This section contains 6,041 words (approx. 21 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: "Catechesis and Conversion in the Pensées," in Pascal and Disbelief: Catechesis and Conversion in the "Pensees," The Catholic University of America Press, 1994, pp. 327-86.
In the following excerpt, Wetsel seeks to determine the person(s) to whom the Pensées are principally addressed, largely basing his conclusions on Pascal's portrayal and analysis of atheists and agnostics in fragments 427 and 429.
Many sections of the Pensées must remain enigmatic until we are able to reconstruct more completely the mental universe of Pascal's potential convert. But … who is he? The Pensées give us a number of quite dissimilar portraits of disbelief. Is Pascal's potential interlocutor the hardened skeptic of fragment 427? [References to fragment numbers of the Pensées are to Louis Lafuma's edition of Pascal: Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Seuil, 1963).] Or is he the troubled agnostic of fragment 429? The question is crucial to an understanding of the...
This section contains 6,041 words (approx. 21 pages at 300 words per page) |