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Pascal and Social Theory: The Question of Existence Revisited
By: Seyed Javad Meynagh Copyright: LONDON ACADEMY OF IRANIAN STUDIES
Abstract Modernity is considered as a new metaphysics which attempts to herald a new dawn of meaning but the question of meaning has gradually been lost within social theory that relies on Enlightenment Tradition and there is no adequate answer for the existential absence of meaning within our public life except abstractions that are in need of more explanations. In this essay we attempt to discuss the relevance of Pascal, not only as a thinker in his own right, but, as a religious intellectual who’s questions poses profound challenges for anyone who considers the paramount question of social theory as a reflective mode of self in society.
Introduction To think about the condition of Man is as old as humanity but since the rise of West on a global scale some thinkers came to argue that to think about the conditions of man in society is as new as modernity itself. In a sense they may have been right, namely in the sense that the modern format of social theory was based on a reductionist philosophy cast upon the model of Natural Science that itself lost the cordial connection with the sacred formula of Nature as a Divine Book. In this sense these modernist thinkers were right that social theory is a modern enterprise, i.e. unprecedented in its metatheoretical orientations and theoretical considerations. In other words, what came to be known as social sciences or human sciences and cultural sciences were indeed extremely distant from the very project the practitioners of these sciences hoped to study namely human being as far as one could imagine or sometimes failed to imagine that what they portray is not a human being but a mechanical being disconnected from the transcendental source of reality which makes the being of humanity feasible. Once the transcendental considerations as well as religious subtleties were completely removed from the scene of intellectual reflections by the birth of secular intellectual who is supposed to be only a man of reason which, in turn, meant dissociated from religion, gnosis and transcendence a discipline or a discourse on the ‘social’ was constructed by men of word and sword. The proponents of this discourse upheld that a man is not an intellectual as long as he has a religion and religion came to be reduced to ‘ritual’ or a place where rituals where held, i.e. the Church, Temple, Synagogue and Mosque. In other words, to be religious meant to be obedient and to be obedient came to be interpreted as idiocy and all these connoted anti-intellectualism and anybody who associated him/herself with the Holy came to be caricatured as a fool or unintelligent and under the spell of traditions. It seemed that whatever came from the past is not worthy of reflection and opposite to the notion of ‘intellectual’ that was under construction in the Republic. For instance, to read a Holy Text meant to be obedient to idols or Supernatural Powers but it did not occur to these secular thinkers that a text may say something reasonable or pose a question and it is not unreasonable to reflect upon a question and necessarily all questions from the past cannot be unworthy of reflection. As their ideal of the intellectual did not have any affinity with faith and the latter incongruence with reason within their frame of reference where the idea of flat reality reigned supreme there should only exist one of them in the heart of man, either reason or faith. They could not imagine of a spiral where body, mind and soul could exist in a hierarchical fashion as this associated for them the idea of eccelestical hypocrisy which was blamed for all the social regress in Europe. In other words, the disciplinary social theory with all its branches at the academia with all those towering figures who came to be taught to us by great professors through many textbooks and courses provided at the universities and all sites of higher learning was a reflection of a simple but mistaken idea, namely religion is not a reasonable discourse and in opposition to academic (scientific) enterprise. You could read this proposition in another fashion as well, namely academicians should oppose in any reasonable (academic) manner the upsurge of religion in scientific discourses by displaying the unreasonable contours of religion. At the outset the opposition was very amateurish as it is evident from the discourses which are left for us from early 17th centuries but gradually it became more sophisticated and academic, namely methodic. By that I mean the secular thinkers appropriated interesting natural scientific methods such as reductionism for the purpose of studying religion or religious questions by reducing or even simplifying and sometimes glorifying aspects which were not of essence but accident and portraying them as the core of religiosity, on the one hand, and ignoring or debauching highly sophisticated aspects of religion as accidents which some thinkers employed to hide their true intentions. For instance, the Iranian poet-philosopher Hafiz has been portrayed as a disingenuous thinker who hid his anti-religious sentiments under the mystic poetry, as though Mysticism or Irfan is in opposition to religion. For these secular thinkers this is really the case as religion viewed by them or the model they employ to study religion is a flat one-dimensional one which has no experiential and intellectual ladders of experience and intellection. However what the secular philosophers bequeathed contemporary institutionalized universities around the globe was a social theory that had some core founding fathers with specific central topics which are fundamentally alien to religion, religious life, religious thinking or religious worldview. But one may question, is there any fundamental incongruency between reflections on the social and religious point of departure? The