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Summary: Nobody wrote better than Blaise Pascal.
Review: A great physicist, mathematician, writer and theologist, Pascal was also the inventor, and builder, of the first calculating machine. Pensees is of a rarely attained beauty. To reach its equal you must go to the very best poetry.To wit: "Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinies m'effraie", that is, the eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. The rest is silence, as his equally talented fellow said.
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Summary: Pascal's Pensees
Review: For thousands of years humanity has been searching for the presence of an invisible God. Blaise Pascal's "Pensees" is an excellent book describing why God's presence in our lives is so important. Even though I disagree with Pascal's reasoning concerning the defense and support of the Christian faith, he comes across as someone interested in the well-being and happiness of others, which makes it possible for "Pensees" to be beneficial to people of all faiths.
Pascal reminds us that people have been trying to find happiness, through worship, for many years. People have worshipped idols like wood, clay, stone and religious figures. Pascal's intention is to extend the idea that the need to worship someone or something is a natural fixation installed in us. Man's need to worship someone or something must then be due to the fact that God exists.
Pascal's "Pensees" suggests that we need God's help to be happy and to settle many of our own internal wars. Pascal points out that people fight with their own selfishness as well as that of others. He reminds us that the injustices, tyranny and irrational wars of the world have caused much distress. Pascal points out three troublesome questions humanity has struggled with: what is my purpose in life, where is my life going and how much time do I have left?
Pascal sheds light on the three types of people in the world and how God's presence in their lives is needed for their happiness. He tells us that people who have found God are reasonable and happy. Those who have not found God but continue to seek God are unhappy and reasonable, and those who leave God out of their lives are unreasonable and unhappy. Pascal is trying to relate to us that true happiness comes from knowing and understanding our creator.
Pascal, with his wager, intends to show how people have nothing to lose or possibly everything to gain when they put their faith in the Christian God. Although, he argues total destruction may find those who choose not to devote themselves to the Christian faith. As I stated, I disagree with the one-sidedness of Pascal's wager. If we look at Pascal's wager from a religiously neutral standpoint, we can eliminate the fallacy of the wager. Therefore, to put your faith in the "Creator of All Things" can only bring about a relationship with the true God.
Pascal's Pensees is a challenging book that if looked at with the right perspective depicts that happines can be found when a relationship is established with the true God. Pascal's "pensees", consists of ideas that can be useful if applied to our lives in a positive and non-prejudicial way.
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Summary: Read Pascal's Pensees.
Review: I always thought of Pascal as a great scientist, but as a somewhat dated Christian apologist. The general treatment of Pascal by both science and humanities is at best an unreflective nod to the importance of his scientific discoveries and a momentary and uncomfortable glance at his `other' writings. The lack of serious consideration given to Pascal's `other' writings by philosophy and theology departments and their absence from science curriculums is indicative of major bias and ignorance. Why? Pascal's science is embarassing to defenders of prevalent Darwinian atheistic science because of his zeal for the Christian faith. Pascal made some important discoveries but he "abandoned science for religion" and for that reason is tagged as an historical anachronism - he like many of the scientists of the 17th century were heavily tainted with `folk belief' and superstitions. Pascal's Science and Faith is embarassing to those philosophers and theologians that cannot reconcile the two aspects of human Pensees - thoughts. They like to think of Pascal as an early `existentialist' like Kierkegaard who made a `leap' of faith against the atheistic dogmas of material science; but Pascal did not support their radical dichotomy of science versus faith. Shunned on both sides for different reasons (for centuries!), Pascal is finally becoming more and more appreciated as someone who was `between' faith and science; a position becoming more fashionable. All you have to do is read `The Pensees' to quickly see it as one of the most important, beautiful and penetrating books ever written. The Pensees (`Thoughts') are a long series of fragments on the the human situation, Jesus Christ, God, revelation, Infinity and finitude. But it is the little pieces that you find, like lost treasures, that ring through to your very being that sets Pascal's Pensees apart as a book for living and reflecting and not merely analyzing. "We sail over a vast expanse, ever uncertain, ever adrift, carried to and fro. To whatever point we think to fix and fasten ourselves it shifts and leaves us; and if we pursue it it escapes our grasp, slips away, fleeing in eternal flight - Man's condition: inconstancy, ennui, unrest." "The last step that Reason takes is to recognize that there is an infinity of things that lie beyond it. Reason is a poor thing indeed if it does not succed in knowing that."
