What then is man to do in this state of affairs? Is he to doubt everything, to doubt whether he is awake, whether he is being pinched or burned? Is he to doubt whether he is doubting, to doubt whether he exists?
No one can go that far, and I maintain that a perfectly genuine sceptic has never existed. Nature backs up helpless reason and stops it going so wildly astray.
Is he, on the other hand, to say that he is the certain possessor of truth, when at the slightest pressure he fails to prove his claim and is compelled to loose his grasp?
What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sewer of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe!
Who will unravel such a tangle? This is certainly beyond dogmatism and skepticism, beyond all human philosophy. Man transcends man.
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2 comments:
I wonder who his target is here.... Didn't you tell me once that Pascal and Descartes disputed only over mathematics? I know that is what A.C. Grayling tried to paint in his "biography".
Nope. Descartes and Pascal differed most directly over science, and that was the bulk of their interactions the two times they met each other. However, it became clear that their method and goals were totally different. Pascal criticized Descartes for not needing God in his metaphysics or science or anything. Descartes appealed to Aristotle as authority in science rather than experimentation, yet used reason to determine theology. Pascal differed greatly; reason and experimentation should govern science, and authority should govern theology.
Now in this excerpt, Pascal is arguing against dogmatists and skeptics, not really Descartes and Montaigne. He only once I think allows one to really be called a Pyrronhist (sp?), though here he doesn't even allow one. I think you'd like Pascal for his more 'common sense' leanings--"nature stops reason going so far astray" as to doubt one's existence or to doubt whether one is awake--but here he is focusing not on Descarte per se, but on skeptics in general (his favorite being Montaigne).
As far as Descartes goes, Pascal's most witty saying: "Descartes: useless and uncertain." A pretty strong attack to anyone, but all the more so for it being Descartes, and if philosophy had shared his opinion we'd be in a very different place. The other direct reference to Descartes was: "I cannot forgive Descartes. In his whole philosophy he would like to do without God; but he could not help allowing him a flick of the fingers to set the world in motion; after that he had no more use of God." For further differences, see esp. Pascal's Preface to the Treatise on the Vacuum and compare to Descartes' view of science and theology and reason.
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