Blaise Pascal

Una interesante reflexi n sobre la grandeza y miseria de la condici n humana. Traducci n, pr logo y edici n por el c lebre cr tico literario Juan Bautista Bergua y Edmundo Gonz lez-Blanco. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), desde muy joven, demostr ser un verdadero genio y a los 18 a os invent la primera calculadora. Fue un pensador profundamente cristiano. De todas sus obras podemos destacar los siguientes rasgos; su inter's cient fico, literario y apolog tico. Los "Pensamientos" (o Pens es) fueron publicados por primera vez despu's de su muerte, hacia 1670. Esta obra, originariamente, fue pensada como una apolog a del cristianismo y, por tanto, es una obra inconclusa, compuesta por reflexiones en los que aborda diversos temas. El tema principal es su preocupaci n por el hombre. A Pascal le importa su relaci n con lo absoluto -Dios-, y lo relativo -las cosas pasajeras de la vida humana-. Por este motivo el autor se interesa por la grandeza y la miseria humana, el orden religioso, tico, est tico y pol tico de su vida. Su profundo realismo tr gico le permiti analizar, de forma maravillosa y original, c mo la raz n y el coraz n son v as distintas de acceso a nuestra realidad y a Dios: "El coraz n tiene sus razones que la raz n no conoce." Presentado por Manuel Fdez. de la Cueva Villalba, Profesor de Filosof a.

Blaise Pascal's famous Pens es (Thoughts) is, in reality, a collection of notes he made for a book he never wrote. Many of the thoughts are fragmentary in nature, and the sectionalising and numbering was devised by a later editor. Yet they contain the key ideas of his religious philosophy, including his famous wager, as well as many other insights and ideas such as his celebrated comment on Cleopatra's nose. This is a new edition (not a scan) of the W. F. Trotter translation of 1908, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot.

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 Pens es, and they occupy a crucial place in Western philosophy and religious writing. --(Text refers to a previous edition)

Pascal's Pens es is a masterpiece, and a landmark in French literature. This is Pascal's most influential theological work in it he surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanity-seemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace.