A scary genius! Early on, Pascal demonstrated his skills when, at the age of 18, he invented the calculator. As a mathematician and physicist, he converted to Jansenism and retired to Port-Royal. Denounced in "Les Provinciales” the liberal morality of the Jesuits.
But it was in "The thoughts” who made his defense of the Christian religion, destined to touch the libertines (people who deny all revealed religion, which must be demonstrated) and the skeptics (who put everything in doubt). According to Pascal, man is a miserable being, a “nothing from the point of view of the infinite universe, a whole from the point of view of nothingness, that is, a middle ground between nothing and everything”. He is unable to reach the truth, as human reason is constantly deceived by imagination or other "deceiving powers". His only hope is God: he has everything to gain by betting on His existence. It's the famous argument of bet.
Touched by the miraculous cure of his niece, on March 24, 1656, Pascal engaged in a reflection on the significance of miracles, starting with the struggle of the Jansenists against the Jesuits and then in the debate between Christians and atheists. Little by little, the project of an apology for the Christian religion was formed, which, in its first moment, aimed to present miracles as the foundation of religion. The philosopher, therefore, renounces this argument the following year to work on a project that founds religion on Sacred Scripture and its symbolic interpretation. The broad outlines of this project are presented at a conference in Port-Royal in 1658. On that date, numerous fragments were already written. Gravely ill from 1659, Pascal did not resume his work until the autumn of 1660.
It is enough to open your eyes to see that men's behavior is almost always inconsistent. Our judgment is fickle, the exercise of our reason is disturbed by the imagination, we live in the past and in the future, never in the present and our most beautiful actions are due to motives derisory. The most amazing thing about this finding is that it is carried out by so few people. There is inconsistency in our desires and the way we judge what is good or bad for us. We cannot enjoy a good until its loss makes us unhappy. We seek satisfaction by false means, for example, wanting to be obeyed because we are beautiful (vanity)! We are so incapable of determining the just and the unjust that our wisdom accepts the law and customs of a country, in all its arbitrary aspects.
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The general idea of Jansenism is that man cannot save himself. After original sin, he can only hope for the grace of God, bestowed on a small number of the elect, an absolutely free gift as proof of the sovereign divine freedom. She is thus opposed to the ideas developed by the Society of Jesus, inspired by the Spanish theologian Molina, according to the which man could work out his salvation in the world, for God's assistance is given to each at the moment of temptation. This theological conception would allow, in the moral life, numerous accommodations with the religious precepts. It would, in any case, reconcile profane life and religious life. On the contrary, the Jansenists are in favor of rigor, austerity, the removal of the illusory traps and false pretexts of the century.
Thus, according to Pascal, philosophers who are content to denounce man's misery – skeptics or Pyrrhonists – are mistaken; man also possesses greatness, and that is the only reason why he would recognize his misery and that there is an idea of truth. If our reason is powerless to understand the two extremes (all or nothing) it can know the middle, some truths in the scientific domain; in this she is helped by the heart, which gives us the fundamental insights on which she then builds her demonstrations. These are not unshakable certainties. Also she alone cannot give us faith in God. Only those to whom God gave religion from a feeling of heart who are blessed and legitimately persuaded, but those who do not have it, we cannot give it, except by reason. What does it mean to give faith for the reason? To lead man to become aware of his contradiction and the impotence of philosophies, since in them affirms and denies everything, and admits that only religion can provide satisfactory answers for our longings. But the principle on which these answers rest – original sin – is incomprehensible to reason. It must be accepted as an inaccessible mystery. “The heart has reasons that reason itself does not know”.
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
Philosophy - Brazil School