aforementioned account was meant to demonstrate that this is more of a constructed fairytale than an intellectual question, namely religion as Deen is in total congruency with thinking and as a matter of fact it is the sustainer of intellection as it demands of the thinker his total attention and presence in existence which is surely different than the models which require you to be reasonable as long as you play the role of an academician. Now if religion is not in any opposition to thinking and reasonable discourses then could we think of thinkers who are as a matter of fact as important to social theory as Marx or Freud are today but at the same time are religious? We think the answer is affirmative and actually of great importance in our present time where intercivilizational process has become a reality before our eyes and we need to bring up these personalities into the fore and present them in academic forums. In order to accomplish this task we would like to look at the famous French thinker Blaise Pascal who is very well known but rarely mentioned within social theory which is of great importance as this discourse is where one think how the self and society is constituted in opposite to other discourses which is thought of great significance for the constitution of artists or elites of humanity. The secular discourse has been based on the idea that religion is devoid of any kind of rationality and in complete opposition to rationality. But Pascal puts this idea on test and argues that Religion is the most aesthetic kind of rationality and faith represents the geometry of existence in a most rational fashion. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal put forward an argument that would appeal to agnostics. His argument goes something like this: God either exists or he does not. If we believe in God and he exists, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. If we believe in God and he does not exist then at worst all we have forgone is a few sinful pleasures. If we do not believe in God and he does exist we may enjoy a few sinful pleasures, but we may face eternal damnation. If we do not believe in God and he does not exist then our sins will not be punished. Would any rational gambler think that the experience of a few sinful pleasures is worth the risk of eternal damnation?
Blaise Pascal (1623-62)
Blaise Pascal was the third of Étienne Pascal's children and his only son. Blaise's mother died when he was only three years old. In 1632 the Pascal family, Étienne and his four children, left Clermont and settled in Paris. Blaise Pascal's father had unorthodox educational views and decided to teach his son himself. Étienne Pascal decided that Blaise was not to study mathematics before the age of 15 and all mathematics texts were removed from their house. Blaise however, his curiosity raised by this, started to work on geometry himself at the age of 12. He discovered that the sum of the angles of a triangle are two right angles and, when his father found out, he relented and allowed Blaise a copy of Euclid. At the age of 14 Blaise Pascal started to accompany his father to Mersenne's meetings. Mersenne belonged to the religious order of the Minims, and his cell in Paris was a frequent meeting place for Gassendi, Roberval, Carcavi, Auzout, Mydorge, Mylon, Desargues and others. Soon, certainly by the time he was 15, Blaise came to admire the work of Desargues. At the age of sixteen, Pascal presented a single piece of paper to one of Mersenne's meetings in June 1639. It contained a number of projective geometry theorems, including Pascal's mystic hexagon. In December 1639 the Pascal family left Paris to live in Rouen where Étienne had been appointed as a tax collector for Upper Normandy. Shortly after settling in Rouen, Blaise had his first work, Essay on Conic Sections published in February 1640. Pascal invented the first digital calculator to help his father with his work collecting taxes. He worked on it for three years between 1642 and 1645. The device, called the Pascaline, resembled a mechanical calculator of the 1940s. This, almost certainly, makes Pascal the third person to invent a mechanical calculator for Kharazmi and Schickard had manufactured one respectively earlier. There were problems faced by Pascal in the design of the calculator which were due to the design of the French currency at that time. There were 20 sols in a livre and 12 deniers in a sol. The system remained in France until 1799 but in Britain a system with similar multiples lasted until 1971. Pascal had to solve much harder technical problems to work with this division of the livre into 240 than he would have had if the division had been 100. However production of the machines started in 1642 but, as Adamson writes in By 1652 fifty prototypes had been produced, but few machines were sold, and manufacture of Pascal's arithmetical calculator ceased in that year. Events of 1646 were very significant for the young Pascal. In that year his father injured his leg and had to recuperate in his house. He was looked after by two young brothers from a religious movement just outside Rouen. They had a profound effect on the young Pascal and he became deeply religious. From about this time Pascal began a series of experiments on atmospheric pressure. By 1647 he had proved to his satisfaction that a vacuum existed. Descartes visited Pascal on 23 September. His visit only lasted two days and the two argued about the vacuum which Descartes did not believe in. Descartes wrote, rather cruelly, in a letter to Huygens after this visit that Pascal ...has too much vacuum in his head. In August of 1648 Pascal observed that the pressure of the atmosphere decreases with height and deduced that a vacuum existed above the atmosphere. Descartes wrote to Carcavi in June 1647 about Pascal's experiments saying: It was I who two years ago advised him to do it, for although I have not performed it myself, I did not doubt of its success ... .
