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Pensées - Enhanced Version

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I always thought of Pascal as a great scientist, but as a somewhat dated Christian apologist. The general treatment of Pascal by both science and humanities is at best an unreflective nod to the importance of his scientific discoveries and a momentary and uncomfortable glance at his `other' writings.

The lack of serious consideration given to Pascal's `other' writings by philosophy and theology departments and their absence from science curriculums is indicative of major bias and ignorance. Why?

Pascal's science is embarassing to defenders of prevalent Darwinian atheistic science because of his zeal for the Christian faith. Pascal made some important discoveries but he "abandoned science for religion" and for that reason is tagged as an historical anachronism - he like many of the scientists of the 17th century were heavily tainted with `folk belief' and superstitions.

Pascal's Science and Faith is embarassing to those philosophers and theologians that cannot reconcile the two aspects of human Pensees - thoughts. They like to think of Pascal as an early `existentialist' like Kierkegaard who made a `leap' of faith against the atheistic dogmas of material science; but Pascal did not support their radical dichotomy of science versus faith.

Shunned on both sides for different reasons (for centuries!), Pascal is finally becoming more and more appreciated as someone who was `between' faith and science; a position becoming more fashionable.

All you have to do is read `The Pensees' to quickly see it as one of the most important, beautiful and penetrating books ever written. The Pensees (`Thoughts') are a long series of fragments on the the human situation, Jesus Christ, God, revelation, Infinity and finitude. But it is the little pieces that you find, like lost treasures, that ring through to your very being that sets Pascal's Pensees apart as a book for living and reflecting and not merely analyzing.

"We sail over a vast expanse, ever uncertain, ever adrift, carried to and fro. To whatever point we think to fix and fasten ourselves it shifts and leaves us; and if we pursue it it escapes our grasp, slips away, fleeing in eternal flight - Man's condition: inconstancy, ennui, unrest."

"The last step that Reason takes is to recognize that there is an infinity of things that lie beyond it. Reason is a poor thing indeed if it does not succed in knowing that."

This book, representing Pascal's 'pensees', or thoughts, contains many provocative views that have managed to arouse critics from many different perspectives. And while there are several strains of Pascal's thought that I considerably dissent from, it can hardly be denied that in many ways, Pascal's insights into human character as it relates to the divine are not easily dismissed, at least intellectually.

Because this work is a collection of thoughts rather than a systematic presentation, which is what Pascal ultimately had in mind but his illness and subsequent death prevented, the reader will likely find Pascal to be quite quotable. There are quite a few 'one liners' in here that are profound to the point of being humorous when one thinks about how insightful his thoughts are. And Pascal, in arguing in favor of the truth of Christianity, makes a very big investment in fulfilled prophecy and the history of the Jews that readers should find interesting. His 8 page discourse on indifference at the beginning of the second section is among the best 8 pages I've ever read and have succeeded in providing a noticeable amount of discomfort for atheists for three centuries now.

The portion of Pensees that is the most well known is Pascal's wager argument early in the second section. Personally, this argument, while interesting, is not the most compelling argument he makes and I consider it a shame that the wager argument has really overshadowed what I believe to be Pascal's most provocative argument in favor of the Christian religion - his anthropological argument. While not stated in this manner, section 1 of Pensees spends considerable time developing the notion that the extreme paradox of humanity (as Pascal sees it) of both immense greatness and horrible evil demand an explanation. How can man be both, and what worldview best explains this clear reality? These are the questions that Pascal presents, and he argues that only the Biblical narrative of man from creation forward provides an intelligent framework upon which to explain the human condition adequately. It is a very provocative argument that a number of thoughtful theologians from Groothuis to McKenzie have opined upon quite recently, and it is an argument that deserves extensive thought not just about the Christian religion, but about the very nature of man and whether Pascal's grasp of it is correct or not. I have found that one can take the sketches of the argument put forward by Pascal here and get into some very deep anthropological water that is healthy, even if one ultimately takes issue with Pascal's paradox.

Being a Jansenist, Pascal was not as willing as mainstream Roman Catholicism to rely on human reason, believing that man's 'wretchedness' calls such reason into question. As such, the reader will notice that Pascal tends to employ a general polemic against reason, even though he clearly refutes the complete abandonment of reason. But as part of this general polemic, he clearly distrusts natural theology as well as the rationalizations of the philosophers (which is kind of ironic), believing that philosophical rationalizing is ultimately an impediment to faith. It is in these basic areas (and a few others) which I respectfully dissent from Pascal in varying degrees. Pascal intends here to walk a fine line between what he believed to be the logical absurdity of faith in complete contradiction to reason, but also of the bankruptcy as he saw it of reason alone becoming the basis for our faith. In my own reading of the book, my view is that Pascal devoted more energy to dealing with the latter concern than the former.

