Pensees by Pascal
The Pensees (1662)
by Blaise Pascal, translated by J. M. Cohen
287 pages - Penguin Classics

Blaise Pascal, 17th century mathematician and scientist, was also a theological thinker who had several religious experiences. He was planning to write a work of Christian apologetics, but died before doing so. His assorted notes, many of them just a sentence or two in length, were arranged into this book, organized according to the outline of a lecture he delivered. The book is mainly separated into two parts, 'Man Without God' and 'Man With God'.

The first part is a philosophical analysis of man's state on earth. Pascal disagrees with Descartes and other strict rationalists, and asserts that intellect is not supreme but merely an aspect of our existence, and asking all of the heart's decisions to be explained by reason is equivalent to exposing all of the intellect's decisions to the judgment of the heart. Pascal draws an effective picture of humanity as seemingly contradictory, in the process of becoming, capable of amazing highs and lows.

The second part is ironically a lot weaker, it is mostly focused on how prophecies of the Old Testament have been fulfilled in history and in the New Testament, and how various outer signs and events of history testify to the truth of Christianity, and specifically Catholicism. It reminded me a lot of people who do various calculations with the numbers of letters and words in the Bible in order to 'prove' that it's 'true', and how Kierkegaard compared this to people who start to count the words in letters from their true love -- it may be nice that you're that devoted, but perhaps in putting so much emphasis on these details you're missing the message.

Overall it's a remarkable work, though it's kind of disappointing when the superb perceptive thoughts of the first half end there, and the gears change entirely into what's mostly a discussion of details from the Bible without much application. But it is an uncompleted work that was built with scraps, so you can't assume what kind of book Pascal would have wrote if he had the chance; perhaps he would combine all of this into something greater, or perhaps he would have discarded and smoothed away all the rough edges that give this book its spirit.