Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2026
For Pascal, our knowledge of everything from geometry and the external world to God comes not from reason or experience alone, but rather it requires a feeling of “the heart.” This central notion in Pascal, which is underexplored in the literature, is the key to understanding his philosophy. This chapter develops a “cordate” (or heart-shaped) epistemology to show how the heart replaces reason and experience as the foundation in Pascal. Once we piece together an account of the heart – no easy task, since Pascal’s notes do not explicitly define it – we can trace its role in generating belief. The heart is, roughly, an affective orientation that is the seat of the will, which in turn affects experience, feelings, and perception. It even generates its own reasons. This affective orientation includes, for example, what one fundamentally loves, hates, fears, and so on. We can then see how a feeling of the heart can generate knowledge of first principles, that we are not dreaming, and, once we consider the role of the heart in Pascal’s Augustinian theology, a kind of religious engagement with the world and ultimately a love (and consequently knowledge) of God. Applications to life today are also explored.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.