Pensées

Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont, France, in 1623 and moved to Paris with his family in 1631. Pascal’s father, Etienne, was a noted mathematician who personally educated his children, including Pascal and his sister, Jacqueline.

Pascal, like his sister, showed himself early on as a prodigy and polymath. Especially gifted in mathematics, he designed at the age of 21 a calculating device, the “Pascaline,” often considered an ancestor of the modern digital calculator and computer. Later Pascal contributed to physics, conducting experiments in atmospheric pressure that yielded the discovery known today as “Pascal’s principle,” and to probability theory in mathematics. Toward the end of his life, Pascal designed what is often considered the first public transport system, consisting of horse-drawn carriages running across the Paris streets on schedule.

Alongside science, religion was central to Pascal’s life. A devout Roman Catholic, he became attracted as a young adult to the Jansenist religious movement (See: Background). Pascal’s turn to religion was intensified by a mystical “Night of Fire” that he experienced in November 1654 and later documented in the Pensées. Both the Pensées and Pascal’s other major literary work, the Provincial Letters, reflected religious controversies, especially the clash between Jansenism and the Jesuits, and between Christianity and philosophical rationalism and skepticism. Pascal wrote the various notes that make up the Pensées between the summers of 1657 and 1658; however, his planned Apology for the Christian Faith remained unfinished when he died of a stomach ulcer in 1662, at the age of only 39. His last words were reportedly, “May God never abandon me.”

Pascal’s work as a religious philosopher represents a renewed emphasis on spirituality in reaction to scientific rationalism in early modern thought. His writing style is considered foundational to modern French prose, and he is often ranked among the major thinkers of the 17th century, whose analysis of fundamental human problems still has relevance today.