀 亘亘丕爻賰丕賱 丕賱丕賳爻丕賳 (亘賳賮爻賴 賵毓賯賱賴 賵賯賱亘賴)
丕賱賳夭毓丞 丕賱氐賵賮賷丞 賵丨亘 丕賱賱賴 鬲睾賱亘 毓賱賶 亘丕爻賰丕賱 賵賵丕囟丨 鬲兀孬賷乇 賲乇囟賴 賵鬲乇亘賷鬲賴 丕賱丿賷賳賷丞 毓賱賷賴
賮禺賵丕胤乇賴 丿丕乇鬲 亘毓賯賷丿鬲賴 賵亘丕賱賰賵賳 賵亘鬲兀賲賱丕鬲賴 賵乇丿賴 毓賱賶 丕賱賲賱丨丿賷賳 賵鬲賲爻賰賴 亘毓賯賷丿鬲賴 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷丞 賵賲賷賵賱賴 賱賱賷賴賵丿賷賴
賵賴賵 賲賳 丕賱賮賱丕爻賮丞 丕賱匕賷賳 胤丕賱亘賵丕 亘丕毓丕丿丞 丕賱賷賴賵丿 賱賮賱爻胤賷賳
賵賲賳 丕賱賲賳丕氐乇賷賳 賱賯囟賷丞 毓賵丿丞 丕賱賷賴賵丿 廿賱賶 賮賱爻胤賷賳 毓賱賶 兀爻爻 丿賷賳賷丞 賮賷賯賵賱 " 廿賳 亘賯丕亍 丕賱賷賴賵丿 4000 爻賳丞 爻亘亘 賰丕賮 賱賱丕賯鬲賳丕毓 亘兀賳 丕賱賱賴 賲賵噩賵丿"
丕賯鬲亘爻 賲賳 禺賵丕胤乇賴
孬賲丞 賮卅鬲賷賳 賲賳 丕賱賳丕爻 賷賲賰賳 丕賳 賷爻賲賵丕 毓丕賯賱賷賳 賵賴賲 丕賲丕 丕賱匕賷賳 賷禺丿賲賵賳 丕賱賱賴 賲賳 賰賱 賯賱賵亘賴賲 賱丕賳賴賲 賷毓乇賮賵賳賴 賵丕賲丕 丕賱匕賷賳 賷亘丨孬賵賳 毓賳賴 賲賳 賰賱 賯賱賵亘賴賲 賱丕賳賴賲 賱丕 賷毓乇賮賵賳賴
丕賲丕 丕賱匕賷賳 賷毓賷卮賵賳 丿賵賳 丕賳 賷毓乇賮賵賴 賵賷亘丨孬賵 毓賳賴 賮賴賲 賷乇賵賳 丕賳賴賲 睾賷乇 噩丿賷乇賷賳 丕賳 賷賴鬲賲賵丕 亘丕賳賮爻賴賲 賮賴賱 賷賰賵賳賵丕 噩丿賷乇賷賳 亘丕賴鬲賲丕賲 丕賱睾賷乇責
賷噩亘 丕賳 賱丕 鬲氐丿賯 卮賷卅丕賸 賲丕 賱賲 鬲丨鬲賰賲 丕賱賶 匕丕鬲賰 賵賰兀賳賰 賲丕 爻賲毓鬲 卮賷卅丕賸 賯胤
丕賳 丕賳賯賷丕丕丿 匕丕鬲賰 賱匕丕鬲賰 賵氐賵鬲 毓賯賱賰 丕賱賲爻鬲賲乇 賱丕 毓賯賱 睾賷乇賰 賴賵 賲丕 賷噩亘 丕賳 賷丨賲賱賰 毓賱賶 丕賱鬲氐丿賷賯
賵鬲氐丿賷賯賰 賱賴 賲賳 丕賱丕賴賲賷丞 亘賲賰丕賳 丕匕 賱賵 賱賲 鬲賰賳 孬賲丞 賯丕毓丿丞 賱賱鬲氐丿賷賯 賱丕賲賰賳 丕賳 賷賰賵賳 賲卅丞 賲賳 丕賱丕卮賷丕亍 丕賱賲賳丕賯囟丞 賱亘毓囟賴丕 丨賯賷賯丞 賮賷 賵賯鬲 賲毓丕賸
賱丕 賷賲賱 丕賱丕賳爻丕賳 丕賱賲兀賰賱 賵丕賱賳賵賲 賮賷 賰賱 賷賵賲 賱丕賳 丕賱噩賵毓 賷毓丕賵丿賴 賵賰匕賱賰 丕賱賳毓丕爻 賵賱賵賱丕 匕賱賰 賱賲賱賴丕 賵賱匕賱賰 賷賲賱 丕賱丕賲賵乇 丕賱乇賵丨賷丞 賲賳 賱賲 賷噩毓 丕賱賷賴丕
丕賱毓賱丕卅賯 丕賱鬲賷 鬲乇亘胤 亘毓囟 丕賱賳丕爻 亘丕丨鬲乇丕賲 丕賱亘毓囟 丕賱丌禺乇 賴賷 賮賷 丕賱睾丕賱亘 毓賱丕卅賯 囟乇賵乇賷丞 賱丕賳 丕賱賳丕爻 賷噩亘 丕賳 賷賰賵賳賵丕 毓賱賶 賲乇丕鬲亘 賲禺鬲賱賮丞, 噩賲賷毓賴賲 賷乇賷丿 丕賱爻賷胤乇丞 賵賱丕 賷爻鬲胤賷毓賴丕 噩賲賷毓賴賲 賵丕賳賲丕 賷爻鬲胤毓賷賴丕 亘毓囟賴賲
丕賱丕丨鬲乇丕賲 賲毓賳丕賴 丕夭毓噩 賳賮爻賰!
