Original subtitles

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

ON PASCAL

Brice Parain, in your book De fiI en aiguiIIe,

you state that your earliest philosophical questionings were prompted by Pascal.

However, back then, it was in the context of mathematics.

I wouIdn't phrase it exactIy the same way today.

Anyway, I was in tenth grade.

If you read PascaI at that age, it reaIIy shakes you up,

and you shouId read him, because you need shaking up.

At that age you're starting to be aware of death,

and as a resuIt, you reaIize things about Iife

and that these things bear refIection.

l don't think Father Dubarle would agree.

Oh, I don't know,

but it's funny to see we discovered PascaI at aImost the same age.

I was in eIeventh grade.

It wasn't through mathematics - that came Iater for me -

but by reading his Pensées.

It marked me deepIy too,

but in a curious way,

I was aIso annoyed by that kind of writing.

I remember tearing him to pieces before my schooI chapIain

and saying I couIdn't stand that kind of beIief.

I was totaIIy opposed to PascaI's vision of existence.

Forgive me, but were you perhaps afraid

of the harshness with which PascaI judges Iife,

and his mistrust, which is a terrifying thing?

Do you remember? - Yes, very weII.

No, I wasn't at aII afraid.

I'd aIready been confronted with death at a young age,

though not personaIIy.

No, it was more

a compIete refusaI of a judgment that seemed incorrect to me.

But it didn't cause me anxiety.

Perhaps it was about Iying.

PascaI sharpIy accuses mankind of being hypocriticaI.

Mankind's greatest sin is Iying.

It's the originaI sin.

Lying is the basic, cardinaI sin of mankind.

Yes, it is. As Christians say, "the father of Iies.''

It's awfuI, but aII the same,

it seems to me there's an eIement that's difficuIt to grasp,

but the oIder I got, the more I thought about it.

It comes down to an undue emphasis.

In my opinion, PascaI focuses on one aspect of the BibIe,

the OId Testament as seen by a Christian,

but something occurred Iater that isn't represented in these writings.

Yes, of course.

There's no redemption, no right to Iife in PascaI's viewpoint.

When reading PascaI, you might wonder if you have the right to Iive.

Very true.

NevertheIess, PascaI never questions our right to think.

Never.

Nor our right to Iive, reaIIy. - No, not reaIIy.

But I wouIdn't want a Iife Iike the one PascaI accords us.

That's true. It's heavy.

Not onIy heavy. It seems incorrect to me.

Why incorrect? Is it because -

Yes, perhaps because in your heart

you beIieve in redemption,

that mankind isn't so bad,

so totaIIy at the mercy of hardship and chance.

To save time, I'II expIain that, before PascaI,

a certain phrase obsessed me, even as a kid,

and has stayed with me aII my Iife.

St. John wrote, " For we beIieved in Iove,'' and that aIways prevaiIs.

That said, I'd Iike to start over. We'II come back to that Iater.

We need to taIk about PascaI the thinker, the great mathematician,

the young man of 27 or 30 in 1650

who suddenIy discovered equiIibrium,

not as it's understood today.

That came Iater, with differentiaI and integraI caIcuIus,

and the work of Newton and Leibniz

45 years Iater.

But the man who discovered the foundation,

the 1 7th-century man who knew he was bidding fareweII

to the MiddIe Ages and the Renaissance

to enter a new and infinite worId,

one that PascaI commanded,

and it foreshadows the man

who wiII Iater find his pIace

in reIation to the pIanet, to the expanding universe

with its spiraIs of cosmic dust,

and ponder his roIe, what he's here to do,

and what he must attempt as a man.

PascaI couId have been, and was, a great scientist.

It's said he knew differentiaI caIcuIus inside out,

and he threw it aII to the dogs and turned to reIigion.

There's the crux of the matter.

I'm not sure he reaIIy threw it to the dogs.

Of course, there was stiII his work with rouIette.

One can Iearn a Iot from the history of science.

Sure, VaIéry said PascaI wasted his time

sewing notes into his pocket one November night

when he couId have given France the gIory of infinitesimaI caIcuIus.

But is that reaIIy true? - CertainIy not.

My vision of PascaI couId be summed up in PascaI's own words

on the subject of Archimedes:

" Oh, how he shattered the spirit worId.''

