Blēzs Paskāls

The Pensées is a collection of fragments on theology and philosophy written by 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism and the Pensées was in many ways his life's work. The Pensées represented Pascal's defense of the Christian religion. …

For much of his life, Pascal (1623-62) worked on a magnum opus which was never published in the form the philosopher intended. Instead, Pascal left a mass of fragments, some of them meant as notes for the Apologie. These became known as the Pensées, and they occupy a crucial place in Western philosophy and religious …