Pascal - la religion comme expérience de la contingence et de l'altérité

Abstract

This paper analyzes Pascal’s Pensées interpretation on religion and the anarchic configuration of Christianity. According to Pascal’s work main concepts — such as equivocity, disproportion and contingency — and in his dialogue with Descartes and Montaigne thoughts, the paper presents the pascalienne rejection of the concepts of nature, interiority and principle, fundamental in the elaboration of a certain philosophical and mystical vocabulary. We argue that Pascal’s dialogue with skepticism and rationalism offered a propaedeutic to his religious thought and articulated a religious philosophical grammar resistant to: a) a mystical vocabulary with Neoplatonic roots, b) a pantheistic philosophy of nature, and c) the ontotheological gesture that gave birth to what Pascal called the god of philosophers.