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Blaise Pascal's Pensées is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest masterpieces of seventeenth-century France, an unfinished work which has both inspired and perplexed readers in succeeding centuries. This is the first book on Pascal to be devoted to his use of key terms depicting the central subject of the Pensées: the human condition. The book explores such fundamental notions as language and order, proceeding with a detailed analysis of the words inconstance, ennui, inquiétude, bonheur, félicité, and justice. Developing and challenging the most recent scholarship about the text, it identifies the crucial notion of play (as exemplified in the term divertissement) which underlies all these words and applies its findings to the notoriously unstable concept of truth. Through the fragmentary nature of the Pensées and the shifting meaning of terms, Pascal is shown to be deliberately engaging the reader in a game to make sense of the text. This study gives an account of many important critical controversies of the day, and offers an insight into the persuasive purpose of the Pensées.

The eighteenth-century discussion of ‘pensées détachées’ sums up the central concerns of this book. The persuasive process of the Pensées is energised by the reader's active participation in sorting through both the fragmentary ordering and the shifting meanings of the text. In rhetorical terms, the reader becomes the master of the inventio and dispositio of the text. The fourth part of traditional rhetoric, memoria, plays an important part in the Pensées. As the book has stressed throughout, the doctrine of the Fall underlies all aspects of language and truth in the Pensées. Although God stands above the game which marks man's corrupt condition, the Fall itself made God embark on his own ‘game’. The possibility of transcendence within the very concepts which indicate his fallenness points always to a God who is both stale and constant. Playing with shifting notions of truth becomes an eternal truth played through God.

Perhaps the major difference between the use of ‘paroles’ in this letter and the function of words in the Pensées lies in the fact that the polemicist, despite his recognition of the inadequacy of language, believes in the internal truth of words. In the Pensées, on the other hand, Blaise Pascal calls into question man's very ability to communicate truth through language, an aspect which this chapter develops. It must be pointed out that Pascal does not always make a clear distinction between mot and parole. It would be useful to assess the status of words in this fragment. It is entitled ‘Contre le pyrrhonisme’, and clearly represents an attempt to show the weaknesses of the sceptics' opposition to the dogmatists.

All general studies of ennui recognise the original and central importance which Blaise Pascal brought to it. The significance of ennui in the Pensées would seem to be diminished by the relatively small number of times that it is used, only twenty-nine times in its nominal and verbal forms. However, its prominent position in many of those fragments underlines the central importance which Pascal accords them. This chapter has chosen to make a comparison between the singular and plural forms of ennui because, in the Pensées, every example of the noun is in the singular, which would seem to promote the more specialised meaning of the term. To a large extent, one finds an important distinction between the use of the singular and plural forms in all key terms associated with the human condition.

This chapter looks briefly at ordre and its different meanings, and the way in which these meanings shift. It then considers order in relation to fragmentation. There are six main categories into which it is convenient to divide the usage of ordre in the Pensées, some of which are interconnected: arrangement, plane of understanding, divine and world order, orderliness, command, and priestly succession. The first grouping relates principally to Blaise Pascal's notes on the ordering of his text. Ordre appears most frequently in the Pensées within this context, usually as the heading for what seems to be a working note. This sense of ordre is the main focus of the chapter. The second grouping of ordre is closely related to the first, but it operates on a different level. It is concerned with particular planes of understanding or living, often in strict hierarchy or gradation to each other.

Inquiétude is used in all cases as a singular noun either with no accompanying article or with a definite article of the eleven times it appears in the Pensées. Although the influence on particular fragments where inquiétude appears is not as strikingly discernible, a brief examination of some uses of the word in the Essais and in De la sagesse should throw light on the term in the Pensées. This chapter looks to the Pensées to perceive the importance which Blaise Pascal assigns to it. In the course of the chapter, it examines three categories into which inquiétude falls: the anxiety of man's fallen state, inquiétude as linked directly to fallen man's spiritual teaching, and within the context of the Christian's continued spiritual endeavours.

