人間の現在 --哲学的省察-- (承前、六)

Abstract

The thought of Blaise Pascal as a postmodern thinker in the early modern age was examined. Pascal confronted the rational metaphysician Descartes and made much of the element of experience in the scientific method. Experience always plays a main part intuiting the principles in his mathematical and physical cognition as well as in his theological thoughts. The place where experience unfolds itself is nowhere else but in the heart. According to Pascal the heart is not irrational, but rather supra-rational, having its own reason and dimension ("ordre"). The infinities of space and of a vacuum intuited by the heart indicate the infinite itself, i.e. God. According to Pascal's ontology there are 3 existential dimensions to the human being. First is the dimension of body ("corps") or flesh (politics, economy and military). Second is the dimension of spirit (science) and third is the dimension of love ("charite") or religion. These dimensions differ from each other ontologically as do the dimensions of space. Man is therefore multidimensional. And love springs invisibly from the impenetrable center of the heart as man perceives his being as a thinking reed which symbolizes the human body--an incomprehensible unity of createdness and creativity, extension and intension, and mortality and immortality.