Apologetique et raison dans les pensees de pascal
Institution:
Paris, EHESSDisciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
This study is a consideration of the meaning to be given to the pensees. It challenges the interpretations which, considering the pensees as merely apologetical, strumble over the deliberate disorder, the enlarged comprehensiveness and the greatly increased number of protagonists. This threefold difficulty can be solved without mutilating the text if we perceive, behind the discourse about proof, which is strictly apologetical, a discourse about the ends of the proof, which is entirely different. In accordance with what he sets out in his short treatises, de l'esprit geometrique and de l'art de persuader, pascal does not aim at convincing but, by means of a demonstration akin to the verification of hypotheses in physics, at showing how reason is powerless to believe naturally and so justifying its abandonment into a faith which is a principle of judgment, as the "heart" is a principle of reasoning. While descartes' metaphysics enables reason to experience its own finitude by setting above it the incomprehensible infinity of the god who warrants its truths, pascal's apologetics, by witnessing to its corruption, adds to its demonstrative use a critical one which places theology at the centre of all its truths. It is therefore by the light of the disposal which causes the splitting up of the pensees that we must read the whole work in order to gras
Abstract FR:
Ce travail porte sur le sens a donner aux pensees. On y recuse les interpretations qui, reduisant celles-ci a la perspective apologetique, achoppent inevitablement sur le caractere delibere du desordre, l'elargissement du propos, la multiplication des protagonistes. On peut resoudre cette triple difficulte sans amputer le texte, a condition de deceler derriere le discours de la preuve - proprement apologetique- le discours sur les fins de la preuve, qui est d'un tout autre ordre. Conformement aux opuscules de l'esprit geometrique et de l'art de persuader, pascal ne vise pas a convaincre mais, par le biais d'une demonstration apparentee a la verifi- cation des hypotheses en physique, a demoncer l'impuissance de la raison a croire naturellement et a legitimer ainsi sa demission dans une foi qui est principe de jugement comme le "coeur" l'est du raisonnement. Si la meta- physique cartesienne permet a la raison d'eprouver sa finitude en erigeant au-dessus d'elle l'infinite incomprehensible du dieu qui garantit ses verites, l'apologetique pascalienne, en attestant sa corruption, double son usage demonstratif d'un usage critique qui place la theologie au centre de toutes ses verites. C'est donc a la lumiere du dispositif qui provoque l'eclatement des pensees qu'il faut lire l'oeuvre entiere afin d'en saisir la systematicite.