A highly provocative book that has, and will continue to arouse thought and contemplation at the deepest levels.

Pascal, the brilliant mathematician, physicist, and engineer, presents in his posthumously titled Pensees, his philosophy of religion and a paradox rich and challenging defense of Christian faith. Says Pascal, "Knowledge has two extremes which meet; one is the pure natural ignorance of every man at birth, the other is the extreme reached by great minds who run through the whole range of human knowledge, only to find that they know nothing... but it is a wise ignorance which knows itself. Those who stand half-way... pretend to understand everything... they get everything wrong."
The book is a collection of unfinished writings; arguments and ideas which he had scribbled, intending to then develop and elaborate. As such, the text is disjointed and even mysterious; statements are abrupt, incomplete, dogmatic. Yet, out of respect for the intellectual accomplishments of the great French mathematician, these notes were published essentially as he had left them. They contain many gems; profound statements which stand like islands in a sea of sometimes jumbled thoughts.
Pascal's themes are: the nature of human knowledge, the affliction of pride, the blindness and tyranny of self, the boundaries of reason, the hiddenness of God, and his own argument for "wagering" not only on God, but on the Christian faith. Two things are obvious; (1.) the arguments are not in the form in which Pascal intended to offer them, therefore, (2.) this is not a definitive apologetic. However, Pascal's arguments are rather unique and as such they are interesting even in their [often] crude form. Read this book in conjunction with the writings of C.S. Lewis, Augustine, or Sundar Singh.

I first picked up Pascal's Pensees because I was intrigued by his reputation as a genius of physics and mathematics. I was not very far into it before I realized that I was reading a Christian spiritual classic, in its own right.

Perhaps because Pascal was such a brilliant physicist and mathematician, his Pensees resonate with my very modern soul, steeped as it is in the scientific mode of thought.

He understands the restlessness of the modern soul in his comments on "diversion" - "If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it." And again - "The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." These things are at least as pertinent in the 21st century as they were in the 17th.

His comments on reason (and its limitations) are very sharp - "Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it." Pascal was a world-class scientist of his day, and yet he was very much aware of what reason was and was not capable of.

I especially liked his comments on "The Hidden God" - "[We see] too much to deny and not enough to affirm." Or again, "What can be seen on earth indicates neither the total absence, nor the manifest presence of divinity, but the presence of a hidden God. ... to know that one has lost something one must see and not see; such precisely is the state of nature."

He is also very perceptive in his comments on the simultaneous greatness and smallness, glory and corruption, of human nature.

And I haven't even mentioned the two most famous passages, "The Wager" and "Reasons of the Heart"; this book is dense with nuggets of pure gold.

The Pensees can seem very disjointed, because, in his lifetime, Pascal merely wrote down his thoughts as they occurred to him. What we have are essentially his notes; he died before he could organize them into a coherent work, or develop some of his more obscure themes. A lot falls on the editor/translator to make sense of the material he has to work with, and I think A.J. Krailsheimer has done an admirable job.

This is a wonderful book, and justly counted a classic.

This book proved to be an excellent one to read right after Galileo's Daughter -- after reading of G's struggle to stay within the bounds of the church (he had no problem with a struggle for faith -- he knew he was right about the sun being at the center), it's refreshing to read of a near contemporary who was much more conflicted. Pascal was one of the great geniuses of all time -- if you study math at all, you'll realize the extend of his scope and reach. His talents crossed into other fields as well. Unfortunately, like Galileo (although I think worse), he was very sickly for much of his life. Sometimes, he could barely get down a "pensee" because it hurt so much to write. No surprise then that many are short jottings or musings on many aspects of Christian faith. One doesn't have to be a Christian to understand one man's struggles to reconcile what he saw in the world around him to his scientific and mathematical discoveries. There are infinite nuggets of wisdom in these pages. Sure, he misinterprets the bible a lot, but he was blazing a trail in criticism of translation that he didn't have primary sources for.

Like a Bartlett's book of quotations, this book is best read in small doses or it becomes too much. The book takes the form of many small comments and analysis, a notebook written in shorthand if you will. This translation allows us a look inside one of the greatest thinkers of all time.