Divertissement is directly related to the notion of play in the Pensées. The term emanates from man's corrupt nature and acts as an impetus to redirect him towards spiritual perfection. However, there still remains the question why play and divertissement should be so central to the human condition in the first place. Blaise Pascal is not unique in the seventeenth century in the importance which he attached to the notion of play. Although man is condemned to play on earth, this game is finite. Death puts an end to all games of chance. It is in this context that this chapter views L418, the Wager fragment. By opting out of a game in which he is a player, he is in effect wagering against the existence of God. The positive function of searching which is implicit within the movement associated with divertissement points towards the possible attainment of an eternal truth.

The majority of studies to have appeared on Blaise Pascal's use of language concentrate either on vocabulary or style. Although Sara Melzer in Discourses of the Fall does not examine individual terms, her radical re-evaluation of language within the context of the doctrine of the Fall and within various post-structuralist critical traditions offers a new reading of the text which has provided a useful starting point for this book. Also, despite a tendency to ignore the historical proofs of God's existence which Pascal clearly regarded as important, Melzer's article ‘Classicism and Conventions of Meaning in the Pensées’, throws interesting light on the function of paradox in the Pensées. Through an analysis of the language used by Pascal to portray man's status in the world, it is the book's aim to derive a model of interpretation which will show many different levels of persuasion at work in the Pensées.

The interchangeability of bonheur and félicité which one finds in the dictionaries informs the use of both terms in the Pensées. As far as this chapter can ascertain, they are completely synonymous, with neither word, moreover, being used exclusively in an immanent or transcendental context. Their appearances in Sur la conversion du pécheur best introduce the different levels on which they operate in the Pensées. Blaise Pascal details the problems of the soul, however, although any happiness which relies solely on earthly things is necessarily false, man can attain a happiness which in itself is perceived as positive, but which is essentially temporary. The three forms of happiness determine the chapter's analysis of bonheur/félicité in relation to the fragments concerning imagination. The chapter then moves to the notion of happiness and divertissement.

Repos also functions on its own terms in the dialectical process of the Pensées. Bernard Beugnot and Domna Stanton have studied repos during the seventeenth century. This chapter shows the particular role of repos. On another level, repos is viewed as synonymous with the words paix and tranquillité. It is therefore necessary to consider the different applications of these two terms as they appear in the Pensées, especially with the connotation of spiritual repos. The chapter turns to the central fragment on divertissement, L136, for the use of repos, and shows here the many extensions of the term as it appears throughout the Pensées. It strongly recalls the Stoic notion of repos, of which Lucius Annaeus Seneca was the principal exponent. The Senecan ideal of repos was one which influenced and shaped many interpretations of the term in the seventeenth century.

Inconstance occurs the least number of times in the Pensées of the three nouns which appear in L24. Situated as the final word, it offsets the structural symmetry of the fragment, thereby drawing particular attention to it. The scarcity of the use of inconstance in other fragments serves to highlight its significance in those passages where it appears in a prominent position. A major context in which inconstantia traditionally appears is in its contrast to the Stoic and neo-Stoic conception of constantia. The theme of inconstancy, of the changeability of all earthly things is one which recurs throughout writings known to Blaise Pascal. As Philippe Sellier has clearly shown, the Bible, especially Psalms 101 and 136 and St Augustine's commentaries on them, were a major source of inspiration to Pascal. In them, through the repetition of the Latin terms inconstantia and instabilitas, the mutability of human life is contrasted with the constancy of God.

L24 constitutes the only fragment where ‘la condition de l'homme’ is directly named. Moreover, the Recueil original clearly shows that Blaise Pascal wrote each term with a capital letter, a point which all editors have ignored. The lack of any subordinate clauses leaves the fragment open ended: each of the nouns is open to interpretation, an activity in itself which indicates man's corruption. Thus, the combination of these factors leads one to look elsewhere in the fragmentary text for examples where the terms inconstance, ennui, and inquiétude are more fully developed. The patterning of L24 should also be considered. It has been well established that the word order and patterning play an essential stylistic role in the Pensées. This book shows in many respects how the terms depicting restlessness, inconstance and inquiétude, are closely related to one another, but also how both nouns point toward ennui and ennui refers back to them.