Pensées

Pensées (Thoughts) is a collection of philosophical and theological fragments left incomplete at Blaise Pascal's death in 1662, first published posthumously in 1670. The fragments were intended as the materials for a defence of Christianity, organised around Pascal's central observation that the human condition is defined by a paradox: human beings are simultaneously great and wretched, capable of reason yet enslaved by diversion and distraction. The work contains Pascal's Wager, a probabilistic argument for belief in God that remains one of the most cited and contested arguments in Western philosophy of religion.

Different editors have since arranged the fragments in different orders. The standard modern English edition, translated by A. J. Krailsheimer for Penguin Classics, follows the Lafuma arrangement. The older Brunschvicg arrangement — used in the W. F. Trotter translation — organises the fragments thematically and is the basis of most secondary literature written before the 1950s. Neither arrangement is "correct" in any strict sense; Pascal left only loose bundles of clipped notes, not a determined sequence.

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Fragment L200 — Krailsheimer translation

Contents

Reception

Pensées has been a landmark of Western philosophical and Christian apologetic writing since its posthumous publication in 1670. Pascal's Wager drew immediate philosophical attention and continues to be debated in analytic philosophy of religion. Friedrich Nietzsche called Pascal "the most instructive victim of Christianity" while acknowledging the psychological and sociological acuity of his observations; Martin Heidegger kept a photograph of Pascal's death mask in his study during the 1920s and quoted the Pensées in Being and Time. Jean-Paul Sartre read the work as a young man, and its influence appears throughout his notebooks. Pope Paul VI quoted Pascal in the 1967 encyclical Populorum progressio; Pope Francis issued an apostolic letter on the four-hundredth anniversary of Pascal's birth in 2023, calling Pensées "monumental" for its "philosophical depth and literary charm". Academic reception focuses on the editorial problem: the Brunschvicg, Lafuma, and Sellier arrangements order the fragments differently, leading to substantively different interpretive conclusions. The book was also placed on the Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum, reflecting Pascal's complex relationship with Jansenism and Catholic orthodoxy.

Frequently asked

What is Pensées about?

Pensées is a collection of philosophical and theological fragments left by Blaise Pascal at his death in 1662 and published posthumously in 1670. The fragments were materials for an unfinished defence of Christianity. The central argument is that the human condition is defined by a paradox of greatness and wretchedness, and that only the Christian God resolves it. The work also contains Pascal's Wager, a probabilistic argument for belief in God.

What is Pascal's Wager?

Pascal's Wager, found in the section titled "The Wager" (Lafuma arrangement, Section Two, II), is a probabilistic argument for belief in God. Pascal argues that if God does not exist, the believer loses little; if God does exist, the non-believer loses everything. Since the potential gain of belief is infinite and the cost finite, rational self-interest favours belief. It is one of the most cited and contested arguments in philosophy of religion.

Is Pensées a finished book?

No. Pascal died at 39 in 1662, leaving behind manuscript fragments arranged in loose bundles. His editors published a selection in 1670. Scholars have since proposed several different orderings. The two main modern arrangements are the Lafuma order (used in the Penguin Classics edition by A. J. Krailsheimer) and the earlier Brunschvicg thematic order. The Sellier arrangement is a third scholarly alternative.