Opening

In Pascal's Pensées the important fragment 103 that has the title ‘Justice, force’ has been subject to a number of significant commentaries. In addition it has exerted a considerable influence on how the interconnection between questions of justice and their relation to the operation of power and force are understood. The fragment is, however, preceded by another. (It precedes it, principally, in the Lafuma edition.) This latter fragment is of less certain origin; nonetheless, it forms part of the overall work. The fragment 102 reads:

The juxtaposition is stark. More exactly the fragment presents an exacting either/or. What it sets in play is the position in which, in the first instance, it cannot be the case that both are evil, and then in the second, it cannot be the case that neither is evil; hence the either/or. Moreover, the fragment envisages a universe in which it holds true. While it may be countered that it is possible to suggest another in which this either/or is not operative, such a move would do no more than evince a failure to understand how a statement of this nature works. It creates the universe within which it applies. Within such a universe, given the application of this either/or, the position of both Christian and Jew is constructed. That is how they figure. Within that universe the Jew is named; Jews are ‘méchants’. The context, and it is a context created by the Pensées, within which to read the fragment that follows, i.e. ‘Justice, force’ has now emerged.