Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Professor of Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran.
2 PHD Candidate of Philosophy, Allame Tabataba’I University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Introduction
Jansenism was a theological sect reviving two important Augustinan doctrines: the corruption of all of human cognitive and volitional capacities due to the Original Sin, and recognizing God’s grace as its one and only redeemer with no role for human deeds, which was a kind of thoroughgoing determinism. Blaise Pascal who was completely adhere to this specific theological background, tried to use his ingenuity in order to write an apological work in defense of this interpretation of Christianity in a posthumously published book called “Pensées”. In an important and famous fragment of the work, known as “The Wager”, Pascal asks his readers things that seem to require free will, for example, he wants them to gamble in favor of the existence of God, to weaken their passions and to act and live as if God exists. The same difficulty, of course, may be raised against the very act of writing an apology itself. It made so many researchers believe that this fragment entails a kind of argument in favor of the existence of God that we may call it, “The Wager Argument”. But if we bear in mind the theological background of Pascal, we will find that although we can definitely have a separate “Wager argument”, but “Pascal’s Wager” is not the case and cannot be. Hence, in order to distinguish “Pascal’s Wager” from “the Wager Argument”, we should reread the former Wager” in its own theological context.
Methodology
Our methodology involves not just an abstract and conceptual analysis of the subject-matter but also entails a careful and precise rereading of the “Pascal’s Wager” in the original text with its relation to the other fragments of the “Pensées”. Again, we bear the Augustine and Jansen’s theological doctrines in mind, which are the key to the best way of grasping appropriate knowledge of what “Pascal’s Wager” means in its context.
Findings
By studying the fragment which in known as “The Wager”, in the same manner as done by other researchers, what we find is nothing but a series of inner inconsistencies and contradictions. The fragment persuades us, by using our free will, to gamble in favor of the existence of God whereas at the same time faith is only through God’s grace achieved and is not up to us at all. The fragment asks us to weaken our passions but we cannot do so because we lack the proper control over our passions and desires even if we wanted to do. It, having presupposed our free will, advises us to take a religious way of life and act as if we believe in God but this presupposition of our agency over life and actions is not justifiable with regard to the Pascal’s theological devotions. These inconsistencies and contradictions can even get more clear when we consider that the very act of writing apologetic work by Pascal in order to defend the religious faith and persuade people to initiate into the religious community, contradicts with total determinism with regard to the religious faith only because of the divine grace. If Pascal is going to defend an Augustinian-Jansenistian version of Christian faith, then he cannot invoke the free will in his account, a Jesuit approach to the faith to which Pascal definitely opposes. However, by scrutinizing the Wager fragment, we will find that a few prefaces precede it one of which deals with the way our cognitive faculty works that leads us to our principal cognitive faculty i.e. “the Heart”. Pascal uses this principal faculty in all three sides of cognitive, volitional and affective areas with special emphasis on its dual function, to say, the heart is in a continuous oscillation between the two extremities of the spectrum, e.g. determination and freewill. The heart cannot find a fixed point or side with one of the extremities (e.g. freedom/determinism or, certainty/skepticism) and otherwise if it could, we should call it “reason” not “heart”. The dual function of heart demands the same continuous oscillation; the feature of humankind which implies lack of unity which can be counted as a punishment of the Original Sin. Pascal used this faculty deliberately to point out the human dual character its best explanation of which he believed is the Augustinian-Jansenistian account of Christianity.
Conclusion
“Pascal’s Wager”, in contrast to “The Wager Argument”, is not a call for free choice in favor of the existence of God and Pascal’s Augustinian-Jansenistian theological background doesn’t allow it either. Apparent inconsistencies and contradictions in “Pascal’s Wager” are completely and deliberately used by Pascal with his reference to faculty of “Heart” in connection with its dual function.
Keywords
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