Greatest Hits (for Lent): On Fragment 110

Pascal on Listening: Fragment 110

There’s some debate about what is going on in Pascal’s fragment #110 (i.e., we recently started a debate about whether or not Pascal is a reliablist/externalist w/r/t belief in God), but Pascal does make some valuable comments on the role of the heart in hearing and understanding. Pascal’s epistemology is centered on the three orders: heart, mind and body. The order of the body covers knowledge we can gain through sensory experience, observation and experience of external data. The order of the mind covers reason and rational priniciples. Pascal believes that we can have success and knowledge via the mind, but as Groothuis points out,”those gifted in the use of reason may miss out on the realities of faith, which, while not opposed to reason, emanate froma realm beyond the ken of unaided human rationality…In his reflections on the infinitely large and small, Pascal highlights the limitations of the finite knower in relation to the universe (199/72)” (Douglas Groothuis, On Pascal (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth-Thomson, 2003) p42).

According to Pascal, the source of first principles of metaphysics–including numbers, space, time and religious experience–come from the order of the heart. Pascal seeks to energize the so-called “intuitive mind,” which uses all three orders to understand various things about the world. Pascal’s approach is abductive, interested in using a variety of data (from a variety of sources) to find the explanation that suits the available data. What is important for the purposes of spiritual formation and listening is the idea that Pascal presents in fragment 110. Pascal proposes that there are in fact some things that we don’t know and can’t know using reason. This “inability,” as he calls it, demands heart response. “Our inability must therefore serve only to humble reason, which would like to be the judge of everything, but not to confute our certainty. As if reason were the only way we could learn!” (110/282). This insight is of importance since Pascal says that to have knowledge of first things, we must use something other than our minds. In fact, knowledge of first things is unavailable to us via our minds. In terms of spiritual formation, it is a strong (philosophical) reminder that perhaps in order to really hear and understand others, all of us must be engaged: senses, mind and heart.

Learning to “humble reason” is a tough lesson for philosophy students. We are required to think and demand so much of our minds that we tend to isolate that capacity as the primary (and, for rationalists the only) source of knowledge. When it comes to other people, is it such a stretch that we have to use more? and that those occasionally disparate faculties of mind/sense/heart have to *gasp!* work together to truly hear others? Easier said than done, but certainly a good goal for us all to strive toward.