Pensées

Les Pensées ( who thought ') is a work of Blaise Pascal ( 1623-1663 ) and one of the most widely read philosophical or theological texts of European intellectual history. It is not a closed, finished work, but an issue to divergent output of compilation of notes from the estate of the author.

The emergence of Les Pensées

The notes came from around 1657 and served as preparation of a work to the praise and justification of the Christian faith from the perspective of Jansenists. They were first published in 1670 under the title Pensées sur la religion et autres sujets Friends Pascal excerpts and to produce a supposedly meaningful order. The entire material consisted notes at his death from about 1000 notes, which he himself probably just a moment ago to approx. 60 bundles were pooled. They were written down immediately after his death on behalf of his older sister bundle for bundle twice, but later re-sorted by a nephew and glued onto large sheets. Had they ( quite like the first editor and the nephew ) seen for a long time no proper order in the bundles and labels, but a tried to produce such by each different criteria, it was realized around 1930 that at least 27 bundle as many logical in rows sections could be assigned and contained a meaningful internal order, and that in the remaining good 30 bundles of the then so-called " annexes materials " more than expected order prevailed until then. Therefore, the newer publishers stay as close as possible to the two transcripts of 1663, although in the knowledge that they do not exactly match the intended order of Pascal, yet reflect the potentially definitive text.

Basic idea

Pascal followed in this work a single goal: he wants people to convert. But he is on the one hand to describe the misery of the people, and especially of man without God. He on the other hand develop ( Pascal's Wager ), the famous theory of the " par ". Even if you can not prove the existence of God, Pascal argued, it is still advantageous to " bet " that he exists. If it is a mistake, you've lost nothing and if it is right, we can thereby ensure the salvation of his soul.