De Pascal à Voltaire: Le rôle des Pensées de Pascal dans l'histoire des idées entre 1670 et 1734 (review)

634 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3 1:4 OCTOBER 1993 biographies, and studies. The part on studies is further subdivided into two categories. The first category, "Malebranche Criticism: I_~cke to Maine de Biran," is a catalogue of critical writings on Malebranche's philosophy by his contemporaries and somewhat later figures (Locke, Norris, Buffier, F~nelon, Fontenelle, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, among others). The second category, "The Secondary Literature," comprises both general and specific studies on Malebranche, and works on thinkers, movements, and concepts that would be of interest and value to anyone engaged in Malebranche studies (e.g., books and.articles on Leibniz, Arnauld, Descartes, scholasticism, St. Augustine, Jansenism, the Oratory, Berkeley, Pascal, theories of ideas, Spinoza, occasionalism, and SO on). The organization of this bibliography is exemplary. The editors have done a lot of work for us. I particularly like the separate sections on Malebranche's numerous controversies and his even more numerous critics--it makes it easy to go straight to work in the primary literature on a particular aspect of Malebranche's multifarious intellectual life. Also of value are the annotations appended to many of the entries. The editors take their subtide--a "critical" guideuseriously, and the annotations are honest and opinionated ("Ten pages not to be missed," "A collection of'analogies' between M. and Leibniz, of no further use," "... erroneously claims that..., .... gende but firm," "best by far," "brilliarit," "indispensable," "regrettably unclear"), and, on occasion , humorous (on Copleston, they note: "The staple source for generations of graduate students preparing for Ph.D. exams. Fortunately, a basically sound account"). Scholars of early modern philosophy in general, and of Malebranche's philosophy in particular, owe a great debt to the editors of this volume. It will no doubt be an important and permanent research tool, and indispensable for anyone interested in seventeenth-century thought. STEVEN NADLER University of Wisconsin, Madison Antony McKenna. De Pascal ~ Voltaire: Le role des "Perishes" de Pascal dam rhistoire des idles entre ~67o et z734. Volumes 1 and 2. Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institute, 199o. Pp. xv + 1lo4. Cloth, NP. Antony McKenna's De Pascal ?~Voltaire is the most complete, scholarly and detailed work ever published on the influence of Pascal's Pens~es from its first edition to the Enlightenment. McKenna shows that this influence was considerable. He traces allusions (acknowledged or implicit) to Pascal's Pens~es in a tremendous number of major and minor authors, ranging from en passant souvenirs to extensive developments ofh and/or reactions to--major themes in Pascal's thought. McKenna acknowledges that his survey is not exhaustive and admits that some of the views he traces back to Pascal might have come from some other thinker also influenced by Pascal, but both problems follow from Pascal's pervasive presence in the period unearthed by McKenna. The book contains four sections. In the first McKenna presents his interpretation of the Pens~es. Building on Richard H. Popkin's history of modern scepticism, BOOK REVIEWS 635 McKenna verifies the relevance of the tradition of Christian Pyrrhonism and argues that Pascal belongs to it. Still in this section, McKenna shows the conflicting interpretations of Pascal's unfinished apology within the Port-Royal circle. Basically, whereas Filleau de La Chaise developed the historical proofs of Scripture sketched by Pascal, thereby remaining consistent to Pascal's Christian Pyrrhonism (refusal of metaphysical proofs), Arnauld and Nicole mitigated Pascal's scepticism in their edition of the Perishes, interpreting Pascal's sentiment (which, according to McKenna, derives from Gassendi's sensualism) as Cartesian evidential foundationalism. In the second and third sections, the reader will be surprised at the significance of Pascal's views for philosophers such as Nicole, Malebranche, Bayle and Locke--not to mention the many lesser known figures. The fourth section contains a very detailed examination of the intellectual context of Voltaire's criticism of Pascal. The book also includes the following precious appendices: indications of Leibniz's references to Pascal, Cyrano de Bergerac's criticism of Pascal's wager, bibliographies on the Three Impostors, the reviews of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques in the eighteenth century, the quarrel around the New Testament of Mons, the works in...