Pascal: Reasoning and Belief by Michael Moriarty (review)

What this very thorough examination of the many sides of Pascal’s theological presentation in the Pensées does so well is exactly what it aims to do. It also explains what it does not aim to do, which is give any discussion of his wider mathematical and scientific thought. As Michael Moriarty says, the modern scientist or mathematician has no need to read what Pascal actually wrote, because his concepts are already absorbed into those fields. Not being either, I remain fascinated by just those writings, and also by the Lettres provinciales and their style, wit, and aims. The many authors who have commented on the latter are brought in, so we are invited to ruminate at more length than they can be awarded in these pages. Especially strong are Moriarty’s careful arguments about Pascal’s theological structures and his imaginative force, certainly one of the most powerful elements in the Pensées, together with the way in which it facilitates the making of connections. And as we look at the many divisions of this weighty work, we feel that Moriarty has indeed made connections that lead us intelligently on, through the contradictions, in such matters as belief and scientific knowledge, down to his conclusions. As a supplement to the rational, the rhetorical — that is, the work with language — is a valuable subject of study. The celebrated Entretien avec M. de Sacy with its discussions of Epictetus and Montaigne receives a welcome emphasis, as do questions of moral luck and the argument by design. From my point of view as a translator, I was particularly intrigued by the renderings by Isaac Taylor of the central and difficult term ‘esprit de finesse’, as ‘delicate intellect’ and so on (Pascal, Thoughts on Religion and Philosophy, trans. by Isaac Taylor (Glasgow: William Collins, 1838)). Then, surprisingly, to learn from the Introduction to Taylor’s edition that in Scotland it has been called ‘gumption’! No less intriguing are the sections on perspective, sense perception, self-interest, and self-knowledge. Now of course those of us who write about Pascal or any other thinker encounter the major difficulty of dispositio or how to order one’s argument, and I struggled with that in my own Blaise Pascal: Miracles and Reason (London: Reaktion Books, 2018). This book feels unstruggled-with, and wonderfully replete with quotations from such a truly great source. My favourite, worth a long meditation (and the poet Paul Valéry lingered over it), is this extraordinary sentence: ‘Quand je considère la petite durée de ma vie, absorbée dans l’éternité précédant et suivant le petit espace que je remplis et même que je vois, abîmé dans l’infinie immensité des espaces que j’ignore et qui m’ignorent, je m’effraie et m’étonne de me voir ici plutôt que là, car il n’y a point de raison pourquoi ici.’ For we see it putting into play the small place we all take, that ‘m’ before the fright and the astonishment: ‘je m’effraie et m’étonne’, showing how very tiny is the self therein — just that ‘m’. That phrase is unforgettable by any self we have or might someday become. Pascal the genius knew how to demonstrate the infinitely small and the infinitely immense, and we should remain immensely grateful for this chance to celebrate him.