Pensees (Royal Collector's Edition) (Case Laminate Hardcover with Jacket)

by Blaise Pascal

Overview

Pensees, or thoughts, is a collection of fragments on theology and philosophy written by 17^th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal often examined the same event or example through many different lenses. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensees was in many ways his life's work. Pensees represented Pascal's defense of the Christian religion, and is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose.

When Paschal died, his executors, failing to recognize the basic structure of Pensees, handed them over to be edited, and they were published in 1670. Since then, the proper order of the Pensees is heavily disputed. One of the text's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of Pyrrhonism and Stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God.

This case laminate collector's edition includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781774766057
Publisher:	Royal Classics
Publication date:	11/13/2022
Pages:	252
Sales rank:	209,690
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 - 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defence of the scientific method. In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines. After three years of effort and 50 prototypes, he built 20 finished machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines) over the following 10 years, establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Pascal was an important mathematician, helping create two major new areas of research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo Galilei and Torricelli, in 1647, he rebutted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. Pascal's results caused many disputes before being accepted. In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensees, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids. Throughout his life, Pascal was in frail health, especially after the age of 18; he died just two months after his 39th birthday.