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Author: David Wetsel
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 9780813213286
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Seeks to answer a question that has puzzled readers since the Pensees -- a work conceived principally as an Apology for the Christian Religion -- first appeared in 1670: To whom is Pascal's call to Christian conversion really addressed?
Author: David Wetsel
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 9780813213286
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Seeks to answer a question that has puzzled readers since the Pensees -- a work conceived principally as an Apology for the Christian Religion -- first appeared in 1670: To whom is Pascal's call to Christian conversion really addressed?
Author: Michael Moriarty
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198849117
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 426
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Book Description
This book is a study of Blaise Pascal's defence of Christian belief in the Pensees. Michael Moriarty aims to expound--and in places to criticize--what he argues is a coherent and original apologetic strategy. Setting out the basic philosophical and theological presuppositions of Pascal's project, the present volume draws the distinction between convictions attained by reason and those inspired by God-given faith. It also presents Pascal's view of the contradictions within human nature, between the 'wretchedness' (our inability to live the life of reason, to attain secure and durable happiness) and the 'greatness' (the power of thought, manifested in the very awareness of our wretchedness). His mind-body dualism and his mechanistic conception of non-human animals are discussed. Pascal invokes the biblical story of the Fall and the doctrine of original sin as the only credible explanation of these contradictions. His analysis of human occupations as powered by the twin desire to escape from painful thoughts and to gratify one's vanity is subjected to critical examination, as is his conception of the self and self-love. Pascal argues that just as Christianity propounds the only explanation for the human condition, so it offers the only kind of happiness that would satisfy our deepest longings. He thus reasons that we have an interest in investigating its truth-claims as rooted in the Bible and in history. The closing chapters of this book discuss Pascal's view of Christian morality and the famous 'wager' argument for opting in favour of Christian belief.
Author: Blaise Pascal
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press
ISBN: 9780813233451
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 680
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Book Description
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher, who laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities. The Pensées are made up of some 800 fragments, that have proven to be an enduring masterpiece since their initial publication in 1670. This volume is a translation of Philippe Sellier's edition of Pascal's Pensées, in addition to two shorter texts, the Exchange with M. de Sacy and The Life of Monsieur Pascal by Pascal's sister, Gilberte Périer. In addition to a Preface and an Introduction, there is a comprehensive apparatus criticus. The text was originally produced by a team of international Pascal scholars, who translated individual sections and was revised by the General Editor. The introduction situates the Sellier edition in the history of Pascal scholarship and highlights the advance its reordering of the fragments and of the folders or bundles represents, both the translation itself and the notes allow for a deeper reading of the text. It not only gives English readers a version of the authoritative Sellier edition of the collection of reflections known as The Pensées, it also proposes material which help assess the philosopher's significance and the originality of his thought. On the whole, this translation gives a comprehensive view of the progress of Pascal's intended Apology of the Christian Religion as well as of other writings on related topics. It also provides today's readers with a challenging set of arguments, prayer, and quotations from Scripture, and even the record of a mystical experience, known as the Memorial. It highlights all facets of Pascal's genius, his familiarity with Scripture combined with a talent for controversy, irony mixed with fervor, and altogether the production of an intriguing and challenging writer and thinker.
Author: Blaise Pascal
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
Pascal's Pensées or, Thoughts is a collection of fragments written by the French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensées was in many ways his life's work. It represented Pascal's defense of the Christian religion, and the concept of "Pascal's wager" stems from a portion of this work.
Author: Paul J. Griffiths
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813233844
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is known in the English-speaking world principally for the wager (an argument that it is rational to do what will affect belief in God and irrational not to), and, more generally, for the Pensées, a collection of philosophical and theological fragments of unusual emotional and intellectual intensity collected and published after his death. He thought and wrote, however, about much more than this: mathematics; physics; grace, freedom, and predestination; the nature of the church; the Christian life; what it is to write and read; the order of things; the nature and purpose of human life; and more. He was among the polymaths of the seventeenth century, and among the principal apologists of his time for the Catholic faith, against both its Protestant opponents and its secular critics. Why Read Pascal? engages all the major topics of Pascal's theological and philosophical writing. It provides discussion of Pascal's literary style, his linked understandings of knowledge and of the various orders of things, his anthropology (with special attention to his presentation of affliction, death, and boredom), his politics, and his understanding of the relation between Christianity and Judaism. Pascal emerges as a literary stylist of a high order, a witty and polemical writer (never have the Jesuits been more thoroughly eviscerated), and, perhaps above all else, as someone concerned to show to Christianity's cultured despisers that the fabric of their own lives implies the truth of Christianity if only they can be brought to look at what their lives are like. Why Read Pascal? is the first book in English in a generation to engage all the principal themes in Pascal's theology and philosophy. The book takes Pascal seriously as an interlocutor and as a contributor of continuing relevance to Catholic thought; but it also offers criticisms of some among the positions he takes, showing, in doing so, how lively his writing remains for us now.
