Pensées
Blaise Pascal1670Pascal made the case for faith by starting from total doubt, and the fragments he left behind are some of the most quotable philosophical writing there is.
Read this if you…
- are interested in Pascal's wager
- like idea of math/physics genius turning to religion
- prefer short thoughts/quips to rigorous proofs
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian writings
- want a systematic coherent whole argument, this is a bunch of disjointed thoughts
Why It Matters
Pascal made the case for faith by starting from total doubt, and the fragments he left behind are some of the most quotable philosophical writing there is. "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of" comes from here. The wager argument, that you lose nothing by betting on God, still gets argued over in philosophy classrooms.
The 
Take
A couple nice framings, but overall not poetic nor rigorous, odd middle ground that wasn’t very convincing
Where to go next
- The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Pensées built on it. - 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
- Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes. Pensées built on it. - 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
- Middlemarch by George Eliot. Pensées shaped it. - 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
Depicted in Art
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
Terracotta or plaster preparatory study for Pajou's Pascal monument: the philosopher seated, head bowed in thought, draped robes falling around the chair.
Augustin Pajou, 1779
Oval bust portrait of Pascal in clerical dress, set within an engraved cartouche bearing his coat of arms below.
Gerard Edelinck
Recommended Editions
A.J. Krailsheimer
Penguin Classics · 1995
Krailsheimer's Penguin has carried the Pensées in English for decades. The wager and the heart's reasons fragments land cleanly, and the arrangement is easy to follow.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”