Volume 8, Number 8 · May 4, 1967
Pascal Our Contemporary
By John Plamenatz
The Hidden God
by Lucien Goldmann, translated by Philip Thody
The Humanities Press, 426 pp., $12.50
Pascal
by Jean Steinmann, translated by Martin Turnell
Harcourt, Brace & World, 304 pp., $6.50
Almost everyone who writes about Pascal comments on his 'modernity,' though not everyone understands the same thing by it. Lucien Goldmann, a Marxist and the author of The Hidden God, sees in Pascal a forerunner of Hegel and of Marx, and the Abbé Steinmann, a Catholic admirer of this most paradoxical of Christian apologists, sees in him a man far closer than the skeptical Voltaire to the unbeliever of today. During Voltaire's lifetime doubt was still firmly allied to reason, and was young and confident, and laughed easily at superstition, whereas in our day doubt has undermined reason (or has seemed to do so) and has left the doubter appalled by his doubts. Doubt is a burden to him, a source of anxiety, and nobody understood this burden better than Pascal.
Review, 3372 words
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