Human Reason in "Pensees"

Paper Summary:

This paper analyses some sayings from the "Pensees" in which Pascal tries to impress the limits of reason and empirical knowledge. It discusses how, instead of glorifying the utilitarian potential of reason and empirical endeavour, on the eve of the Enlightenment, Pascal instead warns of its danger.

From the Paper:

"One of the purposes of Blaise Pascal in the Pensees is to delineate the limits of reason and empirical knowledge. It was in the birth throes of the Age of Enlightenment, the period in which empirical knowledge swept aside Catholicism and faith and supplanted them as the underpinning to European society. Diderot, d'Alembert and the French encyclopedists, paved the way for the German idealists, and in turn for the British utilitarians. The corresponding advance of industry and technology made sure that empirical knowledge became more and more synonymous with knowledge itself, all other forms of knowledge gradually being delegated to the status of superstition. Pascal himself is one of the founders of scientific civilisation, and his contributions in fluid mechanics, probability and number theory are of fundamental importance in this regard. The greatness of Pascal lies in the fact that not only was he a progenitor of modern science, but he was equally aware of its limitations. Against the backdrop of the Enlightenment it is fair to assess that Pascal is ignored and overridden in the Western thrust towards technological society."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. Trans. W. F. Trotter. Mineola: Dover Publications, 2003.

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