A Hard Work for a Soft Age

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the great French polymath, scarcely needs an introduction. Mathematician, philosopher, physicist, inventor, and Catholic apologist, he was one of the standout figures of the Century of Genius and was responsible for signal advancements in mathematics (the binomial formula Pascal’s Theory, among other things), probability (he was a creator of the discipline), atmospheric physics (the Pascal is still used as a measure of atmospheric pressure), and mechanical computation (he is responsible for one of the world’s first mechanical calculators, and the computing language Pascal is named for him). Pascal, however, was a man of a different age from ours, one in which scientific genius and deep Christian piety still coexisted. For modern audiences, he is perhaps best known for a work he never completed in his lifetime: his classic Pensées, or “Thoughts.”

In form, the Pensées is a series of notes for a grand defense of the Catholic faith, which Pascal jotted down over the years and more or less tossed in a box, intending to create a unified work at some point. Alas, he died before he could complete the project, and after his death, his friends found his notes and attempted to assemble them into a finished product, which was first published in 1670. While the Pensées has, deservedly, gone on to be regarded as one of the great classics of literature, at the same time it has been overshadowed by a number of problems. There is no — and, indeed, can be no — definitive version of the text, since Pascal never finished it. As such, editors over the years have arranged its contents in the way they thought best. There are a number of different English editions of the Pensées, the most popular probably being A.J. Kralsheimer’s translation for Penguin Books (1966), which provides the basis for Peter Kreeft’s excellent Good Parts version, Christianity for Modern Pagans (1993), still one of the best introductions to the work.

Given all this, what can any new edition of Pascal’s Pensées add? Quite a bit, it turns out.

This new edition of the Pensées, published by the Catholic University of America Press, has much going for it. It is based on a French edition that was the first to be produced from the most accurate original manuscript and is the result of a number of scholars working for many years to bring forth what is arguably the most accurate English translation. Readers accustomed to the Kralsheimer version will find the CUA edition more scholarly in tone and more formal in language. The work abounds in footnotes, and there are extensive introductory and bibliographical materials. In addition to presenting arguably the most accurate extant text of the Pensées, this edition includes a number of fragmentary materials by Pascal, some not commonly included in other translations, some published for the first time. Interestingly, the editors have chosen to include a couple other short works, the Exchange with M. de Sacy on Epictetus and Montaigne (which the editors believe — rightly — to provide some of the philosophical basis of Pascal’s work) and The Life of Monsieur Pascal by his Sister Gilberte (a hagiography of Pascal by one of his sisters, which nevertheless provides some helpful background on him).

The CUA edition is a bit better organized, thematically, than other editions, and the editors also provide a handy plan for an alternate reading order of the text, which doubtless will be helpful to readers who are new to the Pensées. Rounding out the work is a series of tables in which the number of each of the pensées in this edition is cross-referenced with those of the Kralsheimer and W.F. Trotter (1958) editions, which is extraordinarily helpful for those who need to make comparisons between them or chase down other references.

So, is the CUA edition the ultimate edition, meaning you can toss your Kralsheimer, Kreeft, or other edition? Not necessarily. Though this new one is more authoritative and more scholarly, its more formal language is perhaps less accessible to casual readers who may prefer a more approachable translation. Moreover, the CUA edition at times gathers into one pensée a group of what were individual pensées in other editions. This may be closer to Pascal’s original intention, but it does take some getting used to for those more familiar with other editions. Again, this works against the casual reader who might find the Zen effect of shorter pensées more impactful.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the CUA edition, however, is the curate’s egg that is the scholarly apparatus of the work. While parts of it are excellent, other parts are, shall we say, problematic. The introductory sections by David Wetsel, professor of French at Arizona State University, appear both to appreciate Pascal as a towering figure of French literature and to be more than a little embarrassed by major elements in Pascal’s work, most significantly, the negative conception of man that is central to Pascal’s thought. The strength of the Pensées, in my opinion and that of others, is its unflinching depiction of the human condition as a consequence of the Fall — of the suffering that is human life and the risk of damnation that is part of the afterlife. Yet Wetsel’s introduction includes comments such as “It never occurred to Pascal — or any other thinker of the Classical period — that the Fall could be anything other than historical fact” (which for Catholics it is — see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 390). Elsewhere, when dealing with how Pascal treats the subjects of predestination and damnation, Wetsel notes, “Even today the controversy continues. Following the text of the Mass promulgated by Vatican II, Pope Benedict XVI has insisted that the prayer of consecration in English read that the sacrifice of the Mass is offered, not for ‘all’ but for ‘many’” — which is what the original Latin text of the Novus Ordo liturgy does, in fact, say (as does Mk. 10:45 and Mt. 20:28). Elsewhere, editor Pierre Zoberman, professor of French literature at the University of Paris, notes, “We seek to rehabilitate the ego. Pascal insists that it must be destroyed,” and “Modern Catholic preaching often emphasizes the good mental hygiene of loving one’s self.” The whole tone is curious: It is as if those who produced this work appreciate Pascal’s stature but cannot seem to bring themselves to believe that he was actually serious about things like Original Sin, the inevitability of human suffering, the salvific power of Jesus’ death, and His followers’ need to heed His call to take up our crosses and follow Him. Which means they really don’t understand the Pensées at all.

“How empty and full of filth is the human heart,” Pascal wrote (no. 171), and there is no good mental hygiene involved in loving it and its desires, if it is hollow and its desires impure. The whole point of the Pensées is that we are broken and cannot fix ourselves. We need Christ to do that, and acknowledging that we have a problem is the major step we need to take to find the One who can heal us.

Pascal was wiser than most of his contemporaries, and he is wiser than most of ours. This edition of the Pensées, while excellent in so much, is still proof positive that it isn’t just undergraduates who can read a text and have its real meaning escape them completely — professors can, too. The text is excellent, and this is likely to be the definitive version of the Pensées for years to come. But that doesn’t mean you should ditch your copy of Christianity for Modern Pagans, the editor of which does a better job of truly understanding what Pascal meant.

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