Author: Jeff Jordan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199291322
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
What if there is no strong evidence that God exists? Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence illegitimate and improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. And if any thesis enjoys the status of a dogma among philosophers, it is Evidentialism. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absenceof adequate evidence. Pascal's Wager is the most prominent theistic pragmatic argument, and issues in epistemology, the ethics of belief, and decision theory, as well as philosophical theology, all intersect at the Wager. Other prominent theistic pragmatic arguments include William James'scelebrated essay, 'The Will to Believe'; a posthumously published and largely ignored pragmatic argument authored by J.S. Mill, supporting the propriety of hoping that quasi-theism is true; the eighteenth-century Scottish essayist James Beattie's argument that the consoling benefit of theistic belief is so great that theistic belief is permissible even when one thinks that the existence of God is less likely than not; and an argument championed by the nineteenth-century French philosopher JulesLachelier, which based its case for theistic belief on the empirical benefits of believing as a theist, even if theism was very probably false.In Pascal's Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, Jeff Jordan explores various theistic pragmatic arguments, and the objections employed against them. Jordan presents a new version of the Wager, what he calls the 'Jamesian Wager', and argues that the Jamesian Wager survives the objections hurled against theistic pragmatic arguments and provides strong support for theistic belief. In addition to arguing for a sound version of the Wager, Jordan also argues that there is aversion of Evidentialism compatible with a principled use of pragmatic arguments, and that the Argument from Divine Silence fails. Objections found in Voltaire, Hume, and Nietzsche against the Wager are scrutinized, as are objections issued by Richard Swinburne, Richard Gale, and other contemporary philosophers.The ethics of belief, the many-gods objection, the problem of infinite utilities, and the propriety of a hope based acceptance are also examined.
Author: William Wood
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191630381
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Blaise Pascal's account of the cognitive consequences of the Fall is clearly set out by William Wood in the first book on Pascal's theology to appear in English in more than forty years. Wood's central claim is that for Pascal, the Fall is a fall into duplicity. Pascal holds that as fallen selves in a fallen world, human beings have an innate aversion to the truth that is also, at the same time, an aversion to God. According to Pascal, we are born into a duplicitous world that shapes us into duplicitous subjects, and so we find it easy to reject God continually and deceive ourselves about our own sinfulness. Pascal's account of the noetic effects of sin has long been overlooked by theologians, but it is both traditional and innovative. It is robustly Augustinian, with a strong emphasis on the fallen will, the darkened intellect, and the fundamental sin of pride. Yet it also embraces a view of subjectivity that seems strikingly contemporary. For Pascal, the self is a fiction, constructed from without by an already duplicitous world. The human subject is habituated to deception because it is the essential glue that holds his world together. This book offers more than just a novel interpretation of Pascal's Pensées. Wood demonstrates, by exegetical argument and constructive example, that 'Pascalian' theology is both possible and fruitful.
Author: John Cruickshank
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 86
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Book Description
Author: Paul Bartha
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316856720
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
In his famous Wager, Blaise Pascal (1623–62) offers the reader an argument that it is rational to strive to believe in God. Philosophical debates about this classic argument have continued until our own times. This volume provides a comprehensive examination of Pascal's Wager, including its theological framework, its place in the history of philosophy, and its importance to contemporary decision theory. The volume starts with a valuable primer on infinity and decision theory for students and non-specialists. A sequence of chapters then examines topics including the Wager's underlying theology, its influence on later philosophical figures, and contemporary analyses of the Wager including Alan Hájek's challenge to its validity, the many gods objection, and the ethics of belief. The final five chapters explore various ways in which the Wager has inspired contemporary decision theory, including questions related to infinite utility, imprecise probabilities, and infinitesimals.
Author: Jan Miel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
Originally published in 1970. The question of man's freedom to exercise his will—as active an issue among twentieth-century philosophers and theologians as it was in the Jesuit and Jansenist camps known to Pascal—is basic to this study. Pascal's theological thinking, which Professor Miel demonstrates to be the source of unity and coherence in virtually all phases of his thought, is preoccupied by a concern for man's limitations. In his analysis of Pascal's theology, Miel is concerned not only with characterizing Pascal's theological position but also with evaluating it in terms of the history of the church. In a concise and lucid review of the Christian doctrine of grace from the pre-Augustinians through the Renaissance, the author identifies the intellectual-theological atmosphere that created the need for Pascal's strong defense of Augustinian theology. Miel considers Pascal's Écrits sur la grâce, Lettres provincials, and Pensées as well as shorter compositions and correspondence. He establishes the content of Pascal's vision of grace and free will, noting both its originality and its sense of history. Most importantly, he asserts that Pascal's affirmation of Jansenism predated his association with Port Royal and, indeed, was basic to all his adult thought and work. The author finds in the writings of Pascal a style that anticipates twentieth-century theology, a sophistication that belies charges of Pascal's theological naïveté, and a concern to uphold rather than to undermine doctrinal traditions of the church.
