Abstract EN:

As a mathematician as well as an apologist, pascal had to deal with gamblers. This work intends to show that game-playing is an essential model in pascal's own thought. Two main aspects of game-playing are examined here : chance and rules. Chance is, for pascal, the condition of man after the fall. All the rules which govern social life, can therfore be related to the rules of a game : arbitrary but compulsory. The christian is different from the philosopher, to the extent that he accepts to live in a world which functions according to the logic of a game. In his argument of "the wager", pascal applies to the search for god a type of mathematical reasoning which he had developed in order to understand the function of chance in games. A preliminary study of pascal's work concerning chance allows us to analyse "the wager" by taking into account its mathematical character and its status as a game; this study shows how a utilitarian argument works its way into the apology of christian religion.