°Force, law and habit
Blaise Pascal, born June 19, 1623. For Derrida, it was Pascal’s (or is it actually Montaigne’s?) notion of the mystical foundation of the law that was of interest, citing this at the beginning of “Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority’”: “And so laws keep up their good standing, not because they are just, but because they are laws: that is the mystical foundation of their Authority.” For Althusser, it was Pascal’s materialist understanding of ideology (or belief): “‘Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.” Both those readings of Pascal have appealed to me before, but I thought that they both missed this aspect: “Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence; a meridian decides the truth.”
{Sorry about that. Links now fixed}
Not to forget all Nietzsche’s mentionings of Pascal, for example in Human, all too human.
Copyriot [June 21, 2005 @ 9:52 am]
Hello Copyriot. I’m not as familiar with Nietzsche’s take on Pascal. What’s Nietzsche’s reading?
archive [June 21, 2005 @ 4:24 pm]
Well, I’m not sure one could talk about a systematic “reading” from Nietzsche’s side, just that Pascal’s name shows up in numerous aphorisms and is mentioned with great respect.
In Morgenroethe #192 he is called “the foremost of all christians”. In the first book of Morgenroethe, Pascal is reoccuring quite frequently.
In Ecce Homo he writes (sorry, no english translation available): “Dass ich Pascal nicht lese, sondern liebe, als das lehrreichste Opfer des Christenthums, langsam hingemordet, erst leiblich, dann psychologisch, die ganze Logik dieser schauderhaftesten Form unmenschlicher Grausamkeit”. (In short “I don’t read Pascal, i love him”)
In the early text On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, Nietzsche writes:
‘Pascal is right in maintaining that if the same dream came to us every night we would be just as occupied with it as we are with the things that we see every day. “If a workman were sure to dream for twelve straight hours every night that he was king,” said Pascal, “I believe that he would be just as happy as a king who dreamt for twelve hours every night that he was a workman.”‘
Well, more is to find in some Nietzsche biographies…
Copyriot [June 22, 2005 @ 1:51 am]
Thanks for that.
archive [June 23, 2005 @ 4:42 pm]