Philosophic Classics From Plato to Derrida

INTRODUCTION 463 there, then, no rational basis for making the Christian commitment? In the selection given here, Pascal appeals ...

and in every future condition. Now it is impossible for even a most clear-sighted and most capable but finite being to form here ...

464 BLAISEPASCAL PENSÉES (selections) The conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, is to put religion into the mind by r ...

Thus we shall have to investigate purely a priorithe possibility of a categorical imperative, for we do not have the advantage t ...

PENSÉES 465 faith. But, seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied; wherefore I have a hund ...

We shall now enumerate some duties, adopting the usual division of them into duties to ourselves and to others and into perfect ...

466 BLAISEPASCAL He is.— “That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much.”—Let us see. Since there is an ...

PENSÉES 467 those in whom this light is extinguished, and in whom we purpose to rekindle it, persons destitute of faith and grac ...

from him or even envy him; but to his welfare or to his assistance in time of need I have no desire to contribute.” If such a wa ...

468 BLAISEPASCAL Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not ar ...

constitution of human nature. For duty is practical unconditional necessity of action; it must, therefore, hold for all rational ...

PENSÉES 469 Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the skeptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists. What then will you b ...

co-operation of reason. For all these matters belong to empirical psychology, which would be the second part of physics if we co ...

470 Except for Socrates himself, it would be difficult to find a philosopher who was a more highly regarded person than Benedict ...

Thus if there is to be a supreme practical principle and a categorical imperative for the human will, it must be one that forms ...

War (1618–1648), he proposed that religion and truth be separated altogether. This separation, he believed, would be the best sa ...

with humanity as an end in itself is only negative, not positive, if everyone does not also endeavor, as far as he can, to furth ...

Scraton,Spinoza(London: Routledge, 1999); Steven Nadler,Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Micha ...

this case are the practical principle and the imperative which the will obeys uncondi- tional, because the will can have no inte ...

ETHICS(I, AXIOMS) 473 because we can always conceive of another body greater than it. So, too, a thought is limited by another t ...