Blaise Pascal · Mathematics
The <em>Pensées</em> on the human condition: the being suspended between the infinitely large and the infinitely small; the ‘thinking reed,’ feeble yet aware; the heart that knows what reason cannot prove; and the point where mathematics ends and the existential begins.
You learned that Pascal placed the human being between two infinites (the infinitely large and infinitely small), called us a ‘thinking reed’ whose dignity is thought, and held that reason has strict limits - that first principles and the greatest matters are known by the ‘heart,’ not by demons…
Leads to Michel de Montaigne.
Begin this lesson →epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.