Pensées

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1670

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Greatness and Misery of Mankind

One of the major underlying themes of the Pensées is the idea that mankind embodies a duality, or paradox, that occupies an intermediary state between two extremes. In this duality or paradox, various opposites are united in tension—for example, body and soul, both of which combine to form the human being. Blaise Pascal frequently articulates this idea in terms of mankind embodying both greatness and misery. For Pascal, this essential in-betweenness of humanity is related to its status before God, and especially to the theological idea that human beings were created in a state of happiness and perfection but experienced a fall into sin and evil. While still retaining something of their original spiritual greatness, human beings must suffer the consequences of original sin as they slowly strive to find their way back to God and the truth with the help of divine grace.

Pascal believes that the proof of humanity’s insufficiency and unhappiness is all around us. Pascal argues that the default state of humans is dissatisfaction: Humans sense that something is missing and they wish to connect with something outside of themselves, but they are easily prone to distractions and chasing false goals that can never bring true peace or satisfaction. This dissatisfaction, Pascal believes, is the result of mankind’s fallen state due to sin, and reason alone cannot hope to rescue humans from this sense of limbo. However, equally clear is humanity’s potential for greatness, as found especially in their capacity for thought and reflection. God’s grace is necessary for human beings to achieve their greatness—Pascal asserts that it is only through humility and faith in God that humans find the tranquility and wholeness they crave. Pascal urges: “Let us then realize our limitations. We are something and we are not everything” (62, emphasis added). Only by accepting their true and rightful place in the universe with humility can human beings find happiness and peace.

This truth about humanity, grasped through common experience, has important consequences for Pascal’s religious argument. He argues that only a religion that acknowledges this dual nature of man and makes it central to its teachings can be the true one, and he argues that Christianity alone fits this description. This is in contrast to a philosophical system like rationalism, which is altogether too optimistic about mankind’s condition and ability to grasp truth through his reason alone. Since it paints an incomplete picture of human nature, Pascal believes that rationalism leads to pride and hubris, making human beings think they can perfect their world and achieve perfect happiness solely through science. That the duality of mankind has become one of Pascal’s best-known ideas is reflected in “The Grandeur and Misery of Man,” the title of an apostolic letter of Pope Francis issued to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Pascal’s birth in June 2023.

The Value of Spiritual and Intellectual Conviction

Pascal’s writing in the Pensées is aimed in part at those in society who adopt an attitude of proud indifference to religion and the spiritual life. Pascal aims to show such people that such a stance is absurd, because to ignore our ultimate destiny and the meaning of life is to take no interest in the very core of what it means to be human and our own eternal happiness. In contrast to this indifference or deep-rooted skepticism, Pascal affirms the value of possessing spiritual and intellectual conviction.

In Series III, Pascal offers a direct and pointed essay denouncing the attitude of religious indifference—particularly indifference about what will happen to us after we die—as being in the worst possible interest to ourselves as human beings. Pascal states: “The immortality of the soul is something of such vital importance to us, affecting us so deeply, that one must have lost all feeling not to care about knowing the facts of the matter” (128, emphasis added). Such indifference, for Pascal, is rooted in the growing trend of philosophical skepticism, which regards ultimate questions as unknowable while pursuing only what can be scientifically verified (See: Background). Pascal regards this position of supreme doubt as ultimately empty, as it ignores the intuitive side of the human heart that he believes leads to religious truth and emotional satisfaction for human beings. His solution is to rearticulate the claims of Christianity as a valid and reasonable solution to the problems of human existence, in which it is in our best interests to believe.

In the midst of this discussion, Pascal makes a careful distinction between people who earnestly strive to pursue truth about “the final end of life” (129) even while struggling with doubt, and those who simply do not care and even take pride in this indifference. Pascal even praises sincere Jewish believers as being, on a foundational level, united with sincere Christian believers in the depth and value of their convictions. Pascal thus argues that the real divide is not between Jews and Christians, but between those who have firm and sincere beliefs and those who do not. He finds the latter group “contemptible,” arguing that this very absurd indifference goes to prove one of the main doctrines of religion: the corruption of human nature. In any event, it is to both groups that the book is addressed, with Pascal affirming throughout the Pensées that it is better for humans, in both a spiritual and psychological sense, to have genuine spiritual and intellectual convictions than to be indifferent or overly skeptical.

The Importance and Limitations of Reason

The Pensées take their place in a long tradition of thought in Christian culture about the relationship between reason and faith. According to most mainstream Christian thought, both faith and reason are valid and complementary experiences and sources of knowledge. Both as a Catholic and a man of science, Pascal shared this conviction: As he says, “Thought, then, is admirable and incomparable by its very nature” (231, emphasis added). However, writing in reaction to the 17th-century rationalist movement—in which some thinkers made claims on behalf of the power of reason to attain to all knowledge, even to the point of making religion unnecessary—Pascal is particularly concerned to dampen the excessive claims of rationalists, stressing that even reason has limits.

Whereas rational thinkers such as Descartes conceived of the human being as essentially a being who thinks—with thought thus isolated from other aspects of human activity—Pascal sees thought as working in tandem with other human functions, including feeling, will, and the imagination—hence his insistence that the “heart” is the ultimate source of humanity’s beliefs and convictions. Although the ability to think constitutes mankind’s dignity with regard to the rest of nature, it is not the only thing that makes human beings human. True to his convictions, Pascal seeks in the Pensées to prove God’s existence not from rational arguments, but from human psychology—namely, our natural feeling of incompleteness and unhappiness in this life.

Pascal therefore insists that human beings need both reason and religion. He argues that the most basic aspects of human life, such as the purpose of our existence or what happens after death, remain mysterious and cannot be solved by rational reflection alone. Elsewhere in the book, Pascal argues that man’s reason was corrupted by the Fall and, thus, cannot function rightly without the help of God’s grace (See: Index of Terms). This inherent human frailty can be seen from the fact that reason so often goes astray when deceived by human imagination or vanity.

On the whole, Pascal consistently questions the claim that reason is the sole source of knowledge. He instead places reason in perspective with other ways of acquiring knowledge, notably through faith in the Scriptures and divine revelation. In particular, Pascal’s belief in miracles shows his acceptance of sources of knowledge beyond reason. However, he stresses that while faith and miracles complement and supplement reason, they do not contradict it. As he states in Fragment 12, he desires to show that “religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect” (4, emphasis added). For Pascal, reason helps man recuperate some of his former prelapsarian greatness, but it is only a leap of faith that can enable him to achieve his full potential.