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Pensées (Dover Thrift Editions: Philosophy) by [Blaise Pascal]

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Blaise Pascal

Roger-Pol Droit

Pensées (Dover Thrift Editions: Philosophy) Kindle Edition

by Blaise Pascal (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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"I know of no religious writer more pertinent to our time." — T. S. Eliot, Introduction to Pensées
"Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true," declared Pascal in his Pensées. "The cure for this," he explained, "is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is."
Motivated by the 17th-century view of the supremacy of human reason, Pascal (1623-62) had intended to write an ambitious apologia for Christianity, in which he argued the inability of reason to address metaphysical problems. His untimely death prevented his completion of the work, but the fragments published posthumously in 1670 form a vital part of religious and philosophical literature. Essential reading for students of history, philosophy, and theology, the Pensées remain among the liveliest and most eloquent defenses of Christianity ever written.

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380 pages
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English
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Dover Publications
Publication date

April 18, 2018
File size

960 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Pascal is one of those writers who will be and who must be studied afresh by men in every generation.” —T. S. Eliot --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

Dans Folioplus classiques, le texte intégral, enrichi d'une lecture d'image, écho pictural de l'œuvre, est suivi de sa mise en perspective organisée en six points : - Mouvement littéraire : Le siècle des moralistes - Genre et registre : L'art de persuader - L'écrivain à sa table de travail : Une écriture interrompue - Groupement de textes : De la vanité - Chronologie : Blaise Pascal et son temps - Éléments pour une fiche de lecture Recommandé pour les classes de lycée. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and theologian, as well as a writer whose brilliant command of the language marked him as a master of French prose. His early, anonymous masterpiece Les Lettres Provinciales became the model for Voltaire's polemics. Pascal's Pensees, his last great work, remained unfinished at the time of his death at age thirty-nine.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

Destinées pour la plupart à la rédaction ultérieure d'un traité sur la religion chrétienne, les Pensées sont un ensemble de notes éparses prises par Pascal avant de mourir. Il y expose sa conception de l'homme : « imbécile ver de terre », être inconsistant, faible et méprisable, « roseau », certes « pensant », mais que l'imagination et le divertissement détournent de la vérité... Il se fait un devoir de démontrer la misère de l'homme sans Dieu et exhorte les cœurs à le rechercher... Ce penseur du Grand Siècle - l'un des plus brillants de son époque - offre une réflexion dont la profondeur fascine encore aujourd'hui le lecteur... --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Book Description

Avec un dossier et des notes réalisés par Jean-Luc Vincent, agrégé de lettres classiques, et une «lecture d'image» par Joy Sorman, certifiée de philosophie et écrivain. Recommandé pour les classes de lycée (Bac 2009). --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

After the death of French scientist/polemicist Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), his friends discovered among his papers a variety of jottings on religion. These they arranged and published as PENSÉES ("Thoughts"), which has come down to us as the liveliest, most eloquent apology of Christianity ever written. You wouldn't know it by the indifferent reading of William Sutherland. He reads with comprehension of individual lines and phrases, but with no sense of how they relate to one another. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07C4G57X2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dover Publications (April 18, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 18, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 960 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 380 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #2,491,311 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,114 in Christian Monasticism & Asceticism (Books)
- #3,176 in Religious Philosophy (Kindle Store)
- #8,581 in Religious Philosophy (Books)

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

443 global ratings

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Ed Heckman

On various Kindle versions

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 31, 2009

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Update: May 2012

In revisiting the Kindle editions of Pensees, I've discovered that there is now a Kindle version of the Penguin Classics edition. This version is the one translated by A. J. Krailsheimer. It also contains the Introduction written by Mr. Kreilsheimer which gives what appears to be an excellent background of the work. (I haven't read it yet.)

The formatting is generally good. It uses Kindle standard fonts. Each note is visually separated from the one before it. It contains active links to footnotes. The table of contents is very good. It also uses standard paragraph breaks. (No blank line between, and first line indented.) Unfortunately, the left margin wanders left and right. (I've seen this on a few other books, so I'm not sure it's the publisher's fault.)

This is the edition I was hoping to find when I first wrote the review. I recommend it.

----------

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.

34 people found this helpful

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Robert W. Kellemen

Religion of the Heart and of the Head

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 10, 2005

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Before actually reading "Pensees," I knew Blaise Pascal and his "Pensees" only from snippets of quotes such as, "The heart has its reason of which reason knows nothing" and from "Pascal's Wager": better to risk believing in God and living with Him for all eternity and being wrong, then risk not believing in God and living apart from Him in all eternity and because you were wrong.

Having read him, I know now that the quote and wager just mentoned, though only snippets, do summarize his brilliance and his beauty. Like few others, Pascal fuses head and heart in his defense of Christianity. His ability is likely due to his brilliant mind that on November 23, 1654, from 10:30 PM to 12:30 AM encountered God in a mysterious, mystical experience that he could only describe with the one-word epitaph: "Fire."

For the rest of his brief life (he died at age 39), the fire in his soul and the genius of his mind merged in the "writing" of "Pensees." I place "writing" in quotation marks because Pascal's early death never allowed him to finish "Pensees." What we have is akin to his outline (though 325 pages in length!). Imagine if he had actually finished it. Pascal, ever the absent-minded professor, would have a thought run through his mind, write it down, cut it in a strip, and splice it in with other similar subject headings.

It's helpful to understand this before reading "Pensee" for what you find is brilliant disorder--an incomplete sentence here, half a thought there, then long and insightful paragraphs here. In other words, you do need to wade through the unusual design of the book, but in the wading you will find oceans of depth that flood both your heart and your head with passion and reason to love and know God.

Pascal's "real world" arguments for God are the most rationally and personally compelling ones that I have ever read. Pascal honestly faces the reality that we see God only in part and that by evidence alone, whether of reason or nature or both, we might just as well conclude that there is no God (the atheists), or that He is not loving, or not powerful, or that He is disinterested (Deism), or dispassionate (the Greek philosophers). He then explains that God reveals enough in nature to cause us to perceive His existence and to perceive that we are finite and fallen. Nature, according to Pascal, points more to the Mediator--Christ--the One who reveals the hidden God as a God of holiness and love, and the One who reveals us as God's prodigal children who need to come home.

Reviewer: Dr. Robert W. Kellemen is the author of "Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction," "Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction," and the forthcoming "Sacred Companions: A History of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction."

53 people found this helpful

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Customer

"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread."

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 7, 2021

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Pascal was on the bleeding edge of knowledge at his time--perhaps even ahead of his time. He was perhaps seeing even farther than he realized. He experienced the latest telescopes and microscopes and what he saw was infinity--an infinity that terrified him and filled him with anxiety. (And even he knew only a tiny fraction of what we've discovered now.) In this way, he prefigures all the modern existentialists and nihilists. How far from the avuncular popular scientists today with their documentaries that try to make nature "fun"! Reason, he seems to argue, is no match for this vertigo called reality.

There is no doubt he's a Christian -- and he tries with all his intellectual might to square this experience of nature with his Christian faith. I tried very hard to take his point of view, to read him charitably, but it's very hard not to believe his final version of Christianity is very, very dark.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

warren caine

Great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 6, 2020

Verified Purchase

As a student of philosophy I was eager to get this book, you do need to concentrate while reading it, but it's worth it, came very quickly and in perfect condition.

One person found this helpful

Szymon Bialkowski

Thoughts indeed there are

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 23, 2020

Verified Purchase

Very good and succinct points.
Quite interesting but you need to focus while reading

One person found this helpful

J M WILKINSON

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 27, 2018