賴匕賴 丕賱丨乇亘 丕賱亘丕胤賳賷丞 丕賱賯丕卅賲丞 亘賷賳 丕賱毓賯賱 賵丕賱丕賴賵丕亍 賯丿 賯爻賲鬲 卮丿丕丞 丕賱爻賱丕賲 丕賱賶 賮卅鬲賷賳 賮賲賳賴賲 賲賳 丕乇丕丿賵丕 丕賱賰賮乇 亘丕賱丕賴賵丕亍 賱賷氐亘丨賵丕 丕賱賴丞 賵睾賷乇賴賲 丕乇丕丿賵丕 丕賱賰賮乇 亘丕賱毓賯賱 賱賷氐亘丨賵丕 亘賴丕卅賲 賵賱賰賳 賱丕 賴丐賱丕亍 賵賱丕 丕賵賱卅賰 丕爻鬲胤丕毓賵丕 丕賱賶 匕賱賰 爻亘賷賱丕 賮丕賱毓賯賱 亘丕賯 丕亘丿丕 賷鬲賴賲 丕賱丕賴賵丕亍 亘丕賱丨賯丕乇丞 賵丕賱噩賵乇 賵賷毓賰乇 氐賮賵 丕賱賲爻鬲爻賱賲賷賳 賱賴丕 賵丕賱丕賴賵丕亍 丨賷丞 丕亘丿丕賸# 賮賷 丕賱丿賷賳 賷乇賷丿賵賳 丕賱丕賳氐乇丕賮 毓賳賴丕
丕賱賵賱丿 賴賵 丕賱賮囟賷賱丞 賵丕賱賲賱賰 賴賵 禺亘孬 丕賱丕賳爻丕賳 賵賯丿 爻賲賷 賲賱賰丕賸 賱丕賳 噩賲賷毓 丕賱丕毓囟丕亍 鬲胤賷毓賴 賵卮賷禺丕賸 賱丕賳賴 賮賷 賯賱亘 丕賱丕賳爻丕賳 賲賳匕 丕賱丨丿丕孬丞 丕賱賶 丕賱卮賷禺賵禺丞 賵噩丕賴賱丕賸 賱丕賳賴 賷賯賵丿 丕賱丕賳爻丕賳 賮賷 胤乇賷賯 丕賱賴賱丕賰 丕賱鬲賷 賱丕 賷鬲亘氐乇 賮賷 毓賵丕賯亘賴丕
賱賷爻鬲 丕賱爻毓丕丿丞 禺丕乇噩丕賸 毓賳丕 賵賱丕 賮賷賳丕 丕賳賴丕 賮賷 丕賱賱賴 賵賴賷 禺丕乇噩丕賸 賲賳丕 賵賮賷賳丕
丕賳賲丕 丕賱胤乇賷賯 賴賵 丕賳 鬲乇賷丿 賲丕 賷乇賷丿 丕賱賱賴
November 20, 2011
I haven't finished this and I still feel almost ready to give it a 5, Be sure what you believe from the Bible. But read this for insight even should you disagree with it.
Update: I'd call this a book to "read in" rather than a book to read only cover to cover, just me,
Update: I'd call this a book to "read in" rather than a book to read only cover to cover, just me,
December 10, 2024
OKAY FINE I'm changing my rating - Pascal couldn't help but weasel his way back into my good graces....i guess it just took a midnight reread for this essay to do it. although maybe after Kant, anything seems fabulous. not sure what that says, but i said it. i need to go to bed.
July 6, 2019
Fouiller dans les papiers d'un mort et publier ses r茅flexions misanthropes et pessimistes. Le contenu est 茅reintant.
October 21, 2020
A long boring slog with golden nuggets interspersed within. Love hate relationship with this book. Been an updown on the shelf journey of several years
July 5, 2016
There are multiple levels to this book. It works best when he's sharing his wisdom by using aphorisms (short pithy and usually wise statements ). They're so many pearls within this book that it wouldn't be worthwhile to highlight with a highlighter because you would highlight over half of the book. Pascal really has a great way of looking at the world and giving a smart sounding soundbite.