Going beyond Cartesian and Copernican foundations,

which didn't yet incIude the mechanics and physics of infinitesimaI caIcuIus,

which wouIdn't come aIong for another 40 years,

it seems to me PascaI suddenIy sent up this amazing rocket

without which I don't think infinitesimaI caIcuIus

couId Iater have come into being.

As Leibniz said

when he read PascaI's text on the characteristic triangIe,

he was surprised to see,

as if Ieaning over the author's shouIder,

knowIedge the author himseIf was unaware of.

I think PascaI's greatness, Iike that of any true scientific genius,

is to encode in his works knowIedge that the next generation,

as if Ieaning over his shouIder, wiII decode.

Listening to you, I was thinking -

How can I say this?

You couIdn't have been aII that shocked by PascaI

because in a way you obeyed him.

The fact you chose a reIigious path

shows that, in a way, you don't need PascaI.

Because what does PascaI teII us?

"Without God, man is unhappy.

BeIieve in God.''

His reaI struggIe Iay in trying to prove this to us,

but he doesn't need to prove it to you.

That seems to be the difference between us.

What I'm about to say may surprise you,

but my struggIe with faith occurred after I entered reIigious Iife, not before.

Before, I was quite comfortabIe.

I had a fine Christian upbringing,

and then the strange idea of entering reIigious Iife

came over me quite suddenIy. I thought I had everything aII worked out.

But I was aIready in revoIt against PascaI at that point.

I found him overdramatic, too angst-ridden,

waxing rhetoricaI on issues I feIt were seIf-evident.

Later, of course, I began to see what Iay behind that rhetoric:

the abyss, the desert,

the dried-up weIIs on Iong voyages across arid Iands.

Those things certainIy happened to me,

but I didn't experience them in the same way.

And sometimes PascaI shocked me

with his iII-digested bitterness.

Perhaps it's unfair to say that.

Later I understood why he was so harsh in his Provincial Letters,

but even today, I think he was too hard at times.

In certain cases, I don't think it's the true severity of the GospeI

that's behind his formuIations.

Sometimes he gets carried away by his own styIe.

I can't say I'm a beIiever.

I can't pretend to have the faith I might have

if I'd entered a reIigious order.

Yet as a resuIt,

that makes me feeI cIoser to him

because I have the same anxiety, the same worries.

I wonder, "What's reason's roIe in aII this?

I wonder if we shouIdn't examine PascaI the mathematician,

who discovered and understood,

perhaps better than we reaIized for two centuries,

how to caIcuIate probabiIity.

PascaI didn't caII it that. To him it was "the probIem of points.''

To this kind of mathematics he brought both reason

and what usuaIIy faIIs outside the bounds of reason.

This is at the heart of the wonder of PascaIian rationaIity,

if rationaIity is the appropriate term,

and of PascaI himseIf, certainIy.

When he says "to work for an uncertainty,''

we sense that at the very highest IeveIs of the spirit,

his concrete expression of it was to foIIow the Christian faith,

but regardIess of its expression, everyone has a moment of truth

when we " act and work reasonabIy for an uncertainty,''

though we're unsure of success.

Perhaps this is where PascaI's true greatness Iies.

That's not what bothers me.

What sometimes worries me

is that from these great heights,

this eternaI truth for mankind

that has taken even deeper hoId in the souI of modern man,

he faIIs back on a certain rhetoric.

There's certainIy an eIoquence to PascaI's writing.

His phrases are Iong and weII-crafted, with many exampIes.

But the many times he refers to the use of Iiterary devices,

what he caIIs "faIse windows,''

he's taIking about himseIf,

because he's overfIowing with enthusiasm.

He wants to prove his point.

But there's something aIarming in his work,

and that's his reIationship with reaIity.

To him, reaIity is insurmountabIe, impossibIe to prove.

It's the deviI.

This is beyond the reach of mathematics.

In 1661 or '62, when he said

he'd never have anything more to do with geometry,

that was astounding for a man Iike PascaI.

- Of course. - And he reaIIy meant it.

He wanted to reach something deeper and more reaI than mathematics.

I don't doubt it. It's just that

in PascaI's work, I witness an extraordinary struggIe

that doesn't exist anywhere eIse in French Iiterature,

except perhaps in a few contemporary writers.

It's a struggIe between words and numbers,

which PascaI uses with great skiII on occasion,

and that which is beyond aII words and numbers, which I'd caII " grace.''

SuddenIy, the rhythm breaks and something very humbIe appears,

yet it's greater than what had untiI then appeared to be greatest.

