This essay compares the different ways in which two famous contemporary novelists, M. Houellebecq and D.F. Wallace, use Pascal’s Pensées on death. The former, in Anéantir, completely removes the fragments from the apologetic context in which they were originally placed by Pascal, thus terrifying the readers without edifying them. While the latter in The Pale King, questioning our desire for eternity, draws the reader’s attention in greater detail to the paradoxical condition of man who, alone among all living beings, knows that he is dying, is aware that life has a limit, and yet aspires to transcend it. The American consumers, who spend a fortune on a gravestone so that some part of themselves will survive their total annihilation, are for Wallace the symbol of this paradoxical condition. In short, Houellebecq uses the fear of death as a narrative tool, while Wallace explores the complexity of human nature in the face of death, as Pascal does in his so-called «second anthropology».
The aim of my study is to conduct a semantic study of Pascal’s lexicon of subsistence by means of a search for occurrences of the lemmas subsister (in its various forms), subsistence and subsistent. The analysis that I develop here shows that the prevailing meaning of this lexicon into Pascal’s corpus is not metaphysical: «to subsist» indicates the permanence of something despite difficulties. The fragments of the Pensées on the prophecies also reveal that the source of this meaning is biblical; moreover, they allow us to identify a deeper historical-salvific meaning. For this reason, Pascal’s lexicon of subsistence would seem to reveal much more than a biblical origin: it seems to refer directly to the expression «God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob», which in fact refers to the permanence of the testamentum across generations and ordeals.
In this paper I analyze briefly the structure envisioned by Blaise Pascal for his Apologie, and I underline its divergence from other apologetic strategies in modern natural theology. Pascal’s argument in support of Christianity should be interpreted as an anthropological ‘proof’, one that is capable of activating a new praxis enlightened by the Christian interpretation of life. This kind of strategy is also typical of the so-called «anthropological turn» of twentieth-century theology. Two texts of Edward Schillebeeckx and Karl Rahner on secularization are analyzed and interpreted as ‘Pascalian’ in essence, thus highlighting the fecundity of Pascal’s thought for contemporaneity.
Placing Pascal within the context of the 17th century enables us to uncover cultural, philosophical, and religious movements of that era. This sheds light on his activities and his approach to presenting and defending the Christian religion while addressing contemporary challenges.
The present study addresses some aspect of Pascal’s reading of Descartes and Montaigne on the two crucial questions of God and the soul in some fragments of the Pensées. Regarding God, Pascal, in his Christian apologetic, does not make any use of the cartesian «metaphysical proofs of God», which he considers nevertheless true, though useless. Regarding the soul, Pascal acknowledges the superiority of the Cartesian cogito in respect of Augustine’s, in so far as it constitutes the foundation of an entire Physics. This shows that the lack of a Pascalian metaphysics, despite the subversion of the Cartesian concepts, is not because of the failure of Cartesian metaphysics, but because of its success: Descartes did everything that needed to be done. As concerns Montaigne, Pascal gathers his nominalist legacy, indeed; and, nevertheless, Pascal’s Cartesian rejection of substantial forms should not be confused with Nominalism. Pascal addresses the question of Being, but he does not argue about it. Pascal searches a name for God: and this name, «Fire», expresses a manifestation, not a concept which aims to grasp the divine essence.
The paper aims to investigate the historical and semantic links between two relevant concepts that compose the panorama of modern philosophy: Montaigne’s diversion and Pascal’s divertissement. The speculative relationship between the two French philosophers has always aroused great interest among historians of philosophy, but that of a punctual comparative study around the aforementioned concepts is a territory that has remained largely unexplored and still susceptible to critical findings. In particular, the article will attempt, in the first paragraph, to highlight the philosophical peculiarities of each of the two concepts within the broader theoretical framework developed by the authors, showing Pascal’s debt towards Montaignan reflection and the originality of his perspective on the topic. The second paragraph instead illustrates a concise overview of the hermeneutic problem that the two concepts present at the level of translation into Italian, trying to offer a solution that can hold together heterogeneous historical and theoretical instances.
In his 1647 letter to Father Noël, Blaise Pascal briefly outlines his critical theory of scientific knowledge in general. Our article analyzes this letter and relates it to other places in Pascal’s works where his critical theory is developed and applied. There are two major points of emphasis in this theory. The first one is the superiority that Pascal recognizes in «geometry» over «logic»: a superiority that lies in the clarification that «geometric» knowledge provides of its conceptual apparatus and in the explicit use of the apagogical method. The second one is the ante litteram falsificationist approach that Pascal reserves for knowledge that does not enjoy apagogical status. Also relevant is the consideration that apagogical demonstration normally introduces truths that contain a mystery, which cannot be deepened by the esprit de géométrie but rather requires the esprit de finesse.
