How Pensées drew on Meditations on First Philosophy
A documented line of influence: Blaise Pascal demonstrably engaged René Descartes’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Meditations on First Philosophy
René Descartes · 1641
EnlightenmentThe influenced
Pensées
Blaise Pascal · 1670
EnlightenmentRelevance
8/10
On Pensées’s page
- The Pensées are in large part an anti-Cartesian book — to feel their force, know what Descartes claimed reason could reach
- Pascal names him and attacks him directly: he cannot forgive Descartes for a God that exists only to set the machine running, then is dismissed
- He takes Descartes' thinking self and dualism but denies the conclusion — reason cannot get you to God; that, for Pascal, is the whole error
On Meditations on First Philosophy’s page
- Descartes built a God reason could prove — and Pascal could not forgive him for it: "he has no further need of God"
- The Pensées keep the thinking self and the mind-body split, then turn on the rest as "useless and uncertain"
- This is the work Pascal is answering when he insists the heart, not the intellect, is the only road to faith