In October 1647 Pascal wrote New Experiments Concerning Vacuums which led to disputes with a number of scientists who, like Descartes, did not believe in a vacuum. Étienne Pascal died in September 1651 and following this Blaise wrote to one of his sisters giving a deeply Christian meaning to death in general and his father's death in particular. His ideas here were to form the basis for his later philosophical work Pensées. From May 1653 Pascal worked on mathematics and physics writing Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids (1653) in which he explains Pascal's law of pressure. Adamson states: This treatise is a complete outline of a system of hydrostatics, the first in the history of science, it embodies his most distinctive and important contribution to physical theory. (1995)
He worked on conic sections and produced important theorems in projective geometry. In The Generation of Conic Sections (mostly completed by March 1648 but worked on again in 1653 and 1654) Pascal considered conics generated by central projection of a circle. This was meant to be the first part of a treatise on conics which Pascal never completed. The work is now lost but Leibniz and Tschirnhaus made notes from it and it is through these notes that a fairly complete picture of the work is now possible. Although Pascal was not the first to study the Pascal triangle, his work on the topic in Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle was the most important on this topic and, through the work of Wallis, Pascal's work on the binomial coefficients was to lead Newton to his discovery of the general binomial theorem for fractional and negative powers. In correspondence with Fermat he laid the foundation for the theory of probability. This correspondence consisted of five letters and occurred in the summer of 1654. They considered the dice problem, already studied by Cardan, and the problem of points also considered by Cardan and, around the same time, Pacioli and Tartaglia. The dice problem asks how many times one must throw a pair of dice before one expects a double six while the problem of points asks how to divide the stakes if a game of dice is incomplete. They solved the problem of points for a two player game but did not develop powerful enough mathematical methods to solve it for three or more players. Through the period of this correspondence Pascal was unwell. In one of the letters to Fermat written in July 1654 he writes ... though I am still bedridden, I must tell you that yesterday evening I was given your letter.
