* This article was translated by Professor George Wack.

¹ Oeuvres de Blaise Pascal, Brunschvicq, Leon & Bontroux, Pierre, editors, Vol. II (Paris, 1908), 129–145.Google Scholar

² For the details see Ersch-Gruber, , Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, Vol. III (Leipzig, 1839), 486 ff.Google Scholar

³ Letter (Nov. 15, 1647) to his brother-in-law, Perier. Briefe des Blaise Pascal, translated by Rüttentauer (Leipzig, 1935), pp. 33 f.Google Scholar

⁴ Descartes' principal work Principia Philosophiae had appeared three years before Pascal's “Fragment” (1644). It says, for example: “We quite clearly recognize (perspicue intelligimus), that there is a substance which fills every conceivable part of space; its nature consists ‘solely in being extended substance’; we discover within ourselves no idea whatever of any other substance.” Principia Philosophiae, II, 22Google Scholar; similarly in Meteores, Discourse I.

⁵ Briefe, p. 35.Google Scholar

⁶ The question whether there can be “emptiness” was already discussed in pre-Socratic philosophy (Anaxagoras, the Eleatics). In the late Platonic dialogue, the Timaeus (79 b 1, 79 c 1) and in the Physics of Aristotle 213a–217b) the question is answered negatively. The mediaeval commentaries on Aristotle devote considerable space to the question, as for example Thomas Aquinas (in Phys. 4, 13; No. 535 f.), who includes also the arguments of Averroes.

⁷ De Animalibus, Stadler, H., editor (Münster, 1916–1920), Vol. I, 310, 861.Google Scholar

⁸ De vegetabilibus, Jessen, C., editor (Berlin, 1867), p. 340.Google Scholar

⁹ Cf. especially Pascal's letter to P. Noel (October 29, 1647) and to Le Pailleur (February–March, 1648), in Briefe, pp. 18 ff, 43 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Oeuvres, II, 129.Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibidem.

¹² Pascal also mentions, it is true, in addition to theology, history, geography, jurisprudence, and language. And along with physics he mentions geometry, music, and architecture. The subsequent argumentation, however, confines itself exclusively on the one hand to theology and on the other to physics.

¹³ Oeuvres, , II, 141.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid., 133.

¹⁵ Ibid., 145.

¹⁶ Cf. Plato, 's Phaedo, 108 a 6.Google Scholar

¹⁷ 198 b: καλομεν … παραδίδοντα διδάσκειν [kaloumen … paradidonta didaskein.].

¹⁸ Cf. Deneffe, A., Der Traditionsbegriff (Minister, 1931), p. 8.Google Scholar

¹⁹ I Cor. 11, 23; the inverse in I Cor. 15, 3.

²⁰ Contra Julianum, 2, 10, 34 (Migne PL, 44, 698).Google Scholar

²¹ “… historic consciousness …, through which the loss of tradition and philosophy without tradition have been sealed as a matter of destiny.” Krüger, G., Bedeutung der Tradition (Frankfurt, 1947), p. 325Google Scholar; cf. p. 322. Ritter, Likewise J., Aristoteles und die Vorsokratiker, Felsefe Arkivi, 1954 (Istanbul).Google Scholar

²² But this does not in the least mean that one accepts a tradition simply because it is a tradition. Cf. Gloege, G., Offenbarung und Uberlieferung (Hamburg, 1954), p. 27 f.Google Scholar

²³ 614b–621b.

²⁴ Sophistic Refutations, Chap. 2. Thomas Aquinas incorporated this maxim in his tract “De fide” (Summa theologica II, II, 2, 3).Google Scholar

²⁵ Rüstow, A., “Kulturtradition und Kulturkritik,” Studium Generale, IV (1951), 308.Google Scholar

²⁶ Bacher, W., Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens (Leipzig, 1914), p. 20.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ritter, , op. cit., p. 31.Google Scholar

²⁸ Goethes Farbenlehre, edited by Gunther Ipsen (Leipzig, n. d.), p. 553.Google Scholar

²⁹ phaedrus, 274 c 1.Google Scholar

³⁰ Laws, 881 a 2.Google Scholar

³¹ It seems to me in some degree symptomatic that in Apelt, 's Platon-Index(2nd ed., Leipzig, 1923)Google Scholar only a single reference is given (Philebus, 16c), while one can easily count up to forty. In this connection I have found useful the unpublished work of a Berlin student, which lists all the passages in Plato in which παλαις occurs. Rumphort, Heinrich, Überlieferung bet Platon.Google Scholar

