PhilosophersBlaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Augustinianism · Jansenism (Port-Royal)1623 – 1662 FranceBelieverMathematicianCritic of reason aloneMoralist
Pensées (Brunschvicg 139, 170, 171, 425)

Diversion: fleeing our misery, seeking God

What it claims

True happiness is found only in God: he alone is our true good.

Why

Alone with ourselves we see our weak, mortal condition; diversion hides it from us without curing it.

Valid with an implicit premise

Pascal watches people bustle about: war, court, gambling, hunting. He concludes that all the unhappiness of men comes from one single thing: not being able to stay quietly in a room. Why? Because, alone with ourselves, we see our condition: weak, mortal, beyond consolation. So we run after the bustle that keeps us from thinking about it: "the chase, and not the quarry". Even a king, without diversion, is unhappy. But diversion cures nothing, it hides the evil. If true happiness exists, it cannot be found in what we pursue: it takes an infinite object, God.

P1All men seek happiness, without exception: it is the motive of all their actions.
P2Our condition is feeble, mortal and so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.
P3Diversion is not happiness: it turns us away from thinking of our misery without curing it, it comes from outside and depends on a thousand accidents; it consoles, but it is also the greatest of our miseries, because it keeps us from thinking about ourselves.
P4The lack we try to fill is bottomless: no finite, created good can fill it. Only an infinite and unchanging object, that is, God, can.
P5If the desire for happiness can be fulfilled, it is fulfilled by a created good or by God.
P6 · implicit premiseThe desire for happiness, which everyone shares, is not in vain: it can be fulfilled.
Therefore true happiness is found only in God: he alone is our true good.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a world where everyone wants to be happy, where neither diversion nor any created good fulfils the desire, but where happiness is simply not possible: man would stay restless forever, and God would not be the answer.
Valid with P6. Without it, the argument only shows that neither diversion nor any good of this world fulfils our desire, which many non-believers grant (they conclude that total happiness is impossible). To get to God, one must assume this desire has a real object. Pascal defends it with his picture of man: an "infinite abyss" that is the trace of a lost happiness. That is the most debated point. P5 is almost self-evident: if the desire can be fulfilled, it is by a creature or by something else, and Pascal calls that something else God.
Analogy. A child afraid of the dark turns on the television so as not to hear the silence of the bedroom. The noise reassures him, but the fear is still there. Pascal says: do not look for a louder noise, look for what really removes the fear. The sceptic replies: what if there were nothing but noise?

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Voltaire 1734 · attacks premise 2

Voltaire finds this reading too gloomy. That man gets bored when he does nothing does not prove he is miserable: one could just as well say he is fortunate on this point, and that the author of nature attached boredom to inaction to force us to be useful to others and to ourselves. Bustle is then not a flight, it is a good use of our strength.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1734, after the author's death (1662).
The debate goes on (our summary) Voltaire and Pascal describe the same fact, the boredom of rest, and draw opposite lessons. For Voltaire it pushes us to act, hence to live usefully; for Pascal it reveals an emptiness that action does not fill (P3 and P4). The debate is less about the fact than about its meaning. A defender of Pascal answers that usefulness does not explain everything: the man who plays for nothing gets bored, he must "get heated" and deceive himself about what he seeks. A defender of Voltaire answers that most active people are simply busy living.
Montaigne 1588 · attacks premise 3

For Montaigne, diversion is a natural and sensible remedy. When a grief grips him, he does not fight it head on: he changes place, occupation, company, and loses himself in other thoughts, where the evil loses his trail. He sees in it the way nature itself heals: always, he says, "variation soothes, dissolves and dissipates". If diversion heals, it is not one more misery. (Montaigne is speaking here of a particular sorrow, not of the whole human condition.)

Pascal replies
Pascal Pascal (anticipated reply, not aimed at Montaigne)
Pascal says almost the opposite: the only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet it is the greatest of our miseries. It mainly prevents us from reflecting upon ourselves and makes us ruin ourselves insensibly. Without it we should be in weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escape; diversion amuses us and leads us unconsciously to death.
The debate goes on (our summary) Pascal does not reply to Montaigne in particular (he knows him well, see his Conversation with M. de Sacy). The disagreement is clear. Montaigne treats a particular sorrow and keeps a sense of measure; Pascal speaks of the whole human condition. A defender of Montaigne would say that escaping a passing grief is not escaping death, and that healing by change is a matter of experience. A defender of Pascal would say that this "flight" touches all our occupations, and that it keeps us from seeking a deeper remedy.
E
Epicurus 300 BC · attacks premise 4

For Epicurus, the wise can be fully happy in this life. They sort their desires, are content with little, and obtain health of body and peace of mind. Once this peace is reached, the tempest of the soul is laid, and the living creature has nothing left to go and seek that it lacks. So there is no infinite abyss that only God could fill: the lack is filled when we stop desiring what is vain.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Pascal in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) In the fragment on diversion, Pascal does not reply to Epicurus. The closest he comes is his remark that the advice given to Pyrrhus to take at once the rest he was seeking at such cost "was full of difficulties" (B139). An Epicurean would answer that this is exactly what philosophy teaches: to free oneself from fears, including the fear of death ("death is nothing to us", says the same letter). A defender of Pascal would answer that this peace holds only if one manages to stop thinking about one's condition, which amounts to a more refined diversion. The disagreement is over a matter of fact: can a soul really be fulfilled without desiring anything more?