However, despite his health problems, he worked intensely on scientific and mathematical questions until October 1654. Sometime around then he nearly lost his life in an accident. The horses pulling his carriage bolted and the carriage was left hanging over a bridge above the river Seine. Although he was rescued without any physical injury, it does appear that he was much affected psychologically. Not long after he underwent another religious experience, on 23 November 1654, and he pledged his life to Christianity. After this time Pascal made visits to the Jansenist monastery Port-Royal des Champs about 30 km south west of Paris. He began to publish anonymous works on religious topics, eighteen Provincial Letters being published during 1656 and early 1657. These were written in defence of his friend Antoine Arnauld, an opponent of the Jesuits and a defender of Jansenism, who was on trial before the faculty of theology in Paris for his controversial religious works. Pascal's most famous work in philosophy is Pensées, a collection of personal thoughts on human suffering and faith in God which he began in late 1656 and continued to work on during 1657 and 1658. This work contains 'Pascal's wager' which claims to prove that belief in God is rational with the following argument: If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing. With 'Pascal's wager' he uses probabilistic and mathematical arguments but his main conclusion is that ...we are compelled to gamble... His last work was on the cycloid, the curve traced by a point on the circumference of a rolling circle. In 1658 Pascal started to think about mathematical problems again as he lay awake at night unable to sleep for pain. He applied Cavalieri's calculus of indivisibles to the problem of the area of any segment of the cycloid and the centre of gravity of any segment. He also solved the problems of the volume and surface area of the solid of revolution formed by rotating the cycloid about the x-axis. Pascal published a challenge offering two prizes for solutions to these problems to Wren, Laloubère, Leibniz, Huygens, Wallis, Fermat and several other mathematicians. Wallis and Laloubère entered the competition but Laloubère's solution was wrong and Wallis was also not successful. Sluze, Ricci, Huygens, Wren and Fermat all communicated their discoveries to Pascal without entering the competition. Wren had been working on Pascal's challenge and he in turn challenged Pascal, Fermat and Roberval to find the arc length, the length of the arch, of the cycloid. Pascal published his own solutions to his challenge problems in the Letters to Carcavi. After that time on, he took little interest in science and spent his last years giving to the poor and was going from church to church in Paris attending one religious service after another. Pascal died at the age of 39 in intense pain after a malignant growth in his stomach spread to the brain. He was described as: ... a man of slight build with a loud voice and somewhat overbearing manner. ... he lived most of his adult life in great pain. He had always been in delicate health, suffering even in his youth from migraine ... (Adamson, 1995).
The Philosophy of Pascal Pascal lived in the time when Copernicus' discovery - that the earth moves round the sun - had made fallen human beings insignificant factors in the new order of the world. Facing the immensity of the universe, Pascal felt horror - "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me." For him the world seemed empty of ultimate meaning or significance without faith, which he defended against the assaults of freethinkers. While Montaigne lived at ease with skepticism, Pascal was tormented by religious doubt, and took the question Why are we here? with the utmost seriousness, revealing his thoughts in his most famous book, the posthumous PENSÉES. T. S. Elliot argues against those who belittle Pascal to the point of being a deluded man who could not bear a life without tutelage by stating:
Pascal's disillusioned analysis of human bondage is sometimes interpreted to mean that Pascal was really and finally an unbeliever, who, in his despair, was incapable of enduring reality and enjoying the heroic satisfaction of the free man's worship of nothing. His despair, his disillusion, are, however, no illustration of personal weakness; they are perfectly objective, because they are essential moments in the progress of the intellectual soul; and for the type of Pascal they are the analogue of the drought, the dark night, which is an essential stage in the progress of the Christian mystic." (T.S. Eliot in Selected Essays, 1960)
Pascal examined the problems of human existence from both psychological and theological points of view. "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of," he once wrote. Against the immensity of the universe he measured the fate of human beings - "Man is but a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed." For Jansenists his work came at the right time: they needed an outsider to defend their cause. The Letters, written with freshness and spontaneity, was ideal for that purpose. According to the famous "Pascal´s wager", sane and prudent persons must bet their lives on religion. If they do, and it turns out to be true, then they have won an eternity of bliss. And if it turns out to be false, and death is after all annihilation, what has been lost? Due to its greater expected value, religious belief is more rational.
Experimenting with the vacuum, Pascal published in 1663 his study TRAITÉ DE LA PESANTEUR DE LA MASSE DE L'AIR, where he argued that "experiments are the true teachers which one must follow in physics." This principle of empiricism put Pascal into conflict with René Descartes, his contemporary, whose starting point was human reason. "Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling," Pascal said, "do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles and being unable to see at a glance." But Pascal's belief in God was based on personal religious experience - he saw that reason cannot decide the question of God's existence, but he could appeal to it. In Pensées Pascal wrote: "Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is." Pascal´s studies deeply influenced the development of modern essay writing. The idea of intuition as presented in Pensées had an impact on the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and Henri Bergson (1859-1941). Also the popularity of Provincial Letters has remained undiminished. Pascal was among the first noteworthy philosophers who seriously questioned the existence of God. When he imagined himself arguing with somebody who was constitutionally unable to believe, Pascal could find no arguments to convince him. He concluded that belief in God could only be a matter of personal choice.