Warning! If you reached this Kindle edition by way of the edition published by Penguin Classics, be aware that this Kindle edition (by Douglas Editions) of Pensees is not the same book. The Penguin version was translated by A. J. Krailsheimer, while this Kindle edition was translated by W. F. Trotter.

In my opinion, the Trotter translation is far weaker than the Krailsheimer translation, or any other translation I've checked. For example, consider these two translations of this thought:

"How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping."
--from A. J. Krailsheimer's translation

"How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but that a fool does? Because a cripple recognises [sic] that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly;"
--from W. F. Trotter's translation

All the other translations I've compared these sentences to are far closer to the Krailsheimer translation than Trotter's. Unfortunately, all the Kindle editions of Pensees (as of this writing) are the Trotter translation. So all that's left is to compare the differences of the Kindle editions.

The rest of this review is based on the sample of the Douglas Editions version. This one has a table of contents, but it's not very good. All it lists is "Section 1", "Section 2", and so forth instead of descriptive names. It's also not linked directly from the menu, so you have to go to the cover then the next page to get to it. Footnotes are not active links.

I also noticed that there is a blank space between each paragraph. It doesn't really bother me, but I'm mentioning it anyway in case it bothers you.

Otherwise, this is a pretty vanilla Kindle edition. The font size is standard. (Some Kindle editions aren't.) There don't seem to be any flaws beyond what I mentioned. There's also no introduction or cover art.

It seems that this review will also show up under the Kindle edition I did buy. That's the version of Pensées by Christian Classics Ethereal Library. It does have a descriptive Table of Contents which is accessible directly from the menu, cover art, and better formatting, though I would prefer a blank space before each numbered section. But it's still the Trotter translation, so I would give it only 3 stars.

Pascal is arguably the greatest genius who ever lived. He is probably the only person to attain immortality in both the fields of science and literature. Pensees is his masterwork and here Pascal comes as close as any writer can to finding what Dostoyevsky called "the man in man". He thinks with his heart and feels with his mind. The greatest non-fiction book ever written.

In his short lifespan, Pascal invented the prototype of the computer (la machine arithmetique), started the first public passenger service in Paris, mastered a physics problem re the vacuum, expounded his scientific and mathematical studies with such an order of brilliance that it was considered by no means inappropriate to compare him with Aristotle, engaged in vituperative and extremely effective theological polemics with the Jesuits -- and, finally, in spite of appaling ill-health and pain, attained a serene relationship with God and with his fellows, in the process producing one of the great literary masterpieces of all time, viz., the PENSEES. This volume is a work of Christian apologetics before which the most sceptical mind, indulgent flesh, and arrogant spirit, stand utterly defenseless. Not too shabby an achievement in thirty-nine years and two months!

The mention of Pascal's Pensees and the profound effect it clearly had on his life,as an athiest and a scientist staggered me. I talk of one Dr. Takashi Nagai and the book he wrote,originally in Japanese, The Bells of Nagasaki. Anyway,a friend of mine gave me a copy of another book about Nagai's life which draws on the doctors experiences and accounts from Bells, by author Paul Glynn called A song for Nagasaki-which on numerous occasions talks of Pensees. We have all heard that Christianity and science don't,can't and shouldn't mix and yet here is Pascal doing just the opposite,offering coherent proofs and even attacking the stance of those who say never the twain in a singularly undogmatic and poignant style. I am a believer in Jesus Christ but had always been a grovelling well-it-can't-be-helped,-this-is-the-way-I-was-brought-up type of Christian until I laid hold of a copy of Pensees. The boulders were rolled away from my eyes and I have since seen the world and everything in it in a different light. The Lord uses Blaise Pascal even 300 years after his death in bringing his supreme intellectual powers to bear on citizens of the material world to show them a deeper and startlingly more beautiful one right at their very feet! To continue in ultimately vain metaphysical banter about the ins and outs of this and that point of philosophy I believe is ,in a word castrating the aim of this masterpiece of literature and the goal of Pascal-to introduce simple folk like us into a relationship with the living God. The book Pensees changed me and also helped to shed light on areas in the Bible which I hadn't been able to get my head around. So,all in all this is a MUST HAVE for anyone curious about life and the reasons for it. You will not be disappointed.

People should not be allowed to graduate high school without having first read this book and written a comprehensive essay on it. 'Pensees' is much more than an apology for the Christian faith, it is an investigation into and search for levels of temperance in all areas of human endeavor. Pascal's seemingly simple yet ultra-deep ruminations about life and mind will forever immunize any diligent reader against the tragedy of superficial thinking and instill the comedy of balanced comprehensiveness.