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Summary: A Light in our Darkness
Review: In his short lifespan, Pascal invented the prototype of the computer (la machine arithmetique), started the first public passenger service in Paris, mastered a physics problem re the vacuum, expounded his scientific and mathematical studies with such an order of brilliance that it was considered by no means inappropriate to compare him with Aristotle, engaged in vituperative and extremely effective theological polemics with the Jesuits -- and, finally, in spite of appaling ill-health and pain, attained a serene relationship with God and with his fellows, in the process producing one of the great literary masterpieces of all time, viz., the PENSEES. This volume is a work of Christian apologetics before which the most sceptical mind, indulgent flesh, and arrogant spirit, stand utterly defenseless. Not too shabby an achievement in thirty-nine years and two months!
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Summary: OUTSTANDING !
Review: ONE OF THE BEST PIECES OF LITERATURE I HAVE EVER READ, IN LIGHT OF BOTH ITS STYLE, READABILITY AND CONTENT. PASCAL GIVES AN INCISIVE ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT-HALFWAY BETWEEN THE FINITE AND THE INFINITE-AND THE CONCOMITANT CONSEQUENCES OF THIS SITUATION. HIS VIEW OF KNOWLEDGE-EPISTEMOLOGY-IS NOVEL AND SEEMINGLY VALID AS IT SEEMS TO ACCURATELY REFLECT THE HUMAN SITUATION. THE THREE ORDERS OF KNOWING REALITY SPEAKS BOTH TO MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY. AN EXCELLENT READ FOR ANY LEVEL AS THIS PIECE OF LITERATURE IS BOTH STYLISH AND SIMPLY PROFOUND.
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Summary: Unmatched, Clarity!
Review: ONE OF THE GREATEST APOLOGETICAL WORKS OF ALL TIME! Pascal was a titanic genius, a man with a superb intellect. Even today I would say that this book is unmatched. Since Pascal was so bright his writing is very easy to read. There is no need to complicate the expression of an idea. Pascal not only puts his great defense in understandable terms; he communicates with great artistic expression. Simply a delight to read. Buy this book and you will have to read it again and again, every time finding new insight, adding strength and depth to your faith!
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Summary: The most penetrating book on the human condition ever writte
Review: Pascal is arguably the greatest genius who ever lived. He is probably the only person to attain immortality in both the fields of science and literature. Pensees is his masterwork and here Pascal comes as close as any writer can to finding what Dostoyevsky called "the man in man". He thinks with his heart and feels with his mind. The greatest non-fiction book ever written.
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Summary: Rough but insightful.
Review: Pascal, the brilliant mathematician, physicist, and engineer, presents in his posthumously titled Pensees, his philosophy of religion and a paradox rich and challenging defense of Christian faith. Says Pascal, "Knowledge has two extremes which meet; one is the pure natural ignorance of every man at birth, the other is the extreme reached by great minds who run through the whole range of human knowledge, only to find that they know nothing... but it is a wise ignorance which knows itself. Those who stand half-way... pretend to understand everything... they get everything wrong."
The book is a collection of unfinished writings; arguments and ideas which he had scribbled, intending to then develop and elaborate. As such, the text is disjointed and even mysterious; statements are abrupt, incomplete, dogmatic. Yet, out of respect for the intellectual accomplishments of the great French mathematician, these notes were published essentially as he had left them. They contain many gems; profound statements which stand like islands in a sea of sometimes jumbled thoughts.
Pascal's themes are: the nature of human knowledge, the affliction of pride, the blindness and tyranny of self, the boundaries of reason, the hiddenness of God, and his own argument for "wagering" not only on God, but on the Christian faith. Two things are obvious; (1.) the arguments are not in the form in which Pascal intended to offer them, therefore, (2.) this is not a definitive apologetic. However, Pascal's arguments are rather unique and as such they are interesting even in their [often] crude form. Read this book in conjunction with the writings of C.S. Lewis, Augustine, or Sundar Singh.
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Summary: poetic work of religious philosophy
Review: Pascals thoughts, because they are raw, are intense and beautiful. I can't think of a more poetic work of philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: poetic work of religious philosophy
Review: Pascals thoughts, because they are raw, are intense and beautiful. I can't think of a more poetic work of philosophy.
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