Human Greatness

Abstract

The ‘greatness’ Pascal discerns in humanity has four aspects. 1. Human nature is not purely physical. Pascal upholds a broadly Cartesian dualist view. He acknowledges the difficulty of this but also insists on the difficulty of any alternative explanation, for instance, in purely physical terms. 2. Humankind is radically distinct from the animals. It is argued that Pascal’s formulation of this claim (reducing animal functioning to mere mechanism) is untenable, but that a modified version of his position might suffice for his apologetic purposes. 3. Pyrrhonist scepticism is not the last word: we are capable of knowledge after all, that is (as initially explained in Chapter 4), we have intuitive knowledge (what he calls knowledge ‘by the heart’) of certain primary principles. 4. That we are aware of our wretchedness shows that we are not wholly wretched, completely locked into our condition, for otherwise we should be unable to detach ourselves sufficiently to pass judgement on it. Our dissatisfaction with our lives is a kind of transcendence of their limits.