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After the death of French scientist/polemicist Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), his friends discovered among his papers a variety of jottings on religion. These they arranged and published as PENSÉES ("Thoughts"), which has come down to us as the liveliest, most eloquent apology of Christianity ever written. You wouldn't know it by the indifferent reading of William Sutherland. He reads with comprehension of individual lines and phrases, but with no sense of how they relate to one another. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

ANNOTATION

Showing traces of Augustinian influence, Pascal explores the naute of religious truth and the nautre of man.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true, declared Pascal in his Penseés. The cure for this, he explained, is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Motivated by the seventeenth-century view of the supremacy of human reason, Pascal (1623-1662) intended to write an ambitious apologia for Christianity, in which he argued the inability of reason to address metaphysical problems. While Pascal's untimely death prevented his completion of the work, these fragments published posthumously in 1670 as Penseés remain a vital part of religious and philosophical literature. Unabridged republication of the W. F. Trotter translation as published by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1958. Introduction by T. S. Eliot.

SYNOPSIS

This eloquent and philosophically astute translation is the first complete English translation based on the Sellier edition of Pascal￯﾿ﾽs manuscript, widely accepted as the manuscript that is closest to the version Pascal left behind on his death in 1662. A brief history of the text, a select bibliography of primary and secondary sources, a chronology of Pascal￯﾿ﾽs life and works, concordances between the Sellier and Lafuma editions of the original, and an index are provided.

FROM THE CRITICS

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