Friday, May 20, 2005
What was Pascal all about?
Or, how going to Mass can make you a better Catholic and how Pascal is smarter than people give him credit for.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1670) will always fascinate: a scientific genius, a passionate Catholic with a passionate conversion or series of conversions, homeschooled by his retired lawyer father. Most of us are familiar with Pascal's wager by which Pascal attempted to show merely "that the will is reasonable only in making this bet," namely, that it is better to bet on the infinite gain of eternal life through faith in God than to reject the possibility of this infinite gain because of the finite loss of an earthly life lived apart from God's commandments (see Jean Menard, Pascal [Univ. of Alabama Press, 1969], pp. 49-50). American philosopher William James (1842-1910) made harsh comments on Pascal's wager as if Pascal intended this wager to be the seal of a conversion (see James address). As Pascal scholar Menard notes, Pascal intended the wager only as a first step in approaching the prejudices against Christianity of the atheist or the merely indifferent (Menard, pp. 52-53).
But it is ironic that James was so apparently hostile to the reasoning of Pascal because Pascal goes on to formulate prior to James a psychological principle for which James himself is famous. It is a principle you will probably find in almost any introductory college psychology textbook: to feel an emotion act as if you are already experiencing that emotion. Many of us have heard this principle in the homely wisdom that if you want to feel happy or friendly start smiling and acting in a happy or friendly manner and eventually the feeling will follow.
Pascal formulates the prototype of this homely wisdom in these words of advice to the person struggling to acquire faith:
You wish to find faith [Pascal noted] but you do not know the way to it; you wish to cure yourself of lack of faith and you ask for the remedies thereof. Learn from those who, like yourself, were in bondage and who now wager all that they possess; they are people who know the path that you would like to follow, and who have been cured of an ill of which you wish to be cured. Follow the method by which they began: it is by behaving as though they believed, by taking holy water, by having masses said, etc. Naturally even that will make you believe and will soothe you.
Blaise Pascal, quoted in Menard, p. 53 (emphasis added; parenthetical expression in original).
Now, is Pascal asking us to deceive ourselves, to lull or hypnotize ourselves into religious faith? I think not. Pascal envisions a person sincerely struggling with faith, a person suffering from lack of faith. Certainly, today with rampant secularism and mockery of any religious faith by modern Western culture, that struggle with anti-religious prejudice is real for many of us. But notice that what Pascal recommends is the use of a sacramental ("taking holy water") and participation in the Mass ("by having masses said"). The non-Catholic reader would tend to glide over these recommendations as incidental to the main message of the passage. I would dare say that even as brilliant a non-Christian as William James-- with a nineteenth century Protestant cultural background that viewed Catholic sacramentals and saying of Masses as so much papist superstition-- would likely not put much stock in the mention of holy water and Masses.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1670) will always fascinate: a scientific genius, a passionate Catholic with a passionate conversion or series of conversions, homeschooled by his retired lawyer father. Most of us are familiar with Pascal's wager by which Pascal attempted to show merely "that the will is reasonable only in making this bet," namely, that it is better to bet on the infinite gain of eternal life through faith in God than to reject the possibility of this infinite gain because of the finite loss of an earthly life lived apart from God's commandments (see Jean Menard, Pascal [Univ. of Alabama Press, 1969], pp. 49-50). American philosopher William James (1842-1910) made harsh comments on Pascal's wager as if Pascal intended this wager to be the seal of a conversion (see James address). As Pascal scholar Menard notes, Pascal intended the wager only as a first step in approaching the prejudices against Christianity of the atheist or the merely indifferent (Menard, pp. 52-53).
But it is ironic that James was so apparently hostile to the reasoning of Pascal because Pascal goes on to formulate prior to James a psychological principle for which James himself is famous. It is a principle you will probably find in almost any introductory college psychology textbook: to feel an emotion act as if you are already experiencing that emotion. Many of us have heard this principle in the homely wisdom that if you want to feel happy or friendly start smiling and acting in a happy or friendly manner and eventually the feeling will follow.
Pascal formulates the prototype of this homely wisdom in these words of advice to the person struggling to acquire faith:
You wish to find faith [Pascal noted] but you do not know the way to it; you wish to cure yourself of lack of faith and you ask for the remedies thereof. Learn from those who, like yourself, were in bondage and who now wager all that they possess; they are people who know the path that you would like to follow, and who have been cured of an ill of which you wish to be cured. Follow the method by which they began: it is by behaving as though they believed, by taking holy water, by having masses said, etc. Naturally even that will make you believe and will soothe you.
Blaise Pascal, quoted in Menard, p. 53 (emphasis added; parenthetical expression in original).
Now, is Pascal asking us to deceive ourselves, to lull or hypnotize ourselves into religious faith? I think not. Pascal envisions a person sincerely struggling with faith, a person suffering from lack of faith. Certainly, today with rampant secularism and mockery of any religious faith by modern Western culture, that struggle with anti-religious prejudice is real for many of us. But notice that what Pascal recommends is the use of a sacramental ("taking holy water") and participation in the Mass ("by having masses said"). The non-Catholic reader would tend to glide over these recommendations as incidental to the main message of the passage. I would dare say that even as brilliant a non-Christian as William James-- with a nineteenth century Protestant cultural background that viewed Catholic sacramentals and saying of Masses as so much papist superstition-- would likely not put much stock in the mention of holy water and Masses.
