Pascal against Augustine
negligence and custum in the letters concerning the necessity to seek God and the removal of obstacles
Keywords:
Augustine. Force. Negligence. Custom. Pascal. Toleration.Abstract
The reception of Augustine in Early Modern Europe has several branches. One such branch is the revival of the writings concerning the Donatist controversy that seek to defend the use of force by the secular authority as a means to conversion. Among the Jansenists, whose appropriation of Augustine is incontestable, Pascal rejects this aspect of the Augustinian legacy. This rejection is clear in some fragments of Pensées, but it can also be seen, as this article intends to show, in the letters concerning the necessity to seek God and the removal of obstacles. To defend this thesis, the present article (i) presents the Augustinian justification for the use of force as a means to conversion, with particular emphasis on the typology of the Donatists that underpins it, and (ii) examanes the letters concerning the necessity to seek God and the removal of obstacles, in order to (ii.a) demonstrate that both letters can be interpreted as focused on specific types of refusal of the truth conceived by Augustine and (ii.b) expose Pascal’s strategy to overcome the refusal of the truth. Based on this analysis of the intended readers of the letters, and on Pascal’s strategy to bring those readers to religion, it is possible to deepen our understanding of Pensées in the Early Modern debate on toleration.
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