The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~120,000 words · 556 passages
Cite this work
- APAPascal. (n.d.). The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/blaise-pascal/the-thoughts-of-blaise-pascal
- MLAPascal. "The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/blaise-pascal/the-thoughts-of-blaise-pascal.
- ChicagoPascal. The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/blaise-pascal/the-thoughts-of-blaise-pascal.
What it is about
The fragments Pascal left for an apology for Christianity that his death left unwritten.
Context and history
Pascal died in 1662 at thirty-nine, leaving hundreds of fragments written towards an apology for Christianity he never composed. Some are finished paragraphs, others three words; he left them tied in bundles which give hints of the intended order. Everything we read, then, is an arrangement made by editors, and every edition arranges differently — which is why fragment numbers do not agree between them and one must always say which is being used. Here are the wager, the heart having its reasons which reason does not know, man as a thinking reed, and the eternal silence of the infinite spaces. WARNING: the catalogue contains TWO English translations of this same work, 'Pascal's Pensées' and 'The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal'. This is not an error — they are different editions — but it is worth knowing: the same fragment appears twice, in different words and with different numbering.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. More detail can be found at the end of the book. _THE THOUGHTS OF BLAISE PASCAL._ _THE THOUGHTS OF BLAISE PASCAL_ _THE THOUGHTS OF BLAISE PASCAL_ _TRANSLATED FROM THE TEXT OF M. AUGUSTE MOLINIER_ _BY C. KEGAN PAUL_ _Pendent opera interrupta_ _LONDON_ _KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO._ _MDCCCLXXXV_ _CONTENTS._ PAGE _PREFACE_ vii _GENERAL INTRODUCTION_ 1 Pascal's Profession of Faith 2 General Introduction 3 Notes for the General Introduction 11 _THE MISERY OF MAN WITHOUT GOD_ 15 Preface to the First Part 17 Man's Disproportion 19 Diversion 33 The Greatness and Littleness of Man 43 Of the Deceptive Powers of the Imagination 51 Of Justice, Customs, and Prejudices 61 The Weakness, Unrest, and Defects of Man 73 _THE HAPPINESS OF MAN WITH GOD_ 89 Preface to the Second Part 91 Of the Need of Seeking Truth 95 The Philosophers 105 Thoughts on Mahomet and on China 115 Of the Jewish People 119 The Authenticity of the Sacred Book