Je ne puis avoir que de la compassion pour ceux qui gémissent sincerement dans ce doute, qui le regardent comme le dernier des malheurs, & qui n'épargnant rien pour en sortir font de cette recherche leur principale & leur plus serieuse occupation. Mais pour ceux qui passent leur vie sans penser à cette derniere fin de la vie, & qui par cette seule raison, qu'ils ne trouvent pas en eux-mesme des lumieres qui les persuadent, negligent d'en chercher ailleurs, & d'examiner à fond si cette opinion est de celles que le peuple reçoit par une simplicité credule, ou de celles qui quoyqu'obscures d'elles-mesmes ont neanmoins un fondement tres solide, je les considere d'une maniere toute differente. Cette negligence en une affaire où il s'agit d'eux-mesmes, de leur éternité, de leur tout, m'irrite plus qu'elle ne m'attendrit ; elle m'étonne & m'épouvante ; c'est un monstre pour moy. Je ne dis pas cecy par le zele pieux d'une devotion spirituelle. Je prétens au contraire que l'amour propre, que l'interest humain, que la plus simple lumiere de la raison nous doit donner ces sentimens. Il ne faut voir pour cela que ce que voyent les personnes les moins éclairées.
- Pascal, Pensées
The atheist who does not care whether God exists, who wraps his indifference in existentialist truisms and platitudes about living for today--c'est moi. Reading Pascal is thus a particularly trying experience; it is difficult to bear that a vibrant and beautiful mind for which I have so much respect has absolutely none for the likes of me. I twist and turn to escape his geometric and precise condemnations; it is no use. I am compelled to accept his wager, ineffectually to refuse his conclusions.
Yet my first response is always to not take him seriously. He is, after all, a corpse these three hundred and fifty years, safely consigned to the dustbin of the Great Classics, which we read with the condescending indulgence reserved for centagenarians, foreigners, child prodigies. That is the real crime of the Canon: not the exclusion of various fashionable minority groups, not its supposed cultural elitism, but the utter exsanguination of its great authors. The cynical smirk of Hobbes, the revolutionary fervor of Hugo--and, yes, the righteous and lofty piety of Pascal--lose all their power, grow tepid, a row of brownish and identical portraits of indistinguishable white men. When Pascal declares his contempt for us, we smile superciliously and nod.
Equally dangerous (as Nietzsche warned in the Untimely Meditations) is the historian's reflex: to take a step back, to refuse to judge the moral commitments of a past, and presumably less enlightened, epoch. Nothing is gained, of course, from serving as some grand jury over the figures of the past--from presenting solemn indictments for racism, bigotry, nationalism. But that "objective" refusal to judge can also be an act of cowardice. We are indifferent atheists, but if we distance ourselves enough from Pascal's time we no longer have to answer for ourselves; we can stand unmoved in all the smugness of our historical triumph.
But it is with Pascal precisely that our disengagement breaks down. One of his early observations on style declares:
Certains auteurs, parlant de leurs ouvrages, disent: «Mon livre, mon commentaire, mon histoire, etc.» Ils sentent leurs bourgeois qui ont pignon sur rue, et toujours un «chez moi» à la bouche. Ils feraient mieux de dire: «Notre livre, notre commentaire, notre histoire, etc.» vu que d'ordinaire, il y a plus en cela du bien d'autrui que du leur.There is much to be said about this beautiful fragment. The text does not belong to its author; it belongs to the whole congress of others who have created it. One of these others is the reader herself. Thus, she bears equal responsibility for its interpretation. In the context of the Pensées, this means something very specific: the book is not at all an integral work. It is not even, like the Brothers Karamazov, an integral dialogue. It is one half of a conversation, incomplete and pointless without the other half, supplied by the impious and indifferent reader.
Hence we cannot separate ourselves from Pascal with the protective zoo cage of the intervening centuries. The act of reading the Pensées already implicates us, forces us to reply, whether or not we choose to acknowledge the existence of the conversation. We will have been forced to take a stance with moral implications for us. That is why most of the contemptuous and contemptible "refutations" of Pascal's Wager miss the mark: they assume that one is free to take or not to take the bet, that the wager is an object of contemplation rather than active, forced engagement. Pascal has no truck with this; he forces us explicitly to bet on one outcome or the other. And if we cannot make a decision with regards to the Pensées, then when we read Kierkegaard's Either/Or we are just as ill-equipped to confront it. Surrounded by the fuzzy inspirational glow of pop-existentialism, we imagine that our enlightened remove no longer requires us to choose one or the other, that we can find a way to do both. This weakness makes cowards of us all.
I can sympathise with quandaries like this; it is really the ultimate dilemma of the intellectual historian. (Brutally anatomised, btw, in Richard Rorty's ‘The historiography of philosophy: four genres’--have you read it?)
ReplyDeleteBut it isn't just Pascal--how much respect, do you think, would Plato or Aristotle, Augustine or Aquinas--even Nietzsche--have for you or me?
PS. Please, please, Greg, don't be one of those people who capitalise "Others".
Will read the Rorty, thanks. (Have you noticed the (Modern Library?) edition of Pale Fire that has a surprise preface by Rorty? It's an interesting read, especially because Rorty makes some entertaining and quite revealing assumptions about the reader's mental states.)
ReplyDeleteYou raise a valid point. I think, though, that to some extent some minimum of respect is required on the part of those philosophers--neither Zarathustra nor Socrates would have "gone down" if all they expected to find were already fully-developed minds. With Pascal it's hard to tell: he declares expressly that he thinks of the indifferent atheist as a monster, not someone to trust or befriend, yet he seems to address his discourse precisely to that kind of person--which presumably implies some degree of faith.
And you're right. Vile error of judgment corrected.
I MUST read Pale Fire again, so maybe I'll have a go with this edition.
ReplyDelete"yet he seems to address his discourse precisely to that kind of person"
That's because it's written in the old style--compare it, eg., to Augustine's De utiitate credendi.
This post really struck a chord with me too. In scholarship on the later Roman Empire, the forbearance of judgment over the last, say, thirty years has not only challenged the idea of the decline of the Empire but made it outright taboo. Many focus on change instead, which has (it must be said) led to the appreciation of a number of things unique to the time. But change is not of the same nature as decline and does not obliterate it. Decline must have occurred, because otherwise the Empire would never have fallen. It didn't just morph peacefully into several depopulated barbarian kingdoms with a significantly lower quality of life.
ReplyDeleteThat anyway is one way how the reluctance to judge has played out in my field.