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Person As Figure of Ambiguity and Resolution in Pascal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Abstract
Certain similarities of style and concept can be found in the majority of Pascalian texts. A tracing of the structure and use of these patterns in the three major phases of Pascal's writings (nonreligious, the Provinciales, the Apologie) shows that the configuration shared by the different modes gravitates constantly toward one type of rhetorical and conceptual figure, the figure of person. It is a dialogic movement with a consistent pattern of an animate image containing human characteristics in which there are correspondences and structures of meaning and expression. This underlying configuration clearly places Pascalian thought and style in the tradition of Renaissance cosmology where the animate image of man, nature, and the universe had not yet been replaced by Cartesian mechanistic scientific philosophy.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969
References
1 It is significant to note one plausible explanation of Pascal's pseudonyms is that they are anagrams of a figurative relationship of Pascal to God, Tahntum Deo soli. See Morris Bishop, Pascal (New York, 1936), p. 222.
2 For simplicity in referring to quotations from the fragments of Pascal's Apologie, I shall use both the Lafuma and Brunschvicg numbering, the Lafuma first. Other references to Pascal's works are taken from the Lafuma edition (Seuil, 1963), which is the only one that includes the fragments recently discovered by Jean Mesnard.
3 It might be said that the structure of Pascal's thought is triadic. See Hugh Davidson, “Conflict and Resolution in Pascal's Pensées,” Romanic Review, xlix (1958), 12–24; see also his Audience, Words, and Art (Columbus, Ohio, 1965).
4 In the fragment on the Trois ordres (Fr. 933–460), a similar progression can be seen focusing on images of person. See also Pensées inédites, 3, p. 639.
5 I prefer to call this type of movement “dialogic” rather than “dialectic.” “Dialectic,” a term often used by Goldman, Lefebvre, Lacombe, and others, emphasizes the essential duality of the paradox. It is oriented toward abstraction and its philosophical implications are less appropriate to Pascal than the term “dialogic.”
6 There is an interesting parallel between this and Croll's description of the movement of word and thought in curt style or style coupe in baroque literature. See Morris VV. Croll, Style, Rhetoric, and Rhythm (Princeton, 1966), pp. 207–233.
7 On the subject of experimentation to determine whether nature abhors the vacuum, Pascal also describes himself as at a point of juncture, a point of confrontation between truth and falsehood. See Récit de la grande expérience de l'équilibre des liqueurs, p. 225. It also expresses the principles of method found in De l'art de persuader and De l'esprit géométrique.
8 This principle of resolution seems in some very profound sense analogous to the basic way of reaching truth in De l'esprit géométrique and De l'art de persuader, for the movement is quite similar. Things defined have their meaning only in relation to a definition. “Substituer toujours mentalement dans la démonstration les définitions à la place des définis” (pp. 349, 356). Compare this to the end of the letter to Noël, pp. 203–204. The definition would seem to incarnate verbally the truth of the thing defined by the act of the thinking person.
9 Cf. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians iv.12. See in detail the passage pp. 231–232.
10 Cf. “La nature agit par progrès. Ilus el reditus, elle passe et revient, puis va plus loin, puis deux fois moins, puis plus que jamais” (Fr. 771–355). See the discussion of this type of movement and the distinction between heredilas and continuatio in Jean-Jacques Demorest, “Pascal et le déséquilibre,” PMLA, lxxxii (May 1967), 191–196.
11 The structuring and imagery of this text is analogous to that of many other Pascalian texts dealing with the Church and the Christian in the general context of Sacred History. See, e.g., the Comparaison des chrétiens des premiers temps avec ceux d'aujourd'hui, Chs. xiv-xvi; Lettre à M. et Mme Périer, pp. 275–279; Lettres aux Roannez, pp. 265–270; Frs. 372–483, 449–556, 489–713, 590–656, 733–862, 919–553; cf. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians i.12-24.