Matter of fact, I would say this is one of the best self help books I've ever came across. He clearly also had parts of a book ready to be published before he died. That's the parts where he proves the truth of the Christian faith by prophecy and its miracles with plenty of bible quotes and those parts flowed more like a book.
From time to time, I dip my toes into apologetic modern writers and not a one has done as well as Pascal does with this book.
In addition, Pascal does a really good job of using reason to show that reason can't give you faith, and, furthermore it will take away the mysteries that he holds so dearly.
I had recently read Hobbes "Leviathan" and the contrast with this book is enlightening. Hobbes sees the world 'deductively' and would starts with axioms, definitions and universals and then argue his points. Pascal does the opposite for the most part, he goes to the particular to the particular and then to the general. Both touch on many of the same themes, but, for example, Hobbes will argue the Papist are flawed and miracles are suspect, while Pascal will argue for the truth of the only true universal church (Catholicism) and miracles are necessary for Christianity. To Pascal tradition, culture and faith rule supremely, Hobbes says the opposite. It's clear which of the two the Enlightenment embraced and which one they ignored.
The book is much more than just about religion (though a lot of it is). His world view and his use of aphorisms cohere much more than Nietzsche's do. These two thinkers, Nietzsche and Pascal are completely antithetical but use a similar approach in edifying.
I have a problem with using aphorisms for making your points. One can read into them something that is not true and almost always there opposite can be just as true. ("A wise man holds his tongue before speaking", oh my, how wise how deep. But wait it can be just as true that "the wise should always speak (after all he is wise)").
He's good at his logic. One of my favorites was something like "the epicureans and stoics conclusions are right but we know they are wrong since if there premises were negated they would still be just as true". That's a really interesting way of demonstrating proof by contradiction, but the same logic could be applied to his core beliefs too I suspect.
I had to reflect on his statement "that we know there is one true religion because there are very many false religions". I realized he is actually right, but it's for an obscure reason and I'll let the reader figure out for himself. (Oh heck, I'll tell ya. For there to be a 'false religion' there must be a true religion otherwise there can be no such thing as religion. Look it's his argument not mine).
Overall his method of argumentation is better than most modern day apologia, there is a large portion of the book that deals with witty sayings that can help one cope with the day-to-day, most modern day apologetic arguments go no further than what's in this book, and it's fun to watch someone using reason to defeat reason.
Matter of fact, I would say this is one of the best self help books I've ever came across. He clearly also had parts of a book ready to be published before he died. That's the parts where he proves the truth of the Christian faith by prophecy and its miracles with plenty of bible quotes and those parts flowed more like a book.
From time to time, I dip my toes into apologetic modern writers and not a one has done as well as Pascal does with this book.
In addition, Pascal does a really good job of using reason to show that reason can't give you faith, and, furthermore it will take away the mysteries that he holds so dearly.
I had recently read Hobbes "Leviathan" and the contrast with this book is enlightening. Hobbes sees the world 'deductively' and would starts with axioms, definitions and universals and then argue his points. Pascal does the opposite for the most part, he goes to the particular to the particular and then to the general. Both touch on many of the same themes, but, for example, Hobbes will argue the Papist are flawed and miracles are suspect, while Pascal will argue for the truth of the only true universal church (Catholicism) and miracles are necessary for Christianity. To Pascal tradition, culture and faith rule supremely, Hobbes says the opposite. It's clear which of the two the Enlightenment embraced and which one they ignored.
The book is much more than just about religion (though a lot of it is). His world view and his use of aphorisms cohere much more than Nietzsche's do. These two thinkers, Nietzsche and Pascal are completely antithetical but use a similar approach in edifying.
I have a problem with using aphorisms for making your points. One can read into them something that is not true and almost always there opposite can be just as true. ("A wise man holds his tongue before speaking", oh my, how wise how deep. But wait it can be just as true that "the wise should always speak (after all he is wise)").
He's good at his logic. One of my favorites was something like "the epicureans and stoics conclusions are right but we know they are wrong since if there premises were negated they would still be just as true". That's a really interesting way of demonstrating proof by contradiction, but the same logic could be applied to his core beliefs too I suspect.
I had to reflect on his statement "that we know there is one true religion because there are very many false religions". I realized he is actually right, but it's for an obscure reason and I'll let the reader figure out for himself. (Oh heck, I'll tell ya. For there to be a 'false religion' there must be a true religion otherwise there can be no such thing as religion. Look it's his argument not mine).
Overall his method of argumentation is better than most modern day apologia, there is a large portion of the book that deals with witty sayings that can help one cope with the day-to-day, most modern day apologetic arguments go no further than what's in this book, and it's fun to watch someone using reason to defeat reason.
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