1. Playing with Truth
- Author
-
Nicholas Hammond
- Abstract
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.
- Published
- 1994