³² Cf. Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, 47Google Scholar; Compendium Theologiae, I, 102.Google Scholar

³³ Philebus, 16 c 5–9.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ritter, , op. cit., p. 35.Google Scholar

³⁵ Meno, 81 b 1.Google Scholar

³⁶ Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, edited by Hoffmeister, J. (Leipzig, 1940)Google Scholar, “Heidelberger Einleitung von 1816,” p. 6.Google Scholar

³⁷ In this connection one should recall the scholastic distinction between traditio constitutiva and traditio continuativa. Cf. Deneffe, , Traditionsbegriff, pp. 132 f.Google Scholar

³⁸ It is true that we can speak of such an equivalence only if the concept “the ancients” is understood in the strict and narrow sense as paraphrased earlier in this article. There is, however, a broader term in linguistic use, in Plato also, which includes all the minds of the past whose thought and teaching have in exceptional measure been nourished by the tradition of truths pointing back to a divine source.

³⁹ N. Monzel speaks of “original recipients of a revelation,” Ü;berlieferung (Bonn, 1950), p. 129.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ In matter, content, and subject, tradition and revelation—coincide. Everything that is the subject of revelation, and only that, is also the subject of—tradition. Deneffe, , op. cit., p. 114Google Scholar. Cf. also Gloege, , op. cit., pp. 14, 27, 40.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Monzel, , op. cit., p. 128.Google Scholar

⁴² Laws, 715 e.Google Scholar

⁴³ Philebus, 30 d.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Phaedo, 63 c.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Meno, 81 b.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Metaphysics, 1074 b 1.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Rüstcw, , op. cit., p. 309.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ In the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, in a treatise on the laws, an article which discusses this question (and gives a negative answer), we read as follows: Utrum lex humana semper sit mutanda, quando occurrit aliquid melius? (I, II, 97, 2).

⁴⁹ Krüger, G., “Die Bedeutung der Tradition für die philosophische Forschung,” Studium Generate, IV (1951), 325–327.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Die christliche Glaube und die altheidnische Welt (Leipzig, 1935), I, 47.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Gorgias, 523 a 1–3; 527 a 5–8.Google Scholar

⁵² I, 12.—For the subject of original revelation and original tradition, see Newman, J. H., The Grammar of Assent (London, 1892), p. 431.Google Scholar

⁵³ Politeia, 611 d–612 a.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Platon (Berlin-Leipzig, 1928), I, 201.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ In the second edition (Berlin, 1954) the word is “epochs.”

⁵⁶ Psychologie und Religion (Zürich, 1940), p. 76.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 93.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Der heilige Augustin (Hellerau, 1930), pp. 497 f.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ The Confessions, 10, 20.Google Scholar

⁶² In Plato (Phaedrus, 244 b 6) the following is also said of the ancients: they are οὑ τ ᾽ονόματα τθέμενοί [hoi ta onomata tithemenoi], they give and “set” the names.

⁶³ Letter to Zelter, , 03 18, 1811.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Cf. Rahner, Carl, “Wissenschaft als Konfession,” Wort und Wahrheit, 11, 1954.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ “Tradition is never merely the obstructing adversary, it is always resistance and incentive at the same time.” Litt, T., “Hegels Begriff des ‘Geistes’ und das Problem der Tradition,” Studium Generate, IV (1951), 320.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ It would perhaps be necessary to show how in the Platonic dialogues, the Gorgias, Phaedo, Politeia, the narrating of the eschatological myths are fitted into the course of the dialectic discussions and to clarify the implications hidden in the Aristotelian proposition according to which the metaphysical inquiry into the nature of being calls for an answer which God alone fully possesses (Metaphysics 983 a 9Google Scholar). The formal structure of a “Christian philosophy” would have to be made clear—an extremely complicated problem as its discussion for the past decades reveals.

⁶⁷ Jaspers, K., Philosophie (Berlin, 1948), pp. 267–269CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This formulation indicates, of course, only one aspect of the many-sided concept of philosophy held by Jaspers.

⁶⁸ Jaspers, K. and Bultmann, R., Die Frage der Entmythologisierung (Munich, 1954).Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Krüger, G., Geschichte und Tradition, p. 28.Google Scholar