Pascal's "Pensees": Fragments of an epistemology?

• Main Author: Moran, Patrick Quinn
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: University of Ottawa (Canada) 2013
• Subjects: Philosophy.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10393/29365; http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-12917

Epistemology plays an important role in Pascal's Pensees , but nowhere in the Pensees will one find an explicit statement of this epistemology. The aim of this dissertation is to bring the epistemology of the Pensees out by considering Pascal's arguments against scepticism on the one hand and dogmatism on the other. The dissertation is thus divided into three chapters. The first chapter concerns Pascal's refutation of scepticism. Briefly, Pascal's rejects scepticism because it is impossible to put the sceptic's policy of universal doubt into practice. The second chapter concerns Pascal's refutation of dogmatism. According to Pascal, dogmatism fails because it is impossible to use reason to prove some certainties, such as first principles in mathematics, or "All men are mortal". In the third chapter we consider Pascal's positive epistemology. The refutation of scepticism shows that knowledge is possible, but the refutation of dogmatism shows that some knowledge is beyond reason. Since a complete epistemology accounts for the knowledge that is beyond reason (which Pascal calls "Knowledge by the heart") as well as the knowledge that is not beyond reason, this final chapter concerns how knowledge beyond reason may be accounted for, according to Pascal. In a word, knowledge by the heart is accounted for by identifying it as self-evidence. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)