Blaise Pascal
1623-1662
Blaise Pascal was many
things - a theological controversialist, a superb French stylist, an inventor,
a scientist, and a mathematician. But he is most known for being a philosopher
of the heart. ‘The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing; we know
this in countless ways,’ he wrote in Pensées
(or Thoughts, 1670), his unfinished
book commending Christianity for skeptics. Given this and other references to
the heart, many take Pascal to be an early religious existentialist, who, like Kierkegaard, disparaged reason and
opted for an emotional leap of faith. One can only wager that God exists for
the sake of what can be gained by believing in God if God does exist. This
common description is a bit of caricature. The truth is more interesting.
Pascal was possibly the
greatest mind of his day, despite a frail constitution and chronic pain. His
mathematical and scientific abilities were prodigious and well known, sparking
the envy of the older and eminent philosopher René Descartes. Pascal’s scientific research proved that, against
received opinion, nature did not abhor a vacuum. He designed the first working
calculating machine in order to aid his father in assessing taxes. He also
engineered the first mass transit system to help the poor of Paris.
When Pascal discussed
religion, he did not put aside his exceptional intellect or deny the power of
reason. Instead, he employed a variety of arguments in support of Christian
faith, despite the fact that he disparaged traditional arguments for God’s
existence as too abstract and generic. (He distinguished ‘the God of the
philosophers’ from ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’.) Some of his most
searching and memorable lines come from his reflections on the human condition
contained in the fragments of Pensées,
which were written with the skeptic’s doubts in mind. Speaking for the baffled
skeptic, he writes, ‘Why have limits been set upon my knowledge, my height, my
life, making it a hundred rather than a thousand years?’ Pascal wanted the skeptic to be puzzled
by his own contingency and to seek out answers to these riddles.
Pascal addressed this
sense of cosmic wonder by delving into the condition of the one wondering.
‘What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how
paradoxical, how prodigious!’ This polarity at the heart of humanity - or
‘greatness and misery’ - is both troublesome and resistant to simple
explanation. Humans
are neither angels nor beasts; neither entirely praiseworthy nor entirely
blameworthy. They are, rather, enigmas to themselves.
Finding no consolation
in human philosophy, Pascal appeals to biblical revelation to solve the riddle.
We are great by virtue of our origin as God’s creatures, made in the divine
image; we are miserable because of original sin. Pascal believed that the
evidence for both propositions was abundant once one took them seriously.
Pascal presents this
case as an argument for Christianity, but he realised the limitations of
unaided human reason. Therefore,
he attempts to strike a balance between conceiving Christianity as either an
airtight rational system devoid of mystery or as a dark mystery that escapes
understanding entirely. Nevertheless, there are
‘reasons of the heart,’ or first principles, which can be known intuitively.
These include mathematical, common sense, and religious beliefs.
Pascal realised that
some skeptics would not be convinced to embrace Christianity by evidence or
rational arguments alone. Therefore, in the famous wager argument, he appealed
to the eternal stakes involved in Christianity’s truth or falsity with respect
to one’s belief or unbelief. The wager is not an argument for the existence of
God (which the hardcore skeptic would reject), but rather concerns situations
where one must make momentous prudential decisions under conditions of
uncertainty. Pascal challenges the unbeliever to believe in God, despite the
lack of proof, because of the infinite gain (heaven) that accompanies belief if
Christianity is true. There is little for the believer to lose if Christianity
is false. On the other hand, there is much to lose if Christianity is true and
one fails to believe (the loss of heaven). A terse fragment outside the longer
wager fragment captures the essence of this proposition: ‘I should be much more
afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of
being mistaken in believing it to be true.’
Therefore, Pascal
advises the unbeliever to become a believer by engaging in certain religious
practices that may result in belief and the eventual beatitude. But Pascal
thinks the skeptic can in this way find certainty; it is not brainwashing. He
may find ‘reasons of the heart.’ Pascal does not offer the wager as the essence
of faith, but as a step toward truer faith.
Because of the
fragmentary nature of Pensées, interpretations of the wager (and other
arguments) differ, but readers of Pascal will, nevertheless, find themselves in
for an intellectual adventure.
Douglas Groothuis
Suggested reading
Groothuis, D. 2003. On
Pascal. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Hammond,
N. 2003. The Cambridge
Companion to Pascal. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Pascal , P. 1995 [1670].
Pensées. Harmondsdworth: Penguin.