The duality of human nature is one of the aspects Pascal dwelled upon and argued that the becoming of man is dependent upon a balanced approach between these two poles. Those who reduced man to reason alone ended up in a dry rationalism which deprived him of lofty aesthetic dimensions, on the one hand, and those who viewed human person in terms of heart alone were lost in excessive emotionalism on the other hand. The human soul is based upon a subtle geometry and this would be best expressed when heart and reason are in harmony. But where could this harmony be possible? In religion alone the geometry of human soul could be achieved but his was not a blind faith. On the contrary, Pascal presented a geometrical understanding of religion which meant that reason is not the designer but a torch in paving the path for those who seek the ground of their grounds. Reason is there to cast a doubt but there must be something there the doubt could be cast upon and that something is not conceivable without ‘intuition’ and this is one of those epistemological grounds where Pascal differed from most disciplinary social theorists as did Bergson in our time. As Fen Yang argues when you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough but when you have realized understanding; even one word is too much. To understand religion man should have a minimum of inner dialogue with his self as Pascal views faith in a paradoxical sense. He says: In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
In other words, when you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough but when you have realized understanding; even one word is too much. Because unlike the views of many disciplinary social theorists faith is not the absence of argument which requires the presence of Reason; on the contrary, it is the embodiment of intuition which is certainly the expression of what integral personality can achieve. Pascal puts this fact in the following fashion: Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them. The majority of disciplinary social theorists have grown to believe that the fundamental aspect of religion is ‘faith’ and the latter is best expressed in the absence of doubt. But, as the emergence of modernity has been possible due to the epistemological significance of doubt which has become the constitutive ontology of scientific mentality so there could be no connection between religion and social theory as the former is based upon faith and the latter on doubt. The disciplinary social theorists have constructed these two aspects of one single faculty in such a diametrical fashion that the presence of one is equivalent to the absence of the other. But as Tillich rightly thought of this question
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
What makes the absence of Pascal within social theory evermore astonishing is that he did not only choose one aspect of human life for consideration but the human existence as such was a question for him. In other words, he proposed a religious anthropology which is based on a rational (not rationalist) methodology based on employment of reason. That is why he chose the word Pensee which means "to think" as the title of one of his work that is translated into English as "Thoughts."
The methodology of Pascal Pascal did not himself complete his task on the Pensees but recent advancements have been made in this area by Tom Morris of Notre Dame and Peter Kreeft of Boston College. Now I would like to construct a basic outline of the religious methodology of Pascal and also attempt to show the contemporary relevance of the Pascalian method.
Pascal’s View of Reason Pascal was opposed to the use of traditional proofs for God's existence. He wrote: The metaphysical proofs for the existence of God are so remote from human reasoning and so involved that they make little impact, and, even if they did help some people, it would only be for the moment during which they watched the demonstration, because an hour later they would be afraid they had made a mistake. (1966. 190)
And
… this is why I shall not undertake here to prove by reasons from nature either the existence of God, or the Trinity or the immortality of the soul, or anything of that kind: not just because I should not feel competent to find in nature arguments which would convince hardened atheists, but also because such knowledge, without Christ, is useless and sterile. Even if someone were convinced that the proportions between numbers are immaterial, eternal truths, depending on a first truth in which they subsist, called God, I should not consider that he made much progress towards his salvation. … God does not consist merely of a God who is the author of mathematical truths and the order of the elements. That is the portion of the heathen and Epicureans. (1966. p 449)
