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WorkBlaise Pascal

The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

The unfinished notes for a defence of Christianity, assembled after Pascal's death — home to the wager and the thinking reed, and reordered by every editor since.

by Blaise Pascal345 passages held

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Original title
Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets
First published
(published posthumously)
Original language
French

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Overview

What Pascal left at his death in 1662, at thirty-nine, was not a book but the makings of one: thousands of notes toward a defence of the Christian religion aimed at the worldly unbeliever. Some were finished paragraphs, many a single line; a few hundred of them he had threaded onto strings in bundles he called liasses, and the rest lay loose. His editors at Port-Royal, publishing in 1670, could not print a heap of scraps, so they selected, smoothed and reordered them into something that reads like a book. Every editor since has had to settle the sequence again, which is why one fragment carries three different numbers in Brunschvicg, in Lafuma and in Sellier. The order changes the argument. Among the pieces is the wager — belief in God as a bet where the possible winnings are infinite and the stake is small — and the claim that the heart has its own reasons, inaccessible to the intellect. Pascal writes about human contradiction, the misery and greatness of a creature he calls a thinking reed, crushable by a vapour yet aware that it is being crushed. The book we read is a reconstruction, and its shape has been argued over for three and a half centuries. It became, for all that, the most enduring defence of faith in the French language.

Key concepts

What exactly is Pascal's wager?

An argument that, since reason cannot prove or disprove God and one must live one way or another, belief is the rational bet. Wager on God and win, and the gain is infinite happiness; wager and lose, and you forfeit almost nothing. The stakes make the choice one-sided. It is aimed not at the devout but at the worldly gambler, and it argues for betting, not for God's existence.

What did Pascal mean by 'the heart'?

Not emotion opposed to thought, but a faculty of immediate knowing. The heart grasps first principles, space, time, number, the certainty that we are awake, that reason cannot prove but must assume. Pascal's line, the heart has its reasons which reason does not know, claims that our surest knowledge is felt directly, and it is to the heart, not the argument, that he assigns faith.

What is the 'thinking reed'?

Pascal's image for the human condition. Man is a reed, the frailest thing in nature, killed by a vapour or a drop of water, yet a thinking reed: he knows that he dies, and the universe that crushes him knows nothing. Our dignity lies in thought, not in size or strength. The phrase compresses his central theme, that we are at once wretched and great.

Why is the Pensées unfinished, and why do fragment numbers differ?

Pascal died in 1662 leaving thousands of notes toward a defence of Christianity, some finished, many a single line, a few bundled on strings he called liasses. The Port-Royal editors selected and reordered them into a book in 1670, and every editor since has resequenced them. That is why one fragment carries different numbers in Brunschvicg, Lafuma and Sellier, and why the order, which shapes the argument, remains disputed.

Who was the Pensées written to persuade?

The worldly unbeliever, the cultivated skeptic who is indifferent rather than hostile to religion. Pascal's strategy is to make such a reader feel the strangeness of their own condition, the misery and greatness they cannot explain, before offering Christianity as the account that fits it. The wager and the appeal to the heart are both shaped for a mind that trusts calculation and distrusts sermons.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Belief as a bet worth placing

If reason cannot decide whether God exists, how should a person who must live anyway place their bet? Pascal turns the question of faith into a calculation of stakes.

The wager meets the unbeliever on his own ground. Reason, Pascal grants, cannot settle whether God exists; the coin is spinning and one must wager, since not betting is itself a bet. He then weighs the stakes: believe and be right, the winnings are infinite; believe and be wrong, the loss is small and finite. On those odds only the reckless decline. It is not a proof of God but a proof that betting on God is rational, aimed at a worldly gambler who trusted odds. And Pascal knew belief cannot be willed cold, so he advised acting as the faithful act until the habit takes.

  • faith
  • reason
  • theology
  • epistemology
  • evidence
  • judgment
  • prophecy

Enter a dialogue

What the heart knows that reason cannot

Are there truths the intellect will never reach by argument, that a person nonetheless grasps and lives by? Pascal marks a second way of knowing, and hands faith to it.

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. Pascal means no sentimental flight from thought but a claim about knowledge: first principles, space, time, number, the certainty we are not dreaming, are felt immediately, not proved, and it is on such felt certainties that all reasoning rests. Faith he places here too, as something God gives to the heart rather than the argument wins for the head, which is why the wager only clears the ground. The intellect is not dethroned but shown its limit, a creature that reasons from foundations it did not and could not reason its way to.

  • reason
  • epistemology
  • perception
  • faith
  • truth
  • spirituality
  • miracles

Enter a dialogue

The thinking reed

What kind of creature is at once so wretched and so exalted, crushable by a vapour yet aware of being crushed? Pascal reads the whole human paradox off that single contradiction.

Man is a reed, the weakest in nature, but a thinking reed; a drop of water suffices to kill him, yet he knows that he dies and the universe crushing him knows nothing. Pascal builds his whole picture of the person on this doubleness, misery and greatness held together, the wretchedness of a creature who cannot sit quiet in a room set against the dignity of one who alone in nature grasps its own condition. Neither half may be dropped: dwell only on the greatness and you get pride, only on the misery and you get despair. The knot, he argues, is what a true account of us must explain.

  • human nature
  • human condition
  • contradiction
  • pride
  • morality
  • religion
  • religious epistemology

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
345
distinct concepts
541
by passages held, corpus-wide
#217

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “miracles” and “religious epistemology”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 90 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
miraclesreligious epistemology12
faithmiracles6
faithreligious epistemology6
miraclesprophecy6
prophecyreligious epistemology6
happinesshuman nature5
epistemologyfaith4
faithgrace4
epistemologygrace3
gracereligious epistemology3
human naturereligious epistemology3
epistemologyhuman nature2
faithprophecy2
gracehuman nature2
gracemiracles2
epistemologymiracles1
epistemologyprophecy1
faithhappiness1
graceprophecy1
human naturemiracles1
human natureprophecy1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1656 The Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal (Les Provinciales)

    Pascal's public polemic, eighteen pseudonymous open letters dashed off in the heat of the Jansenist crisis of 1656–57; long read as much for the clarity of their French as for the theology they defended.

     EN
  2. 1670 The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal (Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets) you are here EN
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