A Brief Introduction to a Brilliant and Formidable Mind

Antoine Compagnon presents this introductory look into Blaise Pascal's views on faith.

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and Catholic philosopher, is a familiar name, and it’s a name typically associated with what’s called “Pascal’s Wager.”

The wager is a theological or, at least, a metaphysical one. Pascal wrote in his work “Pensées” that it would be wiser to believe in God than to not, whether or not God actually exists. “Let’s weigh the gain, and the loss in making the choice that God exists,” he wrote. “Let’s assess these two cases: if you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Bet, then, that he exists, without hesitation!”

This is typically the extent of what people know of Pascal. Antoine Compagnon, the Blanche W. Knopf professor of French and comparative literature at Columbia University and the professor emeritus at the Collège de France, has endeavored to broaden people’s knowledge of this brilliant historical figure in his brief and concise work, “A Summer With Pascal.”

Universal Knowledge

"Pensées" by Blaise Pascal as published by Penguin Classics.

Compagnon primarily references Pascal’s “Pensées” and “Provincial Letters,” plumbing his thoughts on various topics, including the relationship of justice and might, violence and truth, self-love and the love for God, and the need for mental diversion.

The book is a small work, both in length and size; so when it comes to exhausting Pascal’s ideas, it would be best to venture into the 17th-century Frenchman’s original works. But, of course, comprehensiveness is not Compagnon’s point. This is merely an introduction. But knowing at least something about Pascal, even this reviewer would argue, is beneficial to anyone. This idea of at least minimal knowledge falls in line with what Pascal viewed as a sense of “universality.”

As the author notes, Pascal believed everyone would benefit from knowing at least something about any particular subject. “Since one cannot be universal, by knowing everything that can be known about everything, one must know a little about everything,” Pascal noted. “For it is much finer to know something about everything than to know everything about one thing. This universality is the most beautiful.”

A Good Start

Author Antoine Compagnon in October 2015. Claude Truong-Ngoc/CC BY-SA 3.0

It’s a “beautiful” notion to pursue as much subject knowledge as possible. Indeed, Compagnon shows us that Pascal was a man who pursued this very idea. There are 41 chapters in this short book with each chapter extending three to four pages. Pascal is highlighted as questioning and probing, as well as answering and deciphering. Even in these brief chapters, Pascal is shown as formidable in not just his pursuit of knowledge, but in his capability to understand and answer hard questions and issues, ranging from mathematics to theology.

Regarding the complete works of Pascal, Compagnon recommends that the reader follow from his brief introduction to the full world of the French thinker. He notes that Pascal’s works provide more than just enlightened thinking, “There is a whole art of thinking, an art of writing, an art of reading, to be discovered in the ‘Pensées.’”

There is much to be taken from this brief work. I found that, despite its brevity, it was a work that needed to be read slowly. The words and thoughts from both Pascal and Compagnon must be taken in slowly and pondered. Given this, one would sell themselves short if they did not pursue the further and deeper thoughts of Pascal on any of these particular subjects.

Poignant and Thought-Provoking

More pointedly, although Pascal is often referenced within the religious realm, his works are directed toward both those who believe and do not believe in God, and, as Compagnon makes clear, his perspectives are just as poignant and thought-provoking as they ever were. When it came to the religious or, at least, the metaphysical, Pascal focused his attention on the believer; the one wishing to believe, but had not yet come to belief; and the one who rejected the notion of God. Perhaps the reasoning behind his writing in defense of religion and his arguments against those who rejected the existence of God is best summed up in his statement that “men have contempt for religion, they have hatred for it, and fear that it might be true.”

There are probably many things we fear may be true, especially those heady items. But Compagnon encourages us, by virtue of Pascal’s thoughts, to pursue a better understanding of those things, of all things, or at least as many things as possible.

“A Summer with Pascal” is a good place to begin pondering those things, but it is, as Compagnon makes clear, not the end.

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‘A Summer With Pascal’

By Antoine Compagnon Belknap Press, May 7, 2024 Hardcover: 184 pages