Pascal believed that even if these arguments were valid, few would reason well enough to be persuaded by them. And, even if the arguments persuaded someone, that person would still not be saved. Pascal was concerned with leading people to religious understanding, not merely to spirituality. Therefore, he believed the traditional arguments for God's existence were counterproductive. Pascal was also opposed to the pure rationalism of Descartes. Pascal realized that there were more ways to find truth than through reason alone. Man could also find truth through his heart. By the heart, Pascal meant what we intuitively know as opposed to what we know through deductive reasoning. (Kreeft, 1993. p 228) We perceive and believe in God with our hearts. We will with our hearts. (Kreeft, 1993. p 228) We know first principles through the heart. Pascal not only recognized other ways of knowing besides reason, but he saw that man's reason is often influenced by other factors. Man is not always true to his reason. Pascal's view of reason can be seen in the following quotes:
We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. The skeptics have no other object than that, and they work at it to no purpose. We know that we are not dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge, as they maintain. For knowledge of first principles, like space, time, motion, number, is as solid as any derived through reason, and it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason has to depend and base all its argument… It is just as pointless and absurd for reason to demand proof of first principles from the heart before agreeing to accept them as it would be absurd for the heart to demand an intuition of all the propositions demonstrated by reason before agreeing to accept them. Our inability must therefore serve only to humble reason, which would like to be judge of everything, but not to confute our certainty. As if reason were the only way we could learn! (1966. p 110)
The mind of this supreme judge of the world… Do not be surprised if his reasoning is not too sound at the moment, there is a fly buzzing round his ears; this is enough to render him incapable of giving good advice. (1966. p 48)
Would you not say that this magistrate, whose venerable age commands universal respect, is ruled by pure, sublime reason, and judges things as they really are, without paying heed to the trivial circumstances which offend only the imagination of the weaker men? See him go to hear a sermon... If, when the preacher appears, it turns out that nature has given him a hoarse voice and an odd sort of face, that his barber has shaved him badly and he happens not to be too clean either, then, whatever great truths he may announce, I wager that our senator will not be able to keep a straight face… Anyone who chose to follow reason alone would have proved himself a fool… Reason never wholly overcomes imagination, while the contrary is quite common. (1966. p 44) Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God. (1966. p 131) Descartes… we do not think that the whole of philosophy would be worth an hour's effort. (1966. p 84) The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. (1966. p 423) It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason. (1966. p 424)
It is important to note, as Phil Fernandes remarks, that Pascal is not an irrationalist. He recognizes that reason has its place; still, he reminds us that there are other ways of finding truth besides reason: Two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. (1966. p 183)
Or Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that. If natural things are beyond it, what are we to say about supernatural things? (1966. p 188) And
If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. (1966. p 173)
It is apparent that Pascal is not a fideist. He believed there was a place for reason in religious discussions. Still, he was not a pure rationalist. He differed from Descartes in that he did not believe that man could find all truth through reason alone; he did not believe man could deduce everything from one point of rational certainty. Pascal respected the role of reason in knowing truth; but, he also recognized that reason has its limits. (Morris, 1992. p 183) Pascal was willing, as Fernandes demonstrates, to use reason to defend the centrality of Faith. Still, he recognized man to be more than a thinking machine. Man comes complete with prejudices, emotions, a will, and a vivid imagination. The whole man must be vitalized, not just his mind. According to Peter Kreeft,
