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Descartes and Pascal: A Study of Likenesses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert J. Nelson
Robert J. Nelson*
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York 27, N.Y.
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Extract

Of all the commonplace antitheses of literary history none seems more solidly justified than that which opposes Descartes to Pascal. Critics, depending upon their prejudices, have taken sides with either Pascal or Descartes, with either religion or reason. Pascal, whose total view seems more comprehensive, has received the lion's share of favorable comment. To many, his wider awareness, allowing for reason and more-than-reason, makes Descartes appear insufficient and incomplete. The little religion in Descartes is seen chiefly as an excrescence, or a strategic back-tracking: Descartes, seeing the dangerous implications of his rationalism, attempts the always unhappy marriage of Faith and Reason, one he regards as at best a mariage de convenance. Pascal, on the other hand, with his divorce of Faith and Reason, is on “le véritable chemin.” In short, Descartes pays the lip-service to Religion which Pascal pays to Reason.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , June 1954 , pp. 542 - 565
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954

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References

1 See Henri Gouhier, La. Pensée religieuse de Descartes (Vrin, 1924), for a discussion of traditional attitudes towards Descartes' religious thought.

2 Pascal, Pensées, ed. Louis Lafuma (Delmas, 1947), i, 270. The numbers in parentheses refer respectively to the Michaut and the Brunschvicg enumerations of the Pensées.

3 T. S. Eliot, “The ‘Pensées’ of Blaise Pascal,” Selected Essays, 3rd ed. (London: Faber and Faber), p. 416.

4 “La Doctrine pascalienne des trois ordres,” Revue de Philosophie, n.s., vii, 180. The quotations are from Pascal's De protestatum numericarum summa, ed. des Grands Ecrivains (Hachette, 1914), iii, 367.

5 Descartes, Principes 1-26, éd. Adam et Tannery, t. ix; Lettre à Mersenne, 15 avril 1630, A-T, i, 147.

6 Méditations, ix, 36. Nor is Descartes without a certain Pascalian imagery in defining man's relationship to the Infinite: “… je suis comme un milieu entre Dieu et le néant, c'est-à-dire placé de telle sorte entre le souverain être et le non-être, qu'il ne se rencontre, de vrai, rien en moi qui ne puisse conduire dans l'erreur, en tant qu'un souverain être m'a produit; mais que, si je me considère comme participant en quelque façon du néant ou du non-être, c'est-à-dire en tant que je ne suis pas moi-même le souverain être, je me trouve exposé à une infinité de manquements, de façon que je ne me dois pas étonner si je me trompe” (p. 43).

7 Pensées, i, 188.

8 Pascal, “De l'esprit géométrique,” Œuvres, ix, 271-272 (underlining mine).

9 Discours, A-T, vi, 8 (underlining mine).

10 De l'esprit géométrique, ed. GE, ix, 246-247.

11 Laporte, Le rationalisme de Descartes, i, Chapter ii passim.

12 The primacy of first notions is less absolute in Descartes than Laporte suggests: “Premièrement, aussitôt que nous pensons concevoir clairement quelque vérité, nous sommes naturellement portés à la croire. Et si cette croyance est si forte que nous ne puissions jamais avoir aucune croyance de douter de ce que nous croyons de la sorte, i] n'a rien à chercher davantage: nous avons touchant cela toute la certitude qui se peut raisonnablement souhaiter.” Secondes 'Réponses, A-T, ix, 113 (underlining mine). With Pascal, Descartes bases himself squarely upon “nature” in order to check the interminable descent into the abyss.

13 Laporte, Le cœur et la raison selon Pascal, pp. 56-57 et passim.

14 Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, A-T, x, 388. The French translation is from Œuvres de Descartes, ed. André Bridoux (Pléiade, 1949), p. 26 (underlining mine).

15 Etienne Gilson, ed. Discours de la méthode de Descartes (Vrin, 1925), pp. 210-213.

16 Henri Gouhier distinguishes in Descartes between epistemologica] truth (the reality of the world), guaranteed by “la lumière naturelle,” and moral truth (the veracity of perception), guaranteed by God. Essai sur Descartes (Vrin, 1937), esp. the “Quatrième essai.”

17 Discours, A-T, vi, 15. For a discussion of Descartes' willful isolation of the spirit, see Nathan Edelman, “The Mixed Metaphor in Descartes,” RR, xli, iii (Oct. 1950).

