Barry's Blog 

In the last installment examining some of Pascal's pensees from The Trinity Forum's booklet, "Blaise Pascal: The Wager and Other Selections from the Pensees," with commentary by Peter Kreeft, we considered two pseudo-solutions to the human dilemma. They are the pseudo-solutions of diversions and indifference. We turn now to the one remaining bit of innate sanity, to use Kreeft's phrase, that abides despite our insane and decadent culture: the knowledge that we will all die. As Dr. Johnson once declared, "I know know thought that so wonderfully clarifies the mind as the thought that I shall hang tomorrow morning."

Listen to Pascal: "There are only three sorts of people: those who have found God and serve Him; those who are busy seeking him and have not found him; those who live without either seeking or finding him. The first are reasonable and happy, the last are foolish and unhappy, those in the middle are unhappy and yet reasonable." (#160)

Kreeft rightly reminds us that there is no fourth class. The first group are believers, who are "reasonable" or wise because they seek, and happy because they have found. Group two consists of…

In this sixth in a series of posts gleaned from The Trinity Forum's booklet, "Blaise Pascal:The Wager & Other Selections from the Pensees," Peter Kreeft, who supplies the excellent commentary, suggests that Pascal offers up two popular pseudo-solutions to avoid reflecting upon our place in this universe, our inability to be lastingly happy, and our ultimate destiny. These two pseudo-solutions include both Diversion and Indifference.

In regard to diversion, Pascal suggests that modern life is a lot like "foxhunting," in that we complain about our lack of time, but in reality love to complexify our lives! As dispossessed princes and princesses, who may recall some Edenic memory of happiness, we now love diversion and distraction by diverting ourselves from our unhappiness: "The only good thing is for men to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation that takes their mind off it...or by some novel and agreeable passion which keeps them busy, like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short, by what is called diversion...That is why gaming and feminine society, war and high office are so popular...that is why we prefer…

Woody Allen once opined, "I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens!"

Despite all of the attempts by modernity to harness "eternal youth," (cosmetics, cryonics, etc.) and to stave off the inevitable via science and other stratagems, death is the one fact of life, actually one of the few facts of life, that we can count on. Peter Kreeft suggests that Pascal saw death as one of the key proofs of man's wretchedness: "Death is the most unsentimental of facts: simple, decisive, businesslike. Therefore Pascal's pensees on death are also unsentimental, simple, decisive, and businesslike. There is no nonsense, no evasion, no 'nuancing,' no little mental two step about death..."

Listen to Pascal:

"Anyone with only a week to live will not find it in his interest to believe that all this is just a matter of chance. Imagine a number of men in chains, all under the sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of others...This is an image of the human condition." (#326, 434)

"The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the…