pensées · pascal

Blaise Pascal, mathematician and Jansenist, died in 1662 leaving bundles of notes for an unwritten defence of Christianity, published as the Pensées. They diagnose the human condition, greatness and wretchedness, diversion, the misery of a thinking reed, and argue, in the wager and elsewhere, that the heart has reasons that reason does not know.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings, translated by Honor Levi and edited by Anthony Levi (Oxford University Press, 2008). Read over two sessions, Sophomore Spring at Torrey Honors: the Pensées only.