Rating: 
Summary: Pascal's Pensees
Review: For thousands of years humanity has been searching for the presence of an invisible God. Blaise Pascal's "Pensees" is an excellent book describing why God's presence in our lives is so important. Even though I disagree with Pascal's reasoning concerning the defense and support of the Christian faith, he comes across as someone interested in the well-being and happiness of others, which makes it possible for "Pensees" to be beneficial to people of all faiths.
Pascal reminds us that people have been trying to find happiness, through worship, for many years. People have worshipped idols like wood, clay, stone and religious figures. Pascal's intention is to extend the idea that the need to worship someone or something is a natural fixation installed in us. Man's need to worship someone or something must then be due to the fact that God exists.
Pascal's "Pensees" suggests that we need God's help to be happy and to settle many of our own internal wars. Pascal points out that people fight with their own selfishness as well as that of others. He reminds us that the injustices, tyranny and irrational wars of the world have caused much distress. Pascal points out three troublesome questions humanity has struggled with: what is my purpose in life, where is my life going and how much time do I have left?
Pascal sheds light on the three types of people in the world and how God's presence in their lives is needed for their happiness. He tells us that people who have found God are reasonable and happy. Those who have not found God but continue to seek God are unhappy and reasonable, and those who leave God out of their lives are unreasonable and unhappy. Pascal is trying to relate to us that true happiness comes from knowing and understanding our creator.
Pascal, with his wager, intends to show how people have nothing to lose or possibly everything to gain when they put their faith in the Christian God. Although, he argues total destruction may find those who choose not to devote themselves to the Christian faith. As I stated, I disagree with the one-sidedness of Pascal's wager. If we look at Pascal's wager from a religiously neutral standpoint, we can eliminate the fallacy of the wager. Therefore, to put your faith in the "Creator of All Things" can only bring about a relationship with the true God.
Pascal's Pensees is a challenging book that if looked at with the right perspective depicts that happines can be found when a relationship is established with the true God. Pascal's "pensees", consists of ideas that can be useful if applied to our lives in a positive and non-prejudicial way.
Rating:
Summary: Read Pascal's Pensees.
Review: I always thought of Pascal as a great scientist, but as a somewhat dated Christian apologist. The general treatment of Pascal by both science and humanities is at best an unreflective nod to the importance of his scientific discoveries and a momentary and uncomfortable glance at his `other' writings. The lack of serious consideration given to Pascal's `other' writings by philosophy and theology departments and their absence from science curriculums is indicative of major bias and ignorance. Why? Pascal's science is embarassing to defenders of prevalent Darwinian atheistic science because of his zeal for the Christian faith. Pascal made some important discoveries but he "abandoned science for religion" and for that reason is tagged as an historical anachronism - he like many of the scientists of the 17th century were heavily tainted with `folk belief' and superstitions. Pascal's Science and Faith is embarassing to those philosophers and theologians that cannot reconcile the two aspects of human Pensees - thoughts. They like to think of Pascal as an early `existentialist' like Kierkegaard who made a `leap' of faith against the atheistic dogmas of material science; but Pascal did not support their radical dichotomy of science versus faith. Shunned on both sides for different reasons (for centuries!), Pascal is finally becoming more and more appreciated as someone who was `between' faith and science; a position becoming more fashionable. All you have to do is read `The Pensees' to quickly see it as one of the most important, beautiful and penetrating books ever written. The Pensees (`Thoughts') are a long series of fragments on the the human situation, Jesus Christ, God, revelation, Infinity and finitude. But it is the little pieces that you find, like lost treasures, that ring through to your very being that sets Pascal's Pensees apart as a book for living and reflecting and not merely analyzing. "We sail over a vast expanse, ever uncertain, ever adrift, carried to and fro. To whatever point we think to fix and fasten ourselves it shifts and leaves us; and if we pursue it it escapes our grasp, slips away, fleeing in eternal flight - Man's condition: inconstancy, ennui, unrest." "The last step that Reason takes is to recognize that there is an infinity of things that lie beyond it. Reason is a poor thing indeed if it does not succed in knowing that."
Rating:
Summary: A Light in our Darkness
Review: In his short lifespan, Pascal invented the prototype of the computer (la machine arithmetique), started the first public passenger service in Paris, mastered a physics problem re the vacuum, expounded his scientific and mathematical studies with such an order of brilliance that it was considered by no means inappropriate to compare him with Aristotle, engaged in vituperative and extremely effective theological polemics with the Jesuits -- and, finally, in spite of appaling ill-health and pain, attained a serene relationship with God and with his fellows, in the process producing one of the great literary masterpieces of all time, viz., the PENSEES. This volume is a work of Christian apologetics before which the most sceptical mind, indulgent flesh, and arrogant spirit, stand utterly defenseless. Not too shabby an achievement in thirty-nine years and two months!
Rating:
Summary: Unmatched, Clarity!
Review: ONE OF THE GREATEST APOLOGETICAL WORKS OF ALL TIME! Pascal was a titanic genius, a man with a superb intellect. Even today I would say that this book is unmatched. Since Pascal was so bright his writing is very easy to read. There is no need to complicate the expression of an idea. Pascal not only puts his great defense in understandable terms; he communicates with great artistic expression. Simply a delight to read. Buy this book and you will have to read it again and again, every time finding new insight, adding strength and depth to your faith!
