Thoughts (Pensées)

Blaise Pascal, a brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but his reputation today rests primarily upon his unfinished apology for the Christian religion. Pensées is a collection of philosophical fragments, notes, and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in psychological, social, metaphysical, and, above all, theological terms. In Pascal’s analysis, humanity emerges as a wretched and lonely creature in an impersonal universe, yet one that can be transformed through faith in Divine grace.