18 Méditations, A-T, ix, 32-33, 38.

19 Descartes, Secondes Réponses, A-T, ix, 116.

20 Descartes, Discours, A-T, vi, 43.

21 Verneau (see n. 4), p. 328 et passim.

22 Secondes Réponses, A-T, ix, 122.

23 Descartes, Regulae, A-T, x, 370 (French transl., ed. Pléiade, p. 13).

24 Méditations, A-T, ix, 47.

25 De l'esprit géométrique et de l'art de persuader, ed. GE, ix, 271.

26 Méditations, A-T, ix, 46.

27 Descartes, Principes, 1-40, A-T, t. ix; Lettre à Elisabeth, 3 nov. 1645, A-T, iv, 333.

28 Secondes Réponses, A-T, ix, 116.

29 Les Provinciales, ed. GE, vii, 29 (underlining mine).

30 Secondes Réponses, ix, 115. Here Descartes is close to the problem of Predestination. Why could there be an infidel “destitué de toute grâce surnaturelle”? Descartes does not confront the problem directly. Or, perhaps there is no problem for him. As we have suggested, his greater confidence is in God's mercy, not His Justice. Descartes' infidel is only hypothetical and is invoked metaphorically to demonstrate the proper usage of reason. The philosopher's answer to the question of Divine Election re-emphasizes the freedom of the will, for infidels “péchent ou de ce qu'ils résistent à la grâce divine qui les avertit intérieurement, ou que péchant en d'autres choses, ils se rendent indignes de cette grâce.” All are chosen, but some refuse.

31 Descartes, Lettre au marquis de Newcastle, mars ou avril 1648, A-T, v, 136-137. Laporte's discussion of attention, which he relates to volonté in Descartes, offers a corrective to the possibly over-passive description of human responsibility we have been tracing in Descartes. “La leçon de Descartes tient dans les deux notions fondamentales que nous avons retrouvées à chaque chapitre de son œuvre et qui résument l'une sa philosophie du connaître, l'autre sa philosophie de l'être: expérience et liberté.” Laporte, Le rationalisme de Descartes, p. 477 et passim.

32 There is a precept of attention as much in Pascal as in Descartes: “Quand on ne croit que par la force de la conviction, et que l'automate est incliné à croire le contraire, ce n'est pas assez. Il faut donc faire croire nos deux pièces: l'esprit, par les raisons, qu'il suffit d'avoir vues une fois en sa vie; et l'automate par la coutume, en ne lui permettant pas de s'incliner au contraire. Inclina cor meum, Deus.” Pensées (424-1252), i, 88.

33 Descartes would not find it difficult to say with Pascal: “Il est non seulement impossible, mais inutile de connaître Dieu sans Jésus-Christ” (604-649). Pensées, i, 200. Gouhier considers Descartes' whole work a Defense of the Christian Religion replying to the rationalist attacks of libertines and skeptics. This is true of his formal works, accounting for their intellectualized definition of God. Descartes' correspondence, however, offers a more spiritual, a more specifically Christian conception of God, treating informally but reverently of such matters as the Trinity, the Eucharist, Beatitude, and Salvation in terms not of clear and distinct ideas, but of mystery and Revelation. See, in particular, Lettre à Mersenne, 27 mai 1730, A-T, t. ii; Lettre à Mersenne, 28 oct. 1640, A-T, t. iii; Lettre au marquis de Newcastle, mars ou avril 1649, A-T, t. v.

34 We leave the question of influence apart in this discussion. Moreover, in a study involving a close examination of meaning, it is not irrelevant to examine the word influence itself. “In its historical meaning, from which we take our present use, influence was a word intended to express a mystery. It means a flowing-in, but not as a tributary flows into the main stream at a certain observable point; historically the image is an astrological one and the meanings which the Oxford Dictionary gives all suggest ‘producing effects by insensible or invisible means’—‘the infusion of any kind of divine, spiritual, moral, immaterial or secret power or principle.” Lionel Trilling, “The Sense of the Past,” The Liberal Imagination, p. 191. For a direct study of the philosophies of Descartes and Pascal see Emile Baudin, Sa Philosophie critique, Pascal et Descartes, Vol. i of Etudes historiques et critiques sur la philosophie de Pascal (La Baconnière, 1946). In his Etat présent des études sur Descartes (“Les Belles Lettres,” 1937), Jean Boorsch suggests an Augustinian current of ideas as directly influencing Descartes. In The Freedom of French Classicism (Princeton, 1950), E. 0. Borgerhoff presents a systematic view of the unsystematic ideas of genius, artistic freedom and “lumière naturelle” pervading the literature of the Classical Age and manifesting themselves ideally in Pascal. Borgerhoff, however, has excepted Descartes from the list of thinkers and artists whom he considers.