Rating: 
Summary: Rough but insightful.
Review: Pascal, the brilliant mathematician, physicist, and engineer, presents in his posthumously titled Pensees, his philosophy of religion and a paradox rich and challenging defense of Christian faith. Says Pascal, "Knowledge has two extremes which meet; one is the pure natural ignorance of every man at birth, the other is the extreme reached by great minds who run through the whole range of human knowledge, only to find that they know nothing... but it is a wise ignorance which knows itself. Those who stand half-way... pretend to understand everything... they get everything wrong."
The book is a collection of unfinished writings; arguments and ideas which he had scribbled, intending to then develop and elaborate. As such, the text is disjointed and even mysterious; statements are abrupt, incomplete, dogmatic. Yet, out of respect for the intellectual accomplishments of the great French mathematician, these notes were published essentially as he had left them. They contain many gems; profound statements which stand like islands in a sea of sometimes jumbled thoughts.
Pascal's themes are: the nature of human knowledge, the affliction of pride, the blindness and tyranny of self, the boundaries of reason, the hiddenness of God, and his own argument for "wagering" not only on God, but on the Christian faith. Two things are obvious; (1.) the arguments are not in the form in which Pascal intended to offer them, therefore, (2.) this is not a definitive apologetic. However, Pascal's arguments are rather unique and as such they are interesting even in their [often] crude form. Read this book in conjunction with the writings of C.S. Lewis, Augustine, or Sundar Singh.
Rating:
Summary: poetic work of religious philosophy
Review: Pascals thoughts, because they are raw, are intense and beautiful. I can't think of a more poetic work of philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: poetic work of religious philosophy
Review: Pascals thoughts, because they are raw, are intense and beautiful. I can't think of a more poetic work of philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: Ultra Wise, Part 3
Review: People should not be allowed to graduate high school without having first read this book and written a comprehensive essay on it. 'Pensees' is much more than an apology for the Christian faith, it is an investigation into and search for levels of temperance in all areas of human endeavor. Pascal's seemingly simple yet ultra-deep ruminations about life and mind will forever immunize any diligent reader against the tragedy of superficial thinking and instill the comedy of balanced comprehensiveness.
Rating:
Summary: Life changing
Review: The mention of Pascal's Pensees and the profound effect it clearly had on his life,as an athiest and a scientist staggered me. I talk of one Dr. Takashi Nagai and the book he wrote,originally in Japanese, The Bells of Nagasaki. Anyway,a friend of mine gave me a copy of another book about Nagai's life which draws on the doctors experiences and accounts from Bells, by author Paul Glynn called A song for Nagasaki-which on numerous occasions talks of Pensees. We have all heard that Christianity and science don't,can't and shouldn't mix and yet here is Pascal doing just the opposite,offering coherent proofs and even attacking the stance of those who say never the twain in a singularly undogmatic and poignant style. I am a believer in Jesus Christ but had always been a grovelling well-it-can't-be-helped,-this-is-the-way-I-was-brought-up type of Christian until I laid hold of a copy of Pensees. The boulders were rolled away from my eyes and I have since seen the world and everything in it in a different light. The Lord uses Blaise Pascal even 300 years after his death in bringing his supreme intellectual powers to bear on citizens of the material world to show them a deeper and startlingly more beautiful one right at their very feet! To continue in ultimately vain metaphysical banter about the ins and outs of this and that point of philosophy I believe is ,in a word castrating the aim of this masterpiece of literature and the goal of Pascal-to introduce simple folk like us into a relationship with the living God. The book Pensees changed me and also helped to shed light on areas in the Bible which I hadn't been able to get my head around. So,all in all this is a MUST HAVE for anyone curious about life and the reasons for it. You will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Life changing
Review: The mention of Pascal's Pensees and the profound effect it clearly had on his life,as an athiest and a scientist staggered me. I talk of one Dr. Takashi Nagai and the book he wrote,originally in Japanese, The Bells of Nagasaki. Anyway,a friend of mine gave me a copy of another book about Nagai's life which draws on the doctors experiences and accounts from Bells, by author Paul Glynn called A song for Nagasaki-which on numerous occasions talks of Pensees. We have all heard that Christianity and science don't,can't and shouldn't mix and yet here is Pascal doing just the opposite,offering coherent proofs and even attacking the stance of those who say never the twain in a singularly undogmatic and poignant style. I am a believer in Jesus Christ but had always been a grovelling well-it-can't-be-helped,-this-is-the-way-I-was-brought-up type of Christian until I laid hold of a copy of Pensees. The boulders were rolled away from my eyes and I have since seen the world and everything in it in a different light. The Lord uses Blaise Pascal even 300 years after his death in bringing his supreme intellectual powers to bear on citizens of the material world to show them a deeper and startlingly more beautiful one right at their very feet! To continue in ultimately vain metaphysical banter about the ins and outs of this and that point of philosophy I believe is ,in a word castrating the aim of this masterpiece of literature and the goal of Pascal-to introduce simple folk like us into a relationship with the living God. The book Pensees changed me and also helped to shed light on areas in the Bible which I hadn't been able to get my head around. So,all in all this is a MUST HAVE for anyone curious about life and the reasons for it. You will not be disappointed.
|
