Blaise Pascal: The Most Potent Modern Apologist?

Рет қаралды 5,234

9 ай бұрын

In the history of philosophy, there is perhaps no Christian apologist more effective in clearing away masks, evasions, diversions, indifference, and false optimism than Blaise Pascal. He provides a powerful challenge to the secular, skeptical, post-modern "nones" of our day. Where others offer sweet reasons to the head, he shoots sharp arrows at the heart.
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Instructor:
Dr. Peter Kreeft is a convert to the Catholic Church from reformed Protestantism. He earned his B.A. from Calvin College, and he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Fordham University. He completed post-doctoral work at Yale University. He has received several honors for achievements in the field of philosophy including the Woodrow Wilson Award, Yale-Sterling Fellowship, and Weathersfield Homeland Foundation Fellowship. He is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, a regular contributor to several Christian publications, and the author of over 55 books.
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Пікірлер: 20

@dynamic9016 7 ай бұрын

Really love listening to Dr. Peter Kreef.Very insightful and inspiring Catholic Apologist..

@gretalaube91 8 ай бұрын

Great to see Peter Kreeft again! You got me to read Pascal.

@Grace17893 4 ай бұрын

God bless you man cheers

@brianw.5230 8 ай бұрын

Its important to remember that Pascal wrote 200 pages why Christianity is the one true religion. He wrote about Jesus, morality, prophecies and miracles. That's basically the point of "Pensees."

@HarryNicNicholas 8 ай бұрын

and i bet lots of folks have written 200 pages on why their religion is the one true religion too, personally i go for 1 page on why religions are imaginary wish fulfillment, and in the case of catholicism, bully enabling.

@brianw.5230 8 ай бұрын

@HarryNicholas that's your wager. You have a finite life and you're wagering it on atheism.

@coolservantjesusswag2936 5 ай бұрын

@@HarryNicNicholasYou sound emotional Harry. You sound bitter. Just because other religions have books of 200 pages doesn’t make them just as true as Christianity, it could make them just as wrong but saying they both are true, would be a violation of the law of non-contradiction. So the original poster is just mentioning the topic of the discussion, Pascal. You went off on a different topic to ultimately make an emotional point.

@damo780 8 ай бұрын

Pensees - Divine writing- a superb mind

@brianw.5230 8 ай бұрын

I love Pascal's Wager. I think it's misunderstood. Life is a long series of gambles. Humans can't predict the future. There could be trillions of gods but every human is wagering their lives on one, some or none. Atheism is a wager, too. We're all making wagers (driving a car, walking down the street, being an atheist or religious, choosing a job, getting married, having kids) all our lives.

@HarryNicNicholas 8 ай бұрын

the wager assumes there is only one god. it might be that there is a god who prefers atheists (which would make more sense seeing as how christians can't act sincerely, they are avoiding hell). it's better to be atheist and not annoy any god rather than risk worshiping the wrong god and cop it. still, religists aren't very bright, so i don't know why god would favour anyone in an organized religion, i mean, look at the number of denominations , god looks like an amateur, at least atheists ALL AGREE on one thing.

@brianw.5230 8 ай бұрын

@HarryNicholas the wager doesn't assume that. If you read "Pensees" then you see Pascal wrote about other religions. Regardless, atheism is a wager, too.

@ThreeHailMarys777 3 ай бұрын

Look up the root of the word religion.

@mosescamara8866 5 ай бұрын

May the sherafic host continue to use your tongue to guide mankind Ameen🤲🤲💙💚🤲🤲 Amen Musa Moses

@PaoloGasparini-ux2kp 4 ай бұрын

"God sensitive to the heart" is the essence of Pascal's theology. "Heart," as is known, is the biblical term used by Christ to signify the soul as the root of vital, sensory, and intellectual powers, as well as emotional and volitional aspects. However, in Christ's language, we find all the terms referring to the activity of reason and intellect in relation to God. He himself is the Logos, that is, the subsisting Reason, evidently a transcendent, foundational, and guiding principle of human reason, participating in the same Logos and aimed at the knowledge of the Logos. Pascal is somewhat a victim of the Cartesian concept of reason, confined to mathematical and mechanical sciences. Influenced (and I emphasize "influenced") by Jansenist philoluteran pessimism, he fails to see how philosophy can and should appropriately address God. Here he mistakenly contrasts the "God of philosophers" with the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," as if the God that reason discovers to be the subsisting Being is not the same God, hidden in the first case and revealed in the second. He reduces belief to a "wager" as if it were a bet on horse races rather than the more serious and fruitful commitment of reason, which engages the eternal destiny of man.(Fr.G.Cavalcoli)

