Yes, You Will Die. But What Happens Next Is Worse. | The Philosophy of Blaise Pascal

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0:12 Simultaneously one of the most cynical

0:13 [music] and hopeful thinkers in history,

0:15 Bla1 Pascal was a scientific genius

0:18 brought to spiritual extremes, [music] a

0:20 morbidly sensitive, neurotic-like mind

0:22 with the eloquence of a poet, and a

0:24 theologian who saw God, reason, and

0:26 meaning, fear, misery, and hope, all in

0:29 a strange dance where they never quite

0:31 touch, but always move in lock step,

0:33 striving toward a display of redemption.

0:36 Pascal was born in 1623 in Claremont

0:39 Feron, France.

0:40 As a young boy, he very

0:42 quickly had many reasons to feel the

0:43 despair etched into [music] human

0:44 existence.

0:46 His mother died when he was

0:47 just 3 years old.

0:48 He was frequently ill,

0:49 dealing with chronic issues like

0:50 digestive and abdominal disorders,

0:52 migraines, and neurological attacks, as

0:54 well as many other symptoms like

0:56 heightened sensitivity, [music] pain,

0:57 and fatigue.

0:59 Largely because of these

1:00 health issues, he experienced a very

1:02 constrained early social life.

1:04 From within this vortex of social isolation,

1:06 a sickly body and an awareness of the

1:08 transients of life found in the empty

1:10 space left by his mother.

1:12 Pascal looked out at the world and saw all this

1:14 detail, absurdity, and horror through

1:17 the eyes of a genius.

1:19 By an early age,

1:20 it was clear that Pascal was a prodigy

1:22 in math and science.

1:23 By just 12 years

1:24 old, he had worked out Uklid's first 32

1:27 geometric propositions completely on his

1:29 own.

1:29 By age 16, he had developed a

1:31 theorem in geometry still known today as

1:33 Pascal's theorem.

1:35 By his 20s, he had

1:36 constructed what would become the first

1:38 mechanical calculator, formulated the

1:40 principles behind the hydraulic press

1:41 and syringe, helped invent what would

1:43 become modern probability theory, and

1:45 assisted in establishing Paris's [music]

1:47 first public transport system.

1:49 He was fully on his way to becoming a major

1:52 scientist and mathematician of the

1:53 scientific revolution.

1:55 That is until [music] things took a very strange and

1:58 unexpected turn.

2:00 By his early 30s, Pascal had essentially

2:03 given up on math and science.

2:05 Instead, his focus turned almost entirely toward

2:07 religious and philosophical matters.

2:09 This shift was likely partly brought on

2:11 by his health challenges, which had only

2:13 continued to get worse.

2:14 Far more significantly, however, it appears to

2:17 have been triggered by a sudden,

2:18 bizarre, and powerful religious

2:20 experience he had at age 31, which would

2:23 come to be referred to as the night of

2:24 fire.

2:25 While likely alone at home one

2:27 night, a sudden, violent, visceral

2:28 experience of fire, peace, joy,

2:30 certainty, and God overwhelmed Pascal.

2:33 [music] It was, according to him,

2:35 something beyond all reason, language,

2:37 and philosophy, an intellectual rebirth,

2:40 a descent into a kind of spiritual

2:42 madness, or both, depending on who you

2:44 ask.

2:46 Soon after, Pascal began to write a

2:48 book.

2:48 His intention was to defend

2:50 Christianity and bring readers to God.

2:52 At age