Pensées

The notes and fragments Pascal left at his death in 1662 for a planned defence of the Christian religion, published by his friends at Port-Royal in 1670. Because the book was never finished, editions number and order the fragments differently. Pascal's strategy is to show human beings their own condition before offering them faith. Humanity is both wretched and great: a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but a thinking reed. We flee self-knowledge through diversion, from hunting to gambling, because we cannot bear to sit quietly in a room. Caught between two infinities, the vast and the minute, we find that the eternal silence of infinite spaces frightens us. Neither sceptics nor dogmatists can settle our questions, and 'the heart has its reasons which reason does not know'. In the famous wager, Pascal argues that since reason cannot decide whether God exists, a prudent person should bet on God, having little to lose and everything to gain.

It is one of the most searching books on doubt, boredom and the human need for meaning, and the wager remains a staple of debates about faith and decision under uncertainty.