B. Pascal and the philosophico-anthropological worldview

Abstract

The aim of the article is to clarify the status of Pascal's philosophy in the development of philosophical and anthropological worldview. The philosophico-anthropological worldview/thinking refers to the tendency to consider man as a complex phenomenon and the key subject of philosophical research. This tendency, according to the author, led to the emergence of philosophical anthropology as a philosophical discipline of its kind in the 20th century. The author analyses a number of ideas of Pascal's philosophy for their correspondence to the key postulates of philosophical anthropology: (1) the idea of man as a "thinking stick"; (2) the idea of man as a contradictory combination of soul and body, reason and passions, both aspects of which are significant and necessary for a human existence; (3) the idea of man as a being that exists simultaneously in the past, present and future; (4) the idea of man as a being who, through the awareness of his own mortality, strives for infinity and transcendence. In the author's opinion, the above-mentioned range of ideas, especially in view of their significance for Pascal's philosophy, gives every reason to consider Pascal's doctrine as an important milestone in the development of the philosophico-anthropological worldview, and Pascal himself as a harbinger of philosophical anthropology, in whose thinking these ideas have not yet developed into a system of theoretical foundations of philosophical anthropology as a philosophical discipline.