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This book has been referred to as one of the greatest Christianity books ever written. Collaborated from papers and notes about religion that Blasie Pascal had written for an Apology of Christianity. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1891 edition by Calmann Lévy, Paris. ... Read more

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The problem of the ineffable haunts Blaise Pascal. Whether in his fragmentary Pensées, his personal correspondence, or his scientific writings on the void and geometry, the Baroque thinker gravitates to the same elusive questions: How can reason understand that which surpasses reason? How to speak of that which is beyond words? His seemingly paradoxical inquiry into God's transcendent nature-and its mathematical corollary, infinity-does not dead-end at a logical impasse. This book shows how Pascal overcomes the limits of reason by adopting dissonant cognitive strategies akin to the mystical tradition known as apophatic ("negative") theology. Current scholarship has largely overlooked the presence of apophatic thought in Pascal's work. What emerges from this book is a philosophical dialogue between Pascal and Pseudo-Dionysius, the fifth-century writer of seminal apophatic treatises. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1819 edition by Lefèvre, Paris. ... Read more

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"John R. Cole's Pascal is a work of love as well as of scholarly devotion. It brings alive a fascinating man and it makes fascinating reading--not only from beginning to end, but long afterwards, as we absorb all we have learned and are stimulated to think further. This book will be enjoyed by many, far beyond the fields of history and philosophy and regardless of prior knowledge of Pascal. I recommend it especially to everyone interested in the nature and development of human beings."
—Erna Furman, Author of A Child's Parent Dies

Ever since the edifying life written by his sister in the months after his death, canonical representations of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) have revered him for the scientific genius of his youth, the religious conversions of his mid-life, and the great books and greater saintliness of his last years. All this monumentalizes the hero, but it also reduces the man to a mind and spirit and it divides his life and work into unrelated halves. The preeminent specialist, Jean Mesnard, still picks up the subject where Gilberte Pascal left it in 1662. No historian in our language has even attempted to put the halves together again.

In Pascal: The Man and His Two Loves, John R. Cole reintegrates a life that began with familial attachments and achieved youthful marvels of invention and experiment with an Arithmetic Machine and Vacuum Experiments; Cole argues that love for his father spun the wheels and filled the void. Pascal then converted, having suffered particularly painful separations and losses; Cole's central chapters adapt Freudian methods to relate his newly ardent love of God to his prior love of parents. Finally, the convert wrote contrasting classics, the Provincial Letters and the Penses, before years of sanctified suffering terminated his work; Cole suggests that disciplined study of his affective life makes possible new readings of these great books.

Product Description
This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1867 edition by L. Hachette & Co., Paris. ... Read more