12 It is interesting to find these traits in his biography. According to his sister Gilberte, their father encouraged Blaise in the pursuit of the most diverse types of learning and inquiry, while he, as father, took pleasure in bringing them together, synthesizing from his more mature point of view his son's diverse intellectual interests. The governing principle of this private education was in Gilberte's expression “de tenir cet enfant au-dessus de son ouvrage” (La Vie de Monsieur Pascal, p. 18). If this type of intellectual relationship existed between father and son, as Gilberte seems to indicate that it did—where the one was allowed to explore and invent on his own to the very limit of his growing intelligence and the other put order, harmony, relationship, and unity into these diverse interests from his more mature point of view—this type of intellectual filiation spells out in an almost analogical way one of the basic configurations so often noted in Pascal's thought.
13 See Frs. 110–282, 260–678, where, speaking of the human image and analogically the divine image, Pascal says: “Un portrait porte absence et présence, plaisir et déplaisir. La réalité exclut absence et déplaisir.”
14 It is of course to be remembered in this context that such metaphors as the sphère infinie and the argument about religion on the basis of a pari were not original with Pascal. See Henri Busson, La Pensée religieuse franęaise de Charron à Pascal (Paris, 1933), Ch. xi; Marie-Louise Hubert, Pascal's Unfinished Apology (New Haven, 1952); Jean Mesnard, Pascal (Paris, 1962), pp. 154–165.
16 It is hardly necessary to recall, for example, the influence of such acquaintances as Roannez, Mere, and Arnauld on Pascal's undertaking such projects as the carrosse à cinq sols, or the machine d'arithmétique, the study of probabilities, as well as their influence on the Lettres Provinciales and the Apologie.
18 E.g., the work of Torricelli on the vacuum and of Roberval in mathematics.
17 Even the most recent of studies on the persona Montalte continues this critical approach. See Patricia Topliss, The Rhetoric of Pascal (Leicester, 1966), pp. 54–93.
18 There are numerous other examples. See especially Letters i-x, pp. 272–273, 377, 381–382, 384–387, 418.
19 The question of figurative knowledge is of course an immense one, which I am only briefly sketching to draw attention to the role of person in Pascal's thought. A very revealing text to show the working of these principles of analogical thinking centering on the figure of person can be found in the Lettre à M. et Mme Périer, pp. 276–277. “Il faut recourir à la personne de Jésus-Christ; car tout ce qui est dans les hommes est abominable, et comme Dieu ne considère les hommes que par le Médiateur Jésus-Christ, les hommes aussi ne devraient regarder ni les autres ni eux-mêmes que médiatement par Jésus-Christ car si nous ne passons par le milieu, nous ne trouvons en nous que de véritables malheurs, ou des plaisirs abominables; mais si nous considérons toutes choses en Jésus-Christ, nous trouverons toute consolation, toute satisfaction, toute édification” (p. 276). Cf. Entretien avec M. de Saci, p. 296.
20 Cf. Le Mystère de Jésus, Fr. 919–553, 791.
21 See Fr. 946–785 and Lettre iv aux Roannez, p. 267.
22 This resembles the modèle of the fragment on beauty (585-32) which also establishes a theory of correspondences, but less of the symbolist kind than of patristic exegesis. See Marjorie Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle (Evanston, 111., 1950), Introd. and Chs. ii, iii, and iv. In the Renaissance and seventeenth century, cosmology was often interpreted in terms of the circle. The animate macrocosm, the geocosm, and the living microcosm were all conceived of as circles analogous to God, the Circle of Perfection. “More completely than in any other symbol in the universe, the Great Geometer had shown the intricate relationship of the three worlds in the repetition of the Circle of Perfection, which he alone transcended, since, as Pascal, Browne and a dozen others said, echoing in an ancient phrase: ‘God is a Circle whose Circumference is nowhere and whose Centre everywhere!‘ ” (Nicolson, p. 34). It was scientific philosophy which caused this animate image to be replaced by a mechanical one in the course of the seventeenth century.