While it is not possible to find an organic metaphysics structured in a systematic form in Pascal’s writings, it is nevertheless possible to recognise precise «outlines» revealing an implicit metaphysics essentially classical in its framework. The originality of Pascal’s proposal resides in the re-centring of reflection on a «metaphysics of the person» from which results a comprehension of being in «three orders» of reality mutually incommensurable. Experience itself, in fact, informs, in its multidimensionality, about the organisation of the real in the orders of corporeity (corps), intellect (esprit) and transcendence (charité). Heterogeneous dimensions, but unified in the experience of the person as a substantial reality. The metaphysics of the trois ordres thus takes the form of a metaphysics of the real in an existential scope, and philosophical theology itself expresses this leavening, whereby it remains insufficient to itself if it is unable to open rationality to the ordre de la charité, which reason itself is even able to foresee as its own most authentic outcome.
This article aims to study the Augustinian theme of duplex delectatio in relation to Blaise Pascal’s Writings on Grace and their Jansenist and scholastic background. As is well known, Pascal’s doctrine of victorious delight is directly indebted to the Jansenius’ Augustinus. Furthermore, Pascal seems to embrace from Jansenius the idea that in a state of sin, human desire is oriented only towards pleasurable good and not towards good as such. However, in the Pensées and the Provincial Letters, Pascal directs human desire towards good as such and opens up the possibility that free will could resist grace and, therefore, victorious delight. The sense of this freedom, understood as freedom of indifference, is further explored through certain passages in the Augustinus, highlighting the Scotist background that unites Jansenius and Luis de Molina.
Both of the most important readings of Edmund Burke’ philosophy—the utilitarian interpretation of the 19th century and the conservative interpretation of the 20th century— are partial and unable to give a coherent understanding of such terms as «utility», «expedience» and «prescription» on the one hand, and on the other, such notions as «natural law», «eternal justice» and «Providence», instead considering them irreconcilable. Other more recent interpretations tend to show some degree of coherence and unity in Burkean philosophy. This study contributes to identifying the originality of Burke’s moral philosophy through the exploration of the correlation of «prudence» and «prescription», understood here as two complementary ways to obey natural law – in the first case, by means of cautious deliberations of the phronimos; in the second case, through the flow of time that reveals a superior normative order deriving from collective community/species decisions. On both levels, the category of «utility» finds a place in relation to that of eternal justice, representing the countercheck for the proper ‘translation’ of natural law into history.
The object of this paper is the heideggerian interpretation of Aristotelian dynamis in the course On the Essence and Reality of the Force. Our main hypothesis is that the dynasthai expresses a relevant aspect of Dasein’s historical motility. In the first two paragraphs, we will explore the speculative implications of dynamis translation with Kraft. This kind of translation assigns a kantian and leibnizian nuance to the Aristotelian concept. In the third paragraph, we will show the phenomenological exegesis that Heidegger gives to the relation between dynamis tou poiein and dynamis tou pathein. The unity of those two dynamesis is not more present in the being, but it’s the intentional relationship between a way of production and its materials. In the last paragraph, we will show as the dynasthai also indicates the alertness of the Dasein before his historical decision.
Among the themes tackled by Romano Guardini in his oeuvre, we find those related to word and language, with questions regarding their original meaning and value that develop in an authentic philosophy of the word. As a response to the deep crisis of language, which abuses of speech and therefore devalues it and deprives it of its meaning, and led by a strong sense of responsibility towards words, Guardini recovers the nature of language as living-concrete: an analogical image of man in his multilayered structure and in his fundamental openness to the relationship with the other. Thus, language reveals itself as the meaningful space preceding us in which ourexistence unfolds: from one level to the next one, following the dialogic rhythm of Wort und Ant-wort and discovering the theological value of the word, language can rise along the hierarchy of being, until the supreme dialogue between the human I and the divine You.
Anfredus Gonteri was a significant Breton Franciscan theologian who heard Duns Scotus’s lecture in Paris around 1303 and lectured on the Sentences in Barcelona in 1322, and again in Paris in 1325. This paper provides a critical edition of quaestio 14 (utrum notitia theologica… sit proprie scientia) of the Prologue to his Commentary on the Sentences, devoted to the scientific status of theology as cognitio certa fidei.
F. Coniglione, L’uomo venuto da un altro mondo (R. Roni) – E. Huss erl, La preghiera e il divino (C. Carbone) – M. Mantovani, Einverleibung e “organismo sociale” (P. Scolari) – M. Marchetto, Scoprire Dio con Husserl (P. Stagi) – J.E. McTaggart, Commentario alla Logica di Hegel (F.A. Gambini) – M. Serafini, La libertà innata (F. Fiorentino)
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