1654–1670

Blaise Pascal: the Memorial of 1654, the Provincial Letters and the Pensées

Shelley: on the night of 23 November 1654 Pascal experienced a mystical illumination and wrote it down on the sheet of the Memorial (“God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty, certainty, love, joy, peace”), which he carried sewn into his clothing for eight years. Soon he joined the Jansenists of Port-Royal and in the Provincial Letters exposed the theology of the Jesuits; his fragments on faith and reason appeared after his death (1662) as the Pensées (1670): nature gives no reliable indication of God, and the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.

Key points

• Shelley: after Pascal’s death a servant found in his clothing’s lining a parchment – the Memorial of his mystical illumination, 23 November 1654: “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars” – Pascal’s two hours of illumination; for eight years he carried the note
• Path to conversion: Pascal’s mother died when he was three; he invented a calculating machine and discovered principles of pressure
• Path to conversion: Jansenist doctors treating his father drew Pascal in; after a worldly year he had the night of 1654 and joined Port-Royal
• Provincial Letters: Pascal defended Arnauld against the Jesuits with eloquence and sarcasm; all educated France read the letters though the pope condemned them
• Pensées: in 1657 Pascal planned a book on Christianity’s evidences but died at 39 (1662); friends published the fragments eight years later
• What Pascal says: nature is no sure sign of God; man is a “chimera,” the “glory and refuse of the universe”
• What Pascal says: life’s meaning and God must be felt by the heart: “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”

People

• Blaise Pascal
• Antoine Arnauld

Place

Paris, Port-Royal (France)