Much of Pascal’s philosophy, though applicable to a variety of problems and issues we face today, is couched in religious terms that, even for religious believers today, may not resonate. This chapter explores some possibilities of developing some key Pascalian ideas – the limits of reason and experience, the ambiguity of the world, the heart, our sometimes-misplaced desires, and the wager – in secular terms. One possibility that emerges as particularly fruitful is to replace Pascal’s “God” with William James’s “religious belief” that the good will ultimately triumph, and that it is important and beneficial for us to believe it.

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.

Having established the basics of a Pascalian, “cordate” epistemology, this chapter explores the implications for how the world works and applications to some pressing problems today. The way the world looks, and so the reasons your experience gives you, depends on the state of your heart. But the fact that the world can be seen in these ways, according to the different states of heart, is a significant fact about it. Pascal infers much from this built-in ambiguity in the world when it comes to religion. That the world can be seen as both a Godless mechanism and mediating a loving relationship with God confirms one theology (the Augustinian Fall), and disconfirms the rest. A similar situation arises for us today, where the facts about the world can seem equally obvious to both sides of our polarized society, even though they are looking at the same world, albeit from their own “echo chambers.” This chapter explores the relevance of Pascal’s views on ambiguity to the deep disagreements we encounter in society today, applying insights about how the heart influences the way things appear as well as how to communicate with those who profoundly disagree with us.

Philosophy is not only about beliefs but also decisions and desires. This chapter explores Pascal’s ideas about the human condition, how our desires can make us miserable even when they are satisfied, and how this condition leads us to seek distractions that only make us more miserable. Again we find Pascal’s views and prescriptions stem from the heart, as our fallen state is the source of this sad situation. At the same time, by thinking well about it we can arrive at the conclusion that life could be great, and that the fact that it is not so great confirms the theology of the Fall (and doesn’t confirm other religions, which do not predict our actual predicament). The heart, then, is the key to all of our engagement with the world: not only our beliefs about it but also our desires and happiness. Remarkably, some of the problems Pascal wrote so eloquently about seem especially applicable today, as his descriptions of the need to display a fake identity predict and diagnose TikTok culture, and his rejection of the project to “find your true self,” “love yourself,” and “go with your heart” challenges the typical self-help advice one finds today.

This chapter applies the Pascalian picture developed in the rest of the book to the famous “wager.” With that background in place, we can see how the wager has been misunderstood, and that the correct interpretation is far more defensible than the standard one. The so-called wager is an argument designed to convince a very particular kind of person – one with only self-interest in their heart – to seek a change of heart. It is a predictable part of Pascal’s general aim in his philosophy, and it doesn’t make the silly mistakes that are often attributed to him. Pascal’s innovations, such as the notion of infinity, the ambiguity of the world, the dependence of reasons on the heart, and corrupting influence of bad desires, are brought to bear on the wager to present a plausible, and less radical picture of the role of belief in Pascal. Topics such as self-deception, alternative conceptions of God, and the benefits of seeking the love of God are addressed throughout.

This introductory chapter provides a brief overview of Pascal’s legacy, his renown and neglect throughout the centuries, and his profound influence on philosophy, science, religion, and much else. The metholodgy of this book is then addressed: the aim is not primarily exegesis, though there will be plenty of that too. Rather, the aim of the book is to argue that there is much in Pascal’s work that is philosophically relevant to us today. Our cultural, social, political, and technological moment requires a deep look at our natures and aims, and this is what Pascal’s philosophy can offer, if we can get past the sometimes obscure theological disputes he was engaged in and the fragmentary nature of his writings. An overview of the book’s chapters is then provided.

This chapter explores Pascal’s skeptical outlook, highlighting his innovations as well as his reliance on older, more familiar arguments. To begin with, Pascal thought that reason itself could not provide the foundations or first principles of geometry or our knowledge of space. These first principles are not only unsupportable by any proof, so that reason itself provides them no certainty, but they in turn provide materials for further uncertainty given potential infinities in space – both the largeness and smallness of space seems to have no bounds. The result is that we cannot, by appeal to reason alone, find our place within the physical universe. Similarly, and contra Descartes, no proof of God can guarantee that life is not one long dream, so belief in the external world itself cannot be supported by reason. Nor can our experience of the world prove the existence of God in any useful way. The result is that our reason and experience, operating on their own, are insufficient to establish much of anything foundational. The appeal to proofs and evidence cannot resolve other controversies of our day, either, as anyone who has tried to convince a conspiracy theorist by such methods will know.

Perhaps the most debated question in Arnauld scholarship is whether Arnauld follows René Descartes in holding that God freely creates the eternal truths (the creation doctrine). In this chapter, I offer the first systematic treatment of this issue in Arnauld’s early texts from the 1640s. I begin by distinguishing between two versions of the creation doctrine: the metaphysical and the epistemic. According to the former, God in fact freely creates the eternal truths, while according to the latter we do not know whether God creates the eternal truths, and we should not say that God did not create the eternal truths. I then trace Arnauld’s view through the early texts. I argue that in his earliest texts Arnauld does not hold either version of the doctrine, but likely holds a version of voluntarism in line with his early nominalism and I also compare his early view with Ockham’s. I then argue that in the later texts from the 1640s Arnauld’s view changes and by 1648 he likely held the epistemic creation doctrine.

In this chapter, I develop Arnauld’s account of God’s nature, focusing on his account of divine simplicity and whether God acts for reasons. I begin by arguing that Arnauld holds an account of divine simplicity according to which: (i) God and all of God’s attributes are identical; (ii) God, God’s action, and God’s attributes are merely conceptually distinct; and (iii) there are no conceptual priorities among God, God’s action, and God’s attributes. I then argue that Arnauld thinks that whether God has reasons in any sense is beyond the scope of rational knowledge for finite beings, but finite beings can know that, if God does have reasons, they are not practical reasons.