Pascal, Aristotle, or Descartes? Osten

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Does anyone else get Aristotle and desecrates vibes from Pascal? The whole time I was reading it I couldn't help but think of Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean and Descartes' meditations. This made me think that Pascall has had some sort of teaching of the great philosophers whether that be in school or personally. What is really strange though is that while he was doubting and being skeptical just like Descartes he doesn't seem to know who he is. " Shall he doubt whether he exists? We cannot go so far as that; and I lay it down as a fact that there never has been a real complete sceptic. Nature sustains our feeble reason, and prevents it raving to this extent". If Pascal did have a formal education in regard to philosophy then this comment is either wrong or an intentional jab at Descartes for some reason. I also find it intresting that he did not go into as much detail with his thought process as Descartes did. This makes me think that Pascal either was not yet ready for his thoughts to be read or he was a self taught/ homeschooled philosopher.

What are your thoughts on this? Was Pascal self taught or did he have a formal education?





I commented on Jamie and Caroline's blogs

Comments

Will Brady said…
While I’ve never read Pascal, I can’t see any fatal issue with the text you’ve cited here. Pascal is a skeptic, yes, but is well aware that skepticism cannot realistically be carried out to the extent which Descartes attempted to utilize it. That “cogito ergo sum” is a steady foundation for this, but treating it as the ONLY certainty (as Descartes was tempted to do) is drawing skepticism to the brink of reason. Is everything but my mind a dream? Not only is cogito ergo sum not the only answer, but I really shouldn’t care either way. Pascal is more realistic than his predecessor; there’s nothing wrong with that, not is there any serious issue with admitting that ones personal philosophy only carries one so far.

As far as being self-taught/homeschooled… Were not the first philosophers self-taught? The first mathematicians? The first chemists? Everyone takes some degree of knowledge from outside sources, but ultimately, every field of study began with someone more or less self-taught in their field. This by no means denotes a lackluster intelligence, and I certainly hope you don’t mean to place homeschoolers into a category of lesser-developed intellect. The entirety of last year’s Honor’s Council was homeschooled, unless I’m mistaken...
November 18, 2019 at 5:50 AM
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