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This book examines the ways in which Pascal posed and solved intellectual problems in his immense and varied output. Hugh Davidson shows how three of the classical "liberal arts"-- rhetoric, dialectic and geometry--pervade Pascal's method as liberating and guiding influences in his search for truth, both in his attacks on and in his defenses of tradition. Professor Davidson throws new light on both the diversity and the unity of Pascal's thought, and places it in the context of other seventeenth-century innovations in the use of traditional disciplines.
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This book examines the ways in which Pascal posed and solved intellectual problems in three very different areas of his work: mathematics and mathematical physics, religious experience and theology, communication and controversy. Hugh Davidson shows how three of the classical 'liberal arts', rhetoric, dialectic, and geometry, pervade Pascal's method as liberating and guiding influences in his search for truth. They appear throughout his production, and are used and adapted with great skill both in his attacks on tradition in mathematics and physics, and in his defences of tradition in the sphere of religion and morality. Professor Davidson throws new light on both the diversity and the unity of Pascal's thought, and places it in the context of other seventeenthcentury innovations in the use of traditional disciplines.
Cambridge Studies in French 46 PASCAL AND THE ARTS OF THE MIND
Cambridge Studies in French GENERAL EDITOR
Malcolm Bowie {All Souls College, Oxford) EDITORIAL BOARD
R. H o w a r d Bloch {University of California, Berkeley),
Ross Chambers {University of Michigan), Antoine Compagnon {Columbia University), Peter France {University of Edinburgh), Toril M o i {Duke University), Naomi Schor {Duke University) Recent titles in this series include 35 PETER FRANCE
Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture 36 MITCHELL GREENBERG
Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and Prose: The Family Romance of French Classicism 37 TOM CONLEY
The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing 38 MARGERY EVANS
Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads 39 JUDITH STILL
Justice and Difference in the Works of Rousseau: Bienfaisance and Pudeur 40 CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
System and Writing in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida 41 CAROL A. MOSSMAN
Politics and Narratives of Birth: Gynocolonization from Rousseau to Zola 42 DANIEL BREWER
The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing 43 ROBERTA L. KRUEGER
Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance 44 JAMES H. REID
Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel: The Temporality of Lying and Forgetting 45 EUGENE W. HOLLAND
Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Sociopoetics of Modernism A complete list of books in the series is given at the end of the volume.
PASCAL AND THE ARTS OF THE MIND HUGH M. DAVIDSON Department of French Language and Literature, University of Virginia
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521331937 © Cambridge University Press 1993 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1993 This digitally printe