@PaoloGasparini-ux2kp 4 ай бұрын

A moral philosopher in Italy, like the author of the previous quote, who, however, is a Dominican theologian, has particularly enlightened me on Pascal's theology, comparing it to that of Descartes: Like Descartes, Pascal also bases his entire anthropology on the choice one has regarding the problem of God, especially addressing the atheist, as both Descartes and Pascal take the atheist into account. Descartes faces libertine atheism, the skeptical doubt that is overturned into the certainty of the existence of God and freedom. Similarly, in Pascal's "Pensées," the interlocutors are atheists. This unfinished work was supposed to be an apology for the Christian religion, and the interlocutors were atheists and libertines. So, both Descartes and Pascal are aware of the new phenomenon of atheism emerging on the European scene, which was making its first systematic appearances in Paris. However, Pascal, like Descartes, also struggles against doubt: it is libertine skepticism, although for him, Montaigne is not the only opponent, unlike Descartes. It is necessary to evaluate the difference with Pascal because their diversity is undeniable. Pascal's critique of Descartes focuses on the fact that Descartes' God is the God of philosophers, not the God of Jesus Christ. However, it is not the God of the Enlightenment; it is still the Christian God, but a philosophical Christian God, a "deistic" God already tendentially, not Pascal's Savior God. For Pascal, those far from faith are not only skeptics and atheist-libertines but also deists, that is, Augustinianly, Pelagians. There is a fragment in which Pascal states that both atheists and deists are equally distant from God. This is Pascal's striking insight: that the enemy is not only the atheist but also the one who asserts a God that has nothing to do with the salvation of man. It is not enough to affirm the existence of God: a God who does not change life, who does not change the flesh of man, history, is a useless God. That is the God of the Stoics. The two great philosophical schools are indeed the Epicureans and the Stoics, the skeptics and the rationalists, whom Pascal calls dogmatic. The Stoics are those for whom reason solves everything because reason leads to truth, fulfills every desire of man. The Stoic is a Pelagian, one who claims that salvation is achieved through the work of one's reason. These are the two opposing schools indicated in the famous dialogue with Monsieur de Sacy, on whose eternal contrast Pascal believes philosophy will always be torn apart, as reason has strong arguments for truth, but doubt has equally strong arguments against truth. According to Pascal, human nature tends towards the truth, but reason is not always able to find the truth due to a tragic dialectic. Man thus oscillates between the aspirations to the certainty of his nature (he is created for the truth) and the Babel-like confusion of reason that becomes entangled and ends in errors and falsehood. Philosophy is marked by an incurable dialectic; in short, Pascal cannot agree with Descartes because reason cannot radically overcome doubt. This is the point of contrast. After the fall, original sin, doubt cannot be overcome solely by reason, but the salvation of Jesus Christ also restores reason wounded by doubt: this is Pascal's position, which is more Pyrrhonian and pessimistic than Descartes, who is Pelagian. His God is yes at the beginning, but then it is man with his reason that dominates passions. Descartes's anthropology is not wounded, does not need salvation. But this view is rooted in the theology of the time when there was a certain controversy against the Jesuits, echoed by Pascal's work, the Provincial Letters. However, the moral school of the Jesuits of the time was marked by Molina, the Spanish theologian who affirmed the original purity of nature with great rigor. The idea of the pure nature of the Jesuits, which arose as an antithesis to Protestantism and the Lutheran idea of corrupted nature, which is a dialectical reaction to Lutheranism, is exactly that of Descartes. When Descartes does philosophy, he excludes, in the sense that he puts in parentheses, theology. And he starts from the hypothesis of pure nature, that is, a nature that does not need salvation, since the wound (i.e., doubt) can be healed by reason alone. It is important to note, however, that Descartes had studied at the Jesuit college in La Fléche and had well internalized the ethical notions of the Jesuit school. The contrast between Descartes and Pascal revolves around Pelagianism, that is, the idea of a nature that is structurally wounded or a nature that maintains formally its autonomy in a philosophical sense. Descartes is the modern "Molina," the one criticized by Pascal in the Provincial Letters. The point of contrast is thus on what can overcome radical doubt: reason or faith. In fragment 438 of the Chevalier edition, one of the most interesting in all the "Pensées," Pascal starts from doubt, like Descartes, and carries out an analysis of doubt that seems to read the same Meditations on Metaphysics of Descartes. These passages could be compared letter by letter with Descartes, but the difference is that doubt is not overcome through reason, because reason itself is entangled by doubt. Pascal introduces the notion of original sin, which is a mystery for him, but without this mystery, the nature of man cannot be understood. In Descartes, however, this hypothesis is not introduced. For Pascal, it is necessary to go beyond man to understand man. This is the point that differentiates him from Descartes, where instead the search is quieted in philosophy. The Meditations on Metaphysics are a kind of spiritual exercises, like Spinoza's Ethics. In the seventeenth century, works were written in the old way, where philosophy becomes the elevation of the soul from error to truth. Spinoza's Ethics is a liberation of the soul from passions: the more knowledge increases, the more the soul is freed from passions. But also in Descartes's Meditations on Metaphysics, a similar process occurs in the sense that one moves from doubt to truth, from illusion to certainty, generating a conversion within the philosophical process. Philosophy is the tool that allows not only the discovery of the truth but also a change in perspective. It is a "metanoia," no longer concerning the Christian heart, but it is a metanoia that occurs entirely within philosophy itself and certainly through God but not through Christ, who in Descartes has no role, as Cartesian doubt is not challenged by death. In Pascal, death is the source of diversion, of the alienation of existence, and from this perspective, God must answer the problem of death as well as evil, while for Descartes, the problem of death does not exist. So, the difference between Pascal and Descartes does not concern what is usually talked about in manuals. Certainly, in Descartes, there is the possibility of secular development, precisely because of his Pelagianism, that is, because the conversion takes place within a horizon that is entirely philosophical, certainly still Christian because Descartes' God is Christian. His philosophy aims to fight atheism without the principles of religious philosophy: the change occurs within philosophy itself. Instead, for Pascal, it is necessary to move beyond philosophy because, on the plane of philosophical immanence, the dialectic between the schools is unsolvable, and only an external point can allow it. Therefore, the point is modern Augustinianism that unfolds in different ways in Pascal and Descartes, and in particular, it splits in two directions: one is that of enlightenment, that is, ontologism, whereby, once the existence of the soul and God is established, God is shown to be the foundation of the certainties of reason (reminiscent of Augustine, Platoic in some way, whereby the idea of truth attests also to the truth of God), and the other is constituted by the Augustinianism of grace, which, however, appears as a sort of anti-philosophy. It is the Augustinianism of the heart that finds its expression precisely in Pascal.