Pascal On Reading

Pascal’s Penssees is a book that records the philosophy of Pascal. It is a concentrated expression of Pascal’s non-rationalist philosophy. Pascal’s Penssees is not only a enlightenment, but also has some methodological significance. Therefore, the interpretation of Pascal’s Penssees is extremely important for us to understand Pascal’s philosophy. This paper is divided into three sections to interpret the Pascal’s Penssees.The first chapter is about Pascal’s life and the background of Pascal’s Penssees, which contains three aspects. In medieval France, there were all kinds of Christian branches, and one of the largest powers is Jansen. Pascal was a faithful Jansen believer, at the same time, he began to explore and research in mind area. But Pascal did not blindly follow Descartes’rationalism rule, bur from ontology, and fully respected people’s main body status and pioneering spirit. He began the modern western humanism. Pascal’s Penssees is the embodiment of it.The second chapter introduces the main part of Pascal’s Penssees.This chapter divides the context into God Gambling, Justice and contemplation about human thoughts. For human activity is full of adventure and uncertainty, which makes a splendid legacy of secular life, we have to definite the life by betting. Pascal held that justice should be combined with strong force, and only that can we get close to justice. Pascal also pondered the ultimate meaning about life.The third chapter is the author’s evaluation of Pascal’s Penssees from the aspect of irrationalism philosophy, idealism of the existence of god and humanistic and the humanistic human thought. Pascal bypassed priceless dispute with Descartes’rational philosophy, and studied directly on the meaning of existence from philosophical view, such as "what is man and why people is alive" and the meaning of god’s existence. Though it is full of idealism, that Pascal’s thought that god was existing was helpful in solving crisis from rational philosophy which may cause the culture crisis.