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by: Blaise Pascal
List Price: $11.95Amazon.com's Price: $9.56 You Save: $2.39 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 110
EAN: 9780192836557
ISBN: 0192836552
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: June 10, 1999
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Sales Rank: 97892
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Product Description:
For much of his life, Pascal (1623-62) worked on a magnum opus which was never published in the form the philosopher intended. Instead, Pascal left a mass of fragments, some of them meant as notes for the Apologie. These became known as the Pensees, and they occupy a crucial place in Western philosophy and religious writing. This translation is the only one based on the Pensees as Pascal left them. It includes the principal dossiers classified by Pascal, as well as the essential portion of his important Writings on Grace.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A beautiful mind
Seldom does a week go by that one of Pascal's musings doesn't come to my mind. Most often, I think, his comment that he believes that all man's misery is due to either laziness or impatience ("....not being able to sit quietly in a room alone"). I've seen that played out so many times, and it's my favorite lecture to my grandchildren.
As another reviewer has said, Pascal's most provocative reflections are on the miraculous survival of the nation of Israel and what that tells us about ... Read More
Rating:  - Difficult
Hard to grasp. A following sentence will contradict the sentence above. Ravings not musings. If read by a believer it is great writing. If read by a stoic it's ragtime.
"In order to love God you must hate yourself." ???
Rating: - The Spirtual/Logical Mind Reveals Thoughful Comtemplations
Pascal's Pensees are among the more interesting and enlightened of Christian writings. Pascal was a brilliant 17th century mathematician and scientist who tabulated binomial coefficients, provided groundwork in the field of hydrodynamics and also invented the syringe. But for some reason he seems to be known best for his "Pensees" (thoughts). These Pensees are deeply religious but like Pascal's Wager (the argument that it makes sense to believe in god even if it can't be proven scientifically) they ... Read More
Rating: - A milestone of Western religious thought
This is one of the great works of Western religious thought. It is written in fragments, but these fragments are often brilliant poetic thoughts . Many of them have become part of the everyday vocabulary of the Western mind. " Man is a reed, but he is a thinking reed" " The silence of these infinite spaces cast me into dread"
Among the major suggestions of Pascal's thought is the Pascalian wager which William James picked upon. Roughly speaking betting on the non- existence of G-d gives nothing. ... Read More
Rating: - 'The Great Pascal'
This Oxford's version of the Pensees is in some ways superior to the Penguin Classics version. The introduction, by Anthony Levi, gives a much better insight into the history behind the development of Pascal's 'thoughts'. As far as the biography is concerned, Oxford's version gives a much broader span of time concerning Blaise's life.
A lot of people blame Pascal for not being like Montaigne, but that is just foolish. I enjoy Pascal's style because of its originality, and there also seems ... Read More
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