ABSTRACT
At a time when the European universitywas alreadyestablishedand even renowned in certain key centers, Blaise Pascal deliveredan outline of his collected thoughts to the gentlemen of Port Royal. When he died in the mid-seventeenth century, he left the text of his "apology" for Christianity in the form of "thoughts" [pensies]. Among them is the celebrated pensee that states: le coeur a ses raisons que fa raison ne connaitpoint: on le sait en millechoses. (The heart has its reasons which reason doesn't know at all; a thousand things declare it.)' Bya simple substitution, this maxim might well read: philosophy has its reasons which reason doesn't know at all. It would then go on to state: "a thousand things declare it." And furthermore: philosophy "loves the universal Being, and itself naturally, according to its obedience to either; and it hardens against one or the other, as it pleases."? The replacement of the "heart" with "philosophy" is not terribly outlandish considering that the heart is a kind of metonymy in which love is at issue. The heart stands for love.And lovehas access to domains that are inaccessible to reason. But philosophy is love (philia) not caritas: a love ofwisdom. Even Socrates in the Symposium goes out of his way to report the Diotimian claim that the path from eros to philia (the love ofwisdom) is a seriesof steps. The passions of the body can become the passions of the soul. The soul, when properly directed-by its own passions-s-can come to love and know the ideal forms according to which all things are fashioned. As the love of the heart replaces the love of wisdom, philosophy takes over the affairs of the heart. Pascal's heart is a heart of devotion, wagered conviction, subtlety in the face of the infinite. Pascal's heart has perspectives, justifications, conditions of understanding that are inaccessible to reason, that are outside the competence of reason, that reason cannot know. Philosophy-as another kind of love--bears these same characteristics. But this is curious since the very concern of philosophy has to do with the affairs of reason. The simple seventeenth-century dichotomy between reason and passion is not so easilyconstructed. In that philosophy is both a love or passion and the proper employment of reason, philosophy itself becomes indecidable.
