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 chapter investigates the mechanisms of sexist domination and women’s apparent complicity in their own oppression in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It takes as its starting point Wollstonecraft’s claim that aristocratic women are as birds in cages who swap their freedom and reason for clothes and food. I ask whether this can be interpreted as a form of adaptive preferences, and, secondly, existentialist bad faith. I argue that while these theories are useful for understanding Wollstonecraft’s schema, they do not suffice to explain it.

When Socrates finally has the opportunity to present his defense (apologia) to the Athenian jury, he takes an unusual strategy. Rather than asking for forgiveness and throwing himself on the mercy of his judges – “You would have liked to hear me weep and wail,” he tells them – or appealing to their emotions by having his wife and children come before the court to plea for his life, he simply describes his mission in life.

In Plato’s early dialogue Euthyphro, we find Socrates on the eve of the trial in 399 BCE that will end with his conviction and, eventually, execution. According to the story, the official charges brought against him by some leading citizens of Athens are “failing to recognize the city’s gods, introducing other new divinities, and breaking the law because he corrupts the youth of the city.” However, Socrates knows – and we know – that the real reason for his indictment is political. Besides cavorting with individuals suspected of being enemies of the democracy, he has earned the resentment and suspicion of powerful citizens after years of harassing Athenians about the lives they were leading. Socrates has a bad reputation, in part because of those he refers to as the “old accusers” – people such as Aristophanes, whose unflattering portrayal of Socrates among the youth in plays like The Clouds (produced in 423 BCE) only reinforced the animus against him.

Maimonides was born in Córdoba, in Andalusia, in 1137 or 1138. His father, Maimon, was a dayyan or Jewish court judge, and thus held a high position in the flourishing Córdoba Jewish community. The family seems to have been sufficiently well-off, perhaps through the kind of mercantile activities in which many Iberian Jews engaged.

This chapter focuses on the place of work in Wollstonecraft’s moral and political philosophy, and in particular her feminist thought, as she argues that one way in which women are held back is by not being allowed to investigate the world, and move freely in the public space. She sometimes blames early marriage, as it simply removes a young woman from her parent’s home to that of her husband, who will himself have left home as a child to go to school, later possibly to travel, and still leaves most days to go to work. Women, Wollstonecraft argues, both in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman should pursue their development outside the home, either by leading professional lives or pursuing intellectual or artistic interests once their children are old enough to go to school. There can be no independence for women, Wollstonecraft argues, without work that goes beyond unpaid domestic work.

Readers coming to the Guide of the Perplexed for the first time may find themselves perplexed by the work’s opening sections. Perhaps expecting some profound pearls of wisdom about God, the world or human nature, what they discover instead is a long series of entries – over three-dozen chapters – on Hebrew semantics and etymology, along with exegeses of passages from the Hebrew Bible (also called TaNaKh, the Hebrew acronym for the Pentateuch/Torah, the texts of the prophets/Nevi’im, and other writings/Ketuvim). Chapters are devoted to the ambiguity of such mundane words as “foot,” “eye,” “standing and “sitting,” “rock,” and “touch.” Maimonides explains how the Hebrew word for “eat” can refer both to the taking in of food by living beings and to any kind of destruction or undoing, and that “face” can signify either the familiar front part of the head or emotional states like “anger and wrath” (as in “He set his face against them”).

This chapter will look at Wollstonecraft’s multilayered critique of domination which she applies across economic classes, races, and genders.  It will review some objections to the claim that Wollstonecraft’s feminism really is relevant to the concerns of today’s feminists. Namely, does Wollstonecraft address concerns relevant to all women, or simply that of eighteenth-century white, middle-class British women? I argue that it does, and that Wollstonecraft can and should be considered a precursor of decolonial and intersectional feminism. In order to do so I ask what she had to say about class, slavery and racism, gender and sexual orientation.

In the prologue to the Book of Job, we are told that the eponymous protagonist of the story is a blameless and upright man (in Hebrew, tam ve-yashar), that he fears God and turns away from wrongdoing. When Job’s tribulations begin, he accepts them unshaken in his faith and unwilling to speak ill of God. “If we accept good from God, shall we not accept evil?” (Job 2:10). As his losses mount, however, it is, ultimately, all too much even for him. When Job is finally overcome by his suffering, when he has been robbed of everything that was dear to him, when all seems lost, he raises his voice to complain to God about the way he, a righteous individual, has been treated. While Job recognizes God’s wisdom and power, he nonetheless questions God’s justice. God, he insists, “rains blows on me without cause … He destroys blameless and wicked alike” (Job 9:17–22).