Born
Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, June 19, 1623, Blaise Pascal was the son of Etienne Pascal, president of the Court of Appeal, and Antoinette Bégon. According biógrafa and her sister, Gilberte Périer, Pascal showed early an extraordinary spirit, not only for the answers to certain questions that gave, but especially for issues that he raised about the nature of things. She lost her mother to three years of age, was the only male child. Thus, the father apegou is a lot to him and taken care to their education, never send to the colleges. Even when, in 1631, the Pascal family moved to Paris, the education of Blaise remained to charge the father. The sister Gilberte write later: "The maximum that education was to keep the child above the tasks which it was imposed, for that reason only allowed to learn Latin twelve years, to learn more easily. During that interval than the left idle because the occupied with all things that thought capable. Mostrava him in a general way what were the languages; taught him as the grammars had been reduced under certain rules, rules that such exceptions were marked with care, and by such means that all languages had been communicated from one country to another. This last is that will have greater success after Fronda and it is this which, in century XVIII, the fight against absolute monarchy. Pascal part of both currents, in various moments of his life.
Militância From the Collection The Jansenism could propose an attitude abstencionista on the policy because it was composed of people who belonged to a social group whose economic base depended directly from the state. togada While nobility, the official, members of the Cortes, economically dependent on the state, though, ideologically, it is afastassem and he opposed. The situation of jansenistas is thus paradoxical: the discontent expressed in the face of absolute monarchy, without, however, may wish their destruction or its radical transformation. jansenistas The tragic because they are living a tragic situation - and so tragically claim the essential vanity of the world and salvation by retreat and solitude.
The center of the spiritual path of Pascal lies in his meeting with Jansenism, which enabled it to better express their desire for absolute and transcendence. The religious vocation of Pascal Jansenism found in the soil favorable to its expansion. "miracle of the Holy Espinho" strengthened him the mystical trend and the certainty that "anything above what we call nature "- as he writes his sister Gilberte. At the meeting with Jansenism Pascal had on the lives of a contradiction between the primacy accorded in principle to religion, and the practical reality of a life devoted to the world. This meeting allows Pascal establish the Agreement between consciousness and life through religious militancy that seeks the triumph of truth (science) in the Church and the triumph of faith (religion in secular society. That agreement, however, not be maintained. However, it will still be among jansenistas that Pascal come to the conclusion that it is important to withdraw definitively the world and even the religious militancy. Pascal passes thus between the two attitudes that existed between themselves jansenistas of militancy (Arnauld, Nicole) is the retreat (boats, Jacqueline Pascal). At stage apologetics daas
Proncinciais then it follows the stage of
Thoughts. This change is determined by the sentencing of Jansenism by Pope Alexander VI. Pascal just submitting to the papal power - and that means no more religious militancy can be done. In this third phase of his life, Pascal returns to devote themselves to science (studies on the cycloid and on the wheel, followed by discussions with several scholars of the time), but his writings religious lose the tone apologét