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Blaise Pascal: Life
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While it would be anachronistic to describe Pascal as an existentialist, one of the most abiding features of his work is the philosophical reflection on the radical contingency of human affairs that emerges in the final years of his life. He used these reflections to puncture the pride, arrogance and self-love of those who thought of themselves as superior to the vicissitudes of human life. Cromwell provided a contemporary illustration by his fall from power due to a relatively common illness. ‘Cromwell would have ravaged the whole of Christendom; the royal family was lost, and his own family was about to become all-powerful, except for a little grain of sand that lodged in his bladder. Even Rome was about to tremble beneath him. Once this little piece of stone became lodged there, he died, his family was disgraced, peace was established all round, and the king was restored’ (Fragment 632: II, 799).
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Pascal observed that nothing among all God's creation could ever replace the Creator Himself in satisfying the deep longings of the human heart. In his own life, Pascal confessed that not his brilliant intellect, nor his refined thoughts, nor his greatest scientific research could fill the void within.
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Pascal's literarily famous "wager withGod" (included in the Pensées), like his work on statistics, is "expectational" in character. It runs like this: However small the chance may be that God exists, the reward of Heaven, which is infinite, makes the value of belief in God ... infinite.Therefore, the risk of belief will be accepted by the wise and sober gambler, in the earthly casino in which his life is set. Belief is the gambler's best shot.
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For much of his life Pascal (1623-62) worked on a magnum opus which was never published in its intended form. Instead, he left a mass of fragments, some of them meant as notes for the Apologie.
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For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. He showed strong interest in one woman while in Auvergne. He referred to her as the "Sappho of the countryside."[12] During this time, Pascal wrote Discours sur les passions de l'amour ("Conversation about the Passions of Love") and apparently contemplated marriage — which he was later to describe as "the lowest of the conditions of life permitted to a Christian."[13] Jacqueline reproached him for his frivolity and prayed for his reform.
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Knowledge of Pascal's personal life is slight after his entry to Port Royal. His sister Gilberte tells of his asceticism, of his dislike of seeing her caress her children, and of his apparent revulsion from talk of feminine beauty. He suffered increasingly after 1658 from head pains, and he died on Aug. 19, 1662.
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