Read this if you…
- are interested in Pascal's wager
- like idea of math/physics genius turning to religion
- prefer short thoughts/quips to rigorous proofs
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian writings
- want a systematic coherent whole argument, this is a bunch of disjointed thoughts
The 
Take
A couple nice framings, but overall not poetic nor rigorous, odd middle ground that wasn’t very convincing
The lineage through Pensées
- The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Pensées built on it. - The *Pensées* are Pascal arguing with Montaigne on nearly every page — taking his skepticism and his portrait of human restlessness as the ground to build on - Pascal's 'Disproportion of Man' grows straight out of Montaigne's *Apology for Raymond Sebond*; he read it closely and said so - Read the *Essays* first and the *Pensées* sharpen into a reply: Montaigne shows you the doubt, Pascal tells you where it has to lead
- Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes. Pensées built on it. - 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
- Middlemarch by George Eliot. Pensées shaped it. - Eliot built Dorothea's mind on Pascal - In *Middlemarch*, Dorothea 'knew many passages of Pascal's *Pensées* by heart' and imagines that marrying the scholar Casaubon 'would be like marrying Pascal' — the *Pensées* are the measure of her hunger for a great intellect - Pascal also supplies the epigraphs to two of Eliot's chapters; the book Eliot read avidly from a young age is woven into the novel's bones
Depicted in Art
Anonymous mid-17th-century oil on canvas, bust-length, Pascal in a plain dark cloak against a neutral ground.
Miniature head-and-shoulders portrait of the young Pascal in dark clothes and white falling collar, painted in enamel on copper.
Paul Prieur, 1650
Terracotta or plaster preparatory study for Pajou's Pascal monument: the philosopher seated, head bowed in thought, draped robes falling around the chair.
Augustin Pajou, 1779
Oval bust portrait of Pascal in clerical dress, set within an engraved cartouche bearing his coat of arms below.
Gerard Edelinck
Recommended Editions
A.J. Krailsheimer
Penguin Classics · 1995
Krailsheimer's Penguin has carried the Pensées in English for decades. The wager and the heart's reasons fragments land cleanly, and the arrangement is easy to follow.
Please support us by purchasing through these links, at no extra cost to you!
Notable Quotes
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
- T. S. Eliot, poet & critic, 1888–1965: "I can think of no Christian writer, not Newman even, more to be commended than Pascal to those who doubt."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher, 1844–1900: "I do not read but love Pascal, as the most instructive victim of Christianity, murdered slowly, first physically, then psychologically."
- Voltaire, Enlightenment philosopher and writer, 1694–1778: "Je respecte le génie et l'éloquence de Pascal; mais plus je les respecte, plus je suis persuadé qu'il aurait lui-même corrigé beaucoup de ces Pensées."
- Pope Francis, 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, 1936–: "Pascal's monumental Pensées cannot really be understood unless we realize that Jesus Christ and sacred Scripture are both their centre and the key to their understanding."