Blaise Pascal
1623–1662 · France
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”
Peak-work percentile in the canon.
The lineage through Blaise Pascal
Drew From(2)
who shaped Blaise Pascal
- The Pensées are Pascal arguing with Montaigne on nearly every page — taking his skepticism and his portrait of human restlessness as the ground to build on
- Pascal's 'Disproportion of Man' grows straight out of Montaigne's Apology for Raymond Sebond; he read it closely and said so
- Read the Essays first and the Pensées sharpen into a reply: Montaigne shows you the doubt, Pascal tells you where it has to lead
- The Pensées are in large part an anti-Cartesian book — to feel their force, know what Descartes claimed reason could reach
- Pascal names him and attacks him directly: he cannot forgive Descartes for a God that exists only to set the machine running, then is dismissed
- He takes Descartes' thinking self and dualism but denies the conclusion — reason cannot get you to God; that, for Pascal, is the whole error
Inspired(1)
who Blaise Pascal shaped
via Middlemarch
- Eliot built Dorothea's mind on Pascal
- In Middlemarch, Dorothea 'knew many passages of Pascal's Pensées by heart' and imagines that marrying the scholar Casaubon 'would be like marrying Pascal' — the Pensées are the measure of her hunger for a great intellect
- Pascal also supplies the epigraphs to two of Eliot's chapters; the book Eliot read avidly from a young age is woven into the novel's bones
Portraits
Anonymous 17th-century oil at the Archevêché in Toulouse, a frequently reprinted half-length likeness of Pascal in dark cloak with white collar.
1650
Anonymous mid-17th-century oil on canvas, bust-length, Pascal in a plain dark cloak against a neutral ground.
Miniature head-and-shoulders portrait of the young Pascal in dark clothes and white falling collar, painted in enamel on copper.
Paul Prieur, 1650
Oval bust portrait of Pascal in clerical dress, set within an engraved cartouche bearing his coat of arms below.
Gerard Edelinck
Famous Quotes
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.”
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
About Blaise Pascal
French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. A child prodigy who made major contributions to probability theory and hydraulics, he underwent a profound religious conversion and devoted his later years to defending Christianity. His Pensées, published posthumously, is a collection of brilliant, fragmentary meditations on faith, reason, and the human condition.