Pascal and Amour-Propre

• In Event: Pascal's Politics

Abstract

Blaise Pascal occupies a crucial middle position in the history of the concept of self-love, writing between Augustine’s excoriation of amor sui and Rousseau’s (qualified) rehabilitation of amour-propre. This paper offers a systematic account of the role self-love plays in Pascal’s Pensées. For Pascal, self-love is both an attempt to stabilize our fallen condition and a way of worsening that same condition. That self-love deepens our wretchedness is the heart of Pascal’s critique of it. In this respect, he models the Augustinian tradition that he inherits. In spite of this, however, self-love comes to play a critical role in Pascal’s apology for the Christian religion and, indeed, in motivating his reader’s search for God. This paper represents an attempt to make sense of this tension in Pascal’s work and thereby to show that self-love enjoys a more ambiguous status in Pascal’s thought than many of his interpreters—who tend to identify him very closely with Augustine—assign it. It does this in part by showing how Pascal problematizes the self in a distinct way. In short, Pascal understands the self differently than Augustine and this is the core of his distinctive account. Finally, without purporting to offer an intellectual history, this paper nonetheless situates Pascal within the seventeenth century’s rehabilitation of self-love.

Author

• William Lombardo, Boston College