The Paradox of Pascal’s Pensées

Abstract

One of the striking features of the Pensées is the fact that they do not begin their apology for the Christian religion with any of the classical Christian proofs of the existence of God and the truth of Christianity. The reader cannot fail to notice the absence of such traditional scholastic arguments as those based on cosmology, teleology, the rational ordering of the universe, and the moral consciousness of man which leads him to accept a metaphysical source for his value-judgements. Pascal likewise refuses to employ ontological arguments, such as Descartes’ proof of God’s existence derived from the presence in his mind of the idea of perfection.1 Arguments drawn from history and prophecy, as well as from the comparative study of other religions, are used in the second part of the Pensées, but they serve a secondary function in the overall design of the apology.KeywordsChristian ReligionTrue ReligionNous SommesExistential SituationDivine TruthThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.