Blaise Pascal
Humans are both wretched and great, reason cannot settle the deepest questions, and the heart has reasons of its own.
Placement
Mathematician and religious thinker: the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.
Key ideas
- Pascal's wager
- Esprit de finesse
- Misery and greatness of man
Influence
Influenced by 4
Epictetus
influenced by ✓
In the Conversation with M. de Sacy (1655) Pascal praised Epictetus for knowing human duty and greatness, but held that, ignoring human weakness, he led to pride. B. Pascal, Entretien avec M. de Sacy sur Épictète et Montaigne (1655); SEP “Blaise Pascal”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Epictetus › c. 50–135
Augustine
influenced by ✓
Pascal’s Pensées (1670) build on Augustine’s doctrine of a human nature fallen through original sin and restored only by grace, which he knew through Jansenius and Port-Royal. B. Pascal, Pensées (1670); Écrits sur la grâce; SEP “Blaise Pascal”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Augustine › 354–430
Michel de Montaigne
influenced by ✓
Pascal drew heavily on Montaigne’s Essays, above all the Apology for Raymond Sebond, for his picture of human misery, custom and diversion in the Pensées (1670). B. Pascal, Pensées (1670); Entretien avec M. de Sacy (1655); SEP “Blaise Pascal”
Michel de Montaigne › 1533–1592
Antoine Arnauld
influenced by
When the Sorbonne moved to censure Arnauld in 1656, Pascal took up his cause and the Jansenist doctrine of grace in the Provincial Letters (1656–57). B. Pascal, Les Provinciales (1656–57); SEP “Blaise Pascal”; SEP “Antoine Arnauld”
Evidence: AI draft
Antoine Arnauld › 1612–1694
Influenced 4
Alexis de Tocqueville
influenced ✓
Tocqueville counted Pascal among three authors he ‘lived with’ daily (1836); Democracy in America (1840) holds up his disinterested passion for truth against democracy’s taste for useful science. A. de Tocqueville, letter to L. de Kergorlay (Nov. 1836); De la démocratie en Amérique II (1840); P. A. Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift (2009)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Alexis de Tocqueville › 1805–1859
William James
influenced ✓
James discussed Pascal’s wager in ‘The Will to Believe’ (1896) and defended the right to believe where evidence cannot settle a live, forced and momentous option. W. James, “The Will to Believe” (1896); SEP “William James”; SEP “Pascal’s Wager”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
William James › 1842–1910
Miguel de Unamuno
influenced ✓
Unamuno read Pascal as a kindred spirit of agonic faith, a belief that lives with doubt (‘Pascalian Faith’, 1923; The Agony of Christianity, 1925). M. de Unamuno, “La foi pascalienne”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale (1923); L’Agonie du christianisme (1925)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Miguel de Unamuno › 1864–1936
Pierre Bourdieu
influenced
In Pascalian Meditations (1997) Bourdieu took Pascal as guide against the scholastic illusion of pure reason, drawing on his view that custom and the body make belief. P. Bourdieu, Méditations pascaliennes (1997); B. Pascal, Pensées (1670); SEP “Blaise Pascal”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Pierre Bourdieu › 1930–2002
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Voltaire
criticised by
In the 25th of his Philosophical Letters (1734) Voltaire took the side of humanity ‘against that sublime misanthrope’ Pascal, rejecting his picture of human wretchedness and the wager. Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques (1734), Letter XXV, “Sur les Pensées de M. Pascal”
Evidence: AI draft
Voltaire › 1694–1778
Criticizes 1
René Descartes
criticised
Pascal could not forgive Descartes for wanting to do without God, needing him only for a flick to set the world in motion (Pensées, fr. 1001 Lafuma). B. Pascal, Pensées, ed. Lafuma, fr. 1001 (Brunschvicg 77); fr. 887 (B 78: “Descartes inutile et incertain”)
Evidence: AI draft
René Descartes › 1596–1650
Works
- 1670Pensées
Fragments of an apology for Christianity: the wager, the heart, the thinking reed.
Position
Pascal described the human being as a “thinking reed”: fragile and lost between the infinitely large and the infinitely small, yet great because it knows its wretchedness. Reason has limits; besides the geometric mind there is the intuitive “spirit of finesse”, and the heart has its reasons that reason does not know. Since reason cannot prove or disprove God, he proposed his famous wager: betting on God costs little and may win infinite gain. Against the distractions with which we flee ourselves, he urged honest self-examination. His fragments, published as the Pensées, anticipated existentialist themes and remain a classic of religious thought.
Life & context
Born in Clermont in 1623, Pascal was a mathematical prodigy who built a calculating machine as a young man, carried out experiments on the vacuum and, with Fermat, founded probability theory. After a religious experience in the night of 23 November 1654, which he recorded in his “Memorial”, he joined the circle of the Jansenists at Port-Royal and defended them in the Provincial Letters. Chronically ill, he died in Paris in 1662.
Further main works
- Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle (1654)
- Provincial Letters (1656–1657)
As of November 2026 · Sources · Improve this page · How Agora is made