Video and Podcast Resources On Blaise Pascal's Pensées

fifteen lectures on a great work of Christian philosophy

One of the books I’ve returned to many times since I first encountered more than half my lifetime ago is Blaise Pascal’s unfinished work, the Pensées. It was intended to be a work providing a set of arguments, or perhaps better put a case for, the truth of Christian religion, as Pascal understood it.

That would be a Christianity that would be lived through a passionate commitment, and a participation in an order not just of bodies and flesh, or of minds, but of charité and the spirit. It is a Christianity that could be brought into comparison with other lifestyles and perspectives, including philosophical ones (Stoicism, for example, or that of Descartes). It’s also one suspicious of the “God of the philosophers”, of religious fanaticism, and of the casuistry of the Jesuits.

Pascal, like other great religious philosophers whose works I find most interesting and worthwhile to read and reflect upon — I have in mind Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Søren Kierkegaard, Maurice Blondel, and Gabriel Marcel, among others — is someone for whom finding religion did not in any way make matters simpler for them, though it made the world and their ives richer and more complicated.

I’ve drawn upon his thought in a number of different ways over the course of my life and my career. Pascal is also one of those thinkers who I simply enjoy reading and thinking along with for the sake of doing so.

Some years back, I began producing core concept videos on portions of his Pensées that I thought most merited discussion, and I returned to that project a few years later. Later on, I converted those video lectures into downloadable podcast episodes. At this point, I have fifteen lectures in those two formats available. Here they are

The Intuitive Mind and the Mathematical Mind | watch video | listen to podcast

Correcting By Revealing One-Sidedness | watch video | listen to podcast

Self-Love and Aversion to Truth | watch video | listen to podcast

The Power Of Imagination Over Reason | watch video | listen to podcast

Diversions, Happiness, and Misery | watch video | listen to podcast

What Tyranny Consists In | watch video | listen to podcast

Differing Conceptions of Justice | watch video | listen to podcast

The Greatness and Misery of Human Being | watch video | listen to podcast

The Two Infinites | watch video | listen to podcast

The Sphere, Circumference, and Center | watch video | listen to podcast

The Philosophers' God and the God of Faith | watch video | listen to podcast

The Wager About God's Existence | watch video | listen to podcast

The Three Orders | watch video | listen to podcast

The Reasons of The Heart | watch video | listen to podcast

Criticism of the Stoics | watch video | listen to podcast

So there you have them. Fifteen lectures you can watch, listen to, or download. I have plans to start shooting more videos on this great work later on this year, and as I do, I’ll add links to them here.