… like Augustine, Pascal knows that the heart is deeper than the head, but like Augustine he does not cut off his own head, or so soften it up with relativism and subjectivism and 'open-mindedness' that his brains fall out. (1960. p 235) Before reason can get started certain things must be presupposed. This point is even acknowledged by contemporary social theorists such as J. Alexander who speaks of background assumptions in relation to human sciences but sadly they don’t even mention in passing Pascal let alone as one of the architect of social theory in its universal sense. However, unlike modern presuppositionalists, Pascal, like many contemporary Perennialists such as Nasr, Schoun, Lings and Sheikh Ibrahim, held that these first principles could be known with certainty through the intuition of the heart. The Cartesian attempt to prove everything by reason alone was totally futile from Pascal's perspective as well as contemporary Muslim thinkers such as Sayyid Naghib al-Attas. First principles are self-evident truths recognized intuitively by the heart. They cannot be proven by reason; they must be assumed in order for a person to even begin to reason. Pascal was a man before his time. He saw where Descartes' rationalism would lead man. When pure rationalism (which characterized much of modern philosophy) failed to produce the answers expected of it, it eventually collapsed into skepticism and irrationalism (post-modernism). This was due to the failure to recognize the limits of reason. (Kreeft, 1993)
The Dialectics of Human self Pascal believed that merely the religion accurately explained man's nature. Man is both wretched and grand. Many ideologies and philosophies recognize man's prominence, but fail to see man's wretchedness. Liberalism or Socialism and various modernist ideologies are apt examples; man is good and sin is an illusion. Other ideologies accept man's wretchedness but ignore his greatness. Secular Humanists consider man to be an animal; Behaviorists view man as a machine. Only religious worldview sees man for what he really is; man is both desolate and great. Pascal concludes that the doctrines of creation and the fall alone adequately explain the paradox of man. Pascal believed that man's greatness could be explained in the fact that man was created in God's image as a reality. And he argues that man would not understand his wretchedness unless he had some remembrance of a former greatness from which he had fallen. In order to elaborate this point Pascal wrote: Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this. Thus all our dignity consists in thought. (1996. p 200) Man's greatness comes from knowing he is wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. Thus it is wretched to know one is wretched, but there is a greatness in knowing one is wretched. (1996. p 114) All these examples of wretchedness prove his greatness. It is the wretchedness of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king. (1996. p 116) Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness. (1996. p 149) Man is neither angel nor beast. . . (1966. p 678) There are in faith two equally constant truths. One is that man in the state of his creation, or in the state of grace, is exalted above the whole of nature, made like unto God and sharing in His divinity. The other is that in the state of corruption and sin he has fallen from that first state and has become like the beasts… (1966. p 131) For a religion to be true it must have known our nature; it must have known its greatness and smallness, and the reason for both. (1966. p 215)
The dilemma of man, that he is both great and wretched, is easy to document. The gap between animals and man is too great for evolution to adequately explain. No animal species will ever produce a Bozorgmehr, Avecinna or Mulla Sadra. Yet, the brutality of man waged against man is unheard of in the animal kingdom. No animal species will ever produce a Hitler, Bush or Blair. Only religion with its doctrine of creation and the fall or transcendence and immanence can adequately explain both aspects of man. Twentieth-century religious thinkers such as Ali Shariati, Paul Tillich, Francis Schaeffer and Ravi Zacharias continued the Pascalian tradition by using man's greatness and wretchedness as evidence for religious ontology. The Existential Predicament Pascal sees the human condition as ultimately a single road to death. Death is a fact from which all men try to hide; nonetheless, it is a fact. We will all eventually die and we know it. However, we live as if we will never die. The words of Pascal are evocative:
Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition. (1966. p 434) It is absurd of us to rely on the company of our fellows, as wretched and helpless as we are; they will not help us; we shall die alone. (1966. p 151) The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is finished forever. (1966. p 165) Let us ponder these things, and then say whether it is not beyond doubt that the only good thing in this life is the hope of another life. . . (1966. p 427) We desire truth and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty. We seek happiness and find only wretchedness and death. (1966. p 401) God alone is man's true good. . . (1966. p 148) All men will die, and they know they will die. Yet, they do not all live lives of despair. Pascal explains how man copes despite his hopeless condition and profound predicament.
The dialectics of human spirit Pascal states that man responds to his hopeless condition in three ways: diversion, indifference, and self-deception. Rather than admit human wretchedness and death and look for a cure, we would rather ignore the human condition and lie to ourselves. On diversion he states: Diversion; Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things. (1966. p 133) If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it. (1966. p 70) We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it. (1966. p 166) I can quite see that it makes a man happy to be diverted from contemplating his private miseries by making him care about nothing else but dancing well… (1966. p 137)
On indifference Pascal argues as following: The immortality of the soul is something of such vital importance to us, affecting us so deeply, that one must have lost all feeling not to care about knowing the facts of the matter… Thus the fact that there exist men who are indifferent to the loss of their being and the peril of an eternity of wretchedness is against nature. With everything else they are quite different; they fear the most trifling things, foresee and feel them; and the same man who spends so many days and nights in fury and despair at losing some office or at some imaginary affront to his honour is the very one who knows that he is going to lose everything through death but feels neither anxiety nor emotion. It is a monstrous thing to see one and the same heart at once so sensitive to minor things and so strangely insensitive to the greatest. (1966. p 427)
On self-deception Pascal has this to say:
The nature of self-love and of this human self is to love only self and consider only self. . . it takes every care to hide its faults both from itself and others, and cannot bear to have them pointed out or noticed. . . For is it not true that we hate the truth and those who tell it to us, and we like them to be deceived to our advantage, and want to be esteemed by them as other than we actually are? … … people are more wary of offending those whose friendship is most useful and enmity most dangerous. A prince can be the laughingstock of Europe and the only one to know nothing about it. (1966. p 978)
Blaise Pascal saw that the use of reason alone would lead few, if any, to illumination. Pascal realized man is ruled more by his passions than by his reason. Therefore, his existential methodology focused on shaking men out of their indifference and removing their diversions. His existentialism reminds men that eternal issues are of far greater worth than mere temporary ones. Pascal did not try to reason men into the gates of religion; he attempted to sway men to desire the Holy to be true. He encouraged men to earnestly seek the Truth of the Sacred. Hyper-Modernity and the society, which has evolved through this is based more on pleasures and desire than on reason. Therefore, Pascalian methodology of presenting the faith has great potential today. Abstract argumentation is not appealing to most people today as Pitrim Sorokin rightly observed. Pascal recognized that man would rather discuss the concrete things of everyday life. Therefore, Pascal started his reasoning where most people would feel comfortable-with the person himself. Then Pascal would attempt to take the person out of their comfort zone by revealing the hidden, unpleasant truths (such as wretchedness, death, and self-deception) about the person. All this was done to wake the person up to the frivolity of this life and the need for the everlasting things of God.
CONCLUSION Blaise Pascal had a unique existential methodology. He was not a scholastic thinker, for he doubted that the traditional theistic proofs would persuade nonbelievers. He was not a fideist, for he defended the faith. And, he was not a pure presuppositionalist, for he used historical evidences to prove the truth of religion. On the contrary, Pascal's methodology could be classified as an excellent type of religious existentialism. For he attempted to speak to the entire man, not just his reason as he argued that man is more than his reason and to lead a true life man needs a reason that heart can intuit. Today, many people are not concerned about finding rational truth. But, ironically, they are very concerned about their existential experience. Many people seek meaning in life; they also want their deepest desires to be satisfied. At the same time, many people are reluctant to admit their faults. But the disciplinary social theory is designed upon the model cast by thinkers which have even problem with the very notion of human existence as a purely existential question that cannot be explained through behavioral theory or economic sociology. The very idea of human existence as a predicament is a non-issue within contemporary disciplinary social theory and Pascal is someone who can challenge the foundations of this state-social theory. In other words, the Pascalian existential methodology has great potential for contemporary man. For Pascal forces us to look at ourselves in the mirror. He forces us to see ourselves as we are: wretched, miserable people who will all eventually die. Pascal then tugs at our hearts and declares to us that only in the Holy can life have meaning. Only in God can we find satisfaction and forgiveness. Only in God can death, our greatest mystery, be reconciled with life. Pascal beseeches contemporary man to wager on the Holy. He calls us to seek God with all our being. For Pascal knows that if we seek the sacred with all our being, we will find Das Heilige and if we find Der Himmel, we win Ewigkeit.
ENDNOTES Jones, Phillip S. (1985) The World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: World Book, Inc., vol. 15, ‘’Blaise Pascal’’. Morris, Thomas V. (1992) Making Sense of It All. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Kreeft, P. (1993) Christianity for Modern Pagans. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Pascal, B. (1966) Pensees. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer; London: Penguin Books. 7 Kreeft, 228. See also Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy vol. IV (New York: Image Books, 1960), 166-167. 11 Francis A. Schaeffer, Trilogy (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), 109-114. 12 Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994), 133-145. 13 Richard E. Creel, "Agatheism: A Justification of the Rationality of Devotion to God," Faith and Philosophy vol. 10 (January 1993): 40, 45. 14 Gordon R. Lewis, Testing Christianity's Truth Claims (Lanham: University Press of America, 1990), 231-253. http://www.leaderu.com/apologetics/pascalmethodology.html
Reference
Adamson, D. (1995) Blaise Pascal: mathematician, physicist and thinker about God. Basingstoke.
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