تهافت (*)

Quote: The wager The philosophy uses the following logic (excerpts from Pensées, part III, §233): 1. "God is, or He is not" 2. A Game is being played... where ######### or tails will turn up. 3. According to reason, you can defend either of the propositions. 4. You must wager. (It's not optional.) 5. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. 6. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain. The wager builds on the theme of other Pensées where Pascal systematically dismantles the notion that we can trust purely in reason. However, he does not consider reason to be useless or irrelevant. On the contrary, in note 273, he says, "If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous." So, while Pascal is not precluding the use of reason, much of his notes are geared toward attacking absolute certainty, attempting to convince the reader of what he sees as the true range and limits of reason. As such, his work is often cited as one of the first works on Existentialism for thoughts