Pascal and Rousseau
| Author | John Plamenatz |
| Published date | 01 October 1962 |
| Date | 01 October 1962 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1962.tb00995.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
PASCAL AND ROUSSEAU
JOHN PLAMENATZ
Nufield
College,
Oxford
BERTRAND
RUSSELL
has at least once-and perhaps more than once
-deplored Pascal’s turning away from mathematics and natural science
to religion. But Pascal turned away as much to himself as to religion, and
he spoke of himself-or of humanity as revealed to him in himself-as
only
a
man could who had been deeply moved by science and philosophy.
In Pascal we see, at its most intense and most impressive,
a
turning in
of
the human mind upon itself, an introversion of a kind scarcely possible
in an unscientific age or an age when philosophy is merely an extension of
theology. We see
a
new-or at least an unmedieval-type of interest in
man and the human condition. If it had been Freud and not Russell
commenting on Pascal’s turning from science to religion, he would have
found no cause for regret in it.
This introversion, deeply affected by science and by
a
new kind
of
philosophy, was affected also by the emergence of what-for want of
a
better word-I shall call polite society; of social circles whose members
see themselves as arbiters of taste, manners, and intelligence, supporting
in one another
a
sense of common superiority
to
outsiders. Polite society,
which is both exclusive and equalitarian, enhances certain kinds of
sensibility
;
it heightens self-awareness and awareness of others, making
its members more acutely observant and more sensitive to the effects they
produce in others. It is
a
psychological hall of mirrors. In it men of
intellect and taste, men who impose themselves by their talents, are the
equals of the nobly-born; they may find entry more difficult, but once they
are inside, they are in
a
circle where even the nobly-bofn increase their
reputations by intelligence, wit, and taste, and where everyone’s welcome
depends considerably on performance. In polite society, too, women are
the equals of men. And women, though not the more egotistical of the
two sexes, are the more tolerant of egotism in others and perhaps the
better able to impose on egotists restraints which do not silence them but
make them more tolerable to one another.
Philosophy in the seventeenth century was more anthropocentric-or
more consciously so-than it had been in the Middle
Ages.
It was less
concerned than it had been with God and His purposes for man and more
concerned with man considered apart from God. It concentrated
on
the
Political
Studies,
Vol.
X,
No.
3
(1962.
248-263).
JOHN
PLAMENATZ
249
problem of knowledge. What can a man know? How can he know that
his knowledge is genuine? The Cartesian philosophy rests on an assertion
which the philosopher makes about himself.
No
doubt, some
of
the
philosophers of the seventeenth century, who purported to
look
‘inwards’
to reach the self-evident or indubitable ‘truths’ on which they built up
their elaborate theories were not, as self-observers, remarkably perceptive.
I do not think that Descartes was
so
or-to take an example closer to my
own
sphere of interest-that Hobbes was
so.
They were men with an
unusual gift for abstract thought and systematic argument, for making a
small number
of
apparently simple and clear assumptions and deriving
vast consequences from them. Certainly Descartes’s capacity for intro-
spection and self-knowledge was small indeed compared with, say,
Montaigne’s. But when we come to a man like Pascal, who combines the
self-awareness of Montaigne with the taste for clear thinking and sustained
argument of Descartes and Hobbes, the results are extraordinary.
Even men with little aptitude for philosophy as Descartes or Spinoza
or Hobbes practised it, men who were little more than unusually acute
observers
of
themselves and
of
others, were deeply, though indirectly,
affected by the new type of philosophy, which was
so
much more con-
cerned than medieval philosophy had been to answer Montaigne’s
question,
Que
sais-je?
and to look closely at mental processes.
La
Roche-
foucauld and
La
Bruyhe, who constructed no theories and were probably
incapable of doing
so,
also aimed at clarity, at precision, at the making
of fine distinctions. They had at their disposal, for their observations on
man, a vocabulary which was already, in all essentials, that of the ‘philo-
sophes’ of the eighteenth century, a vocabulary refined by the speculations
of philosophers for whom the prime task of philosophy had been to
explain how knowledge is acquired or-to say the same thing in other
words-how man comes to know himself as an observer and an actor in
a world which is external to him.
In the Middle Ages, when philosophers and moralists were concerned
above all with man’s relations with God, the vice of vices was pride. The
man not saciently conscious of
his
human weakness and his need of God
was seen as the victim of pride; and
so
too was the insubordinate man, the
man who challenged the human authorities established among men by
God, the man who was not content with
his
place in the world. It
was
taken for granted that there is a world governed by God in which every
man has a place. Pride, as
I
here use the word, is excessive confidence in
one’s
own
self-sufficiency or ability or power. Theologians saw it
as
an
offence against God,
a
refusal by the mere creature of the submission or
respect due to the Creator or to those holding authority from Him. In
the
seventeenth century, among the theologians, pride was still the
vice
of
SW.3
D
To continue reading
Request your trial