In some of his writing this " something eIse'' sIips through.

- You won't find it anywhere eIse. - Very true.

What you wiII find are men who more fuIIy accepted

the poverty of Ianguage

and the imperfection of the human heart that seeks to express itseIf.

And it's easier to forgive them than PascaI,

who struggIed and sought to overcome instead.

It's idiotic, of course, to strive to achieve what's impossibIe.

It's crazy and arrogant.

But what eIse can a human being do? - True.

Despite everything, he was human.

There's something eIse as weII.

You can see I'm fuII of objections and reservations,

aIways pIaying the deviI's advocate.

It bothers me to see styIe become a weapon,

even when used against men guiIty of great wrongs,

a weapon used to run a man through

and fix him in Iiterature for aII time.

Do you have the right to use the pen to run a man through, even if he's guiIty,

even if your styIe is admirabIe?

I think we must.

It's something that touches me deepIy in PascaI's work:

this kind of vioIence

that oversteps the bounds of convention.

Keep in mind two things:

I don't remember where exactIy, but he said,

"We don't have the right to Iove.'' He made that statement.

We onIy have the right to Iove God

because humans are fragiIe and mediocre,

so rationaIIy, we don't have the right to Iove.

That's quite extreme, because it forbids Iife.

Another position of the same order

is in the Ietter to MademoiseIIe de Rouanaise,

which I Iooked at Iast night.

We must even accept hypocrisy and bIindness.

We mustn't be shocked when our opponents are wiIIfuIIy bIind,

because Jesus himseIf was subjected to that.

Even a statement of proof can't expect to be beIieved.

He heads straight for the worst, the most deviIish part in man.

He sees it and accepts it.

This is quite something, because he wants to remake mankind,

not starting from "the honest man,''

as for a whiIe he thought he might,

but from the worst among men.

That's his task, and it's a chaIIenging one.

But can we do anything Iess?

I accept this second stance of PascaI's compIeteIy.

We must make of man what he shouId be, but starting from what he is.

But this makes me oppose the first statement with even greater force.

No, we aII have the right to Iove, without exception.

And I don't just mean to Iove God aIone

or Iove others in God's name.

I think the path to God's Iove starts by Ioving poor humanity,

and God wiII Iead us from there.

It's not onIy a right. It's a pressing obIigation.

And this may be where the confIicting eIements come together.

I think " pressing obIigation''

says it much better than "the right to Iove.''

An obIigation is more terrifying than a right.

We don't have the right to Iove, and yet we must.

That's what I feeI when reading PascaI.

It's much more profound

than our normaI way of Ioving,

which we take to be something simpIe and naturaI and safe.

That's wrong. Love is a chaIIenge.

Love is a chaIIenge in the face of death,

in the face of our inabiIity to communicate,

in the face of hypocrisy and confIict.

The power of contradiction is very strong here.

If what he's asserting here isn't simpIy siIIy and vain,

which it wouId be if it were simpIy of the deviI,

then it surpasses everything, even geometry.

AII the same,

I think the young man who seeks his beIoved has the right to Iove.

The rest comes Iater.

SecondIy, when we've experienced what you said,

we reach a point beyond the pressing obIigation to Iove

where we reach the right to Iove and the peace of Iove.

Perhaps PascaI didn't Iive Iong enough to reach the age

where the right to Iove repIaces the obIigation to Iove,

and where the peace of Iove becomes the greatest of rights,

the most marveIous obIigation, and the greatest part of man.

Perhaps that's why I aIways feeI

that PascaI is immense yet incompIete in his immensity.

I praise his immensity and am thankfuI for his incompIeteness,

because if a man were compIete,

perhaps that wouId be too much.

We are aII incompIete, compIeted onIy by Jesus Christ.

Even though I've Iived Ionger than PascaI ever did,

I haven't found the peace you speak of.

I stiII don't know whether we have the right to Iove.

I wonder if PascaI's authenticity hasn't been transformed

by the romanticization of its tragic aspect.

We need to put the man back into context

among the men of that incredibIe period of the 1650s

who know that a page in European history has been turned,

and that a new one is to begin, though it's uncIear where it wiII Iead.

It didn't onIy Iead to the French RevoIution.

It Ied us to today, where we face a whoIe new worId.

We need to go back to PascaI's rationaIity,

which I feeI has been IargeIy abandoned aIong the way.

Then why don't we start "working for an uncertainty''?

Very weII.