Pascal, Blaise

Pascal, Blaise (1623–62), French scientist, polemicist, and Christian apologist. Educated at home, he came into contact with the Jansenists in 1646 (his ‘first conversion’). He continued his scientific pursuits and frequented fashionable society in Paris. In 1654 his ‘definitive conversion’ took place, and from 1655 he was a frequent visitor at Port-Royal-des-Champs.

The condemnation of A. Arnauld by the Sorbonne in 1655 prompted Pascal's Lettres écrites à un provincial (commonly known as his ‘Lettres provinciales’, 1656–7). This attack on the Jesuit theories of grace (Molinism) and moral theology (Probabilism) was intended to expose the moral character of their casuistry and to oppose to it the rigorist morality of the Jansenists. The Pensées were designed as a vindication of the truth of Christianity against the indifference of free-thinking contemporaries; rather than depending on philosophical reasoning, the work seeks to persuade of the unique applicability of Christianity to the human condition as the author portrays it. A selection of the material which Pascal left unfinished was published in 1670; the rest were stuck into an album regardless of sequence, and the whole has been frequently re-edited.