Pensées
"Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Pensees is a collection of philosophical fragments, notes and essays in which he explores the contradictions of human nature in psychological, social, metaphysical and, above all, theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but also as a being whose existence can be transformed through faith in God's grace. This masterly translation conveys Pascal's disarmingly personal tone and captures all the fire and passion of the original. Also contained in this volume are a comparison between different editions, appendices and a bibliography.". - Back Cover.
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- Pascal's Pensees
- Ones I read as a teenager that have a lasting, if not nostalgic, effect:
- Blaise Pascal's "Pensées" (Thoughts)
- René Descartes' "Discours de la méthode" (Discourse on the method)
- Henri Poincaré's "L'avenir des mathématiques" (The future of mathematics)
The way they wielded words pleased me. Their hopes and doubts moved me. Their intellect shattered my brain.
- I've recently been reading the Pensees, so it feels timely that this article was posted. I'll add here a couple more practical pieces of advice that Pascal offers for dealing with what he considers the wretchedness of human experience:
"One must know oneself [reference to Socrates]. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves to regulate one's life, and there is nothing better"
"Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences."
- Pascal was bothered by it. In the Pensees he said “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.” Maybe you’d enjoy this blog post about it: https://www.steelsnowflake.org/post/pascals-terror
- “The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself.
This is all that men have been able to make themselves happy. And those who philosophize on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.” (Pensees, Blaise Pascal)
- If you want to restrict Graham's argument to non-fiction, I'll happily grant you that.
But let me give you a bit more context:
As a Frenchman, when I think "Essay", my mind almost automatically reaches for two authors: Montaigne and Pascal (e.g. in his Pensées).
"Simple" is probably the last qualifier I would use to describe their works. They're not simple. They're complex, rich, beautiful, copiously quoting from classical authors and yet often crystal clear. They have the same quality poetry has where replacing a word by another damages the precision of the message and images conveyed.
That is also true of non-fiction prose in longer form. I shudder to think what could become of Tocqueville's writing style, a peculiar mix of classical and romantic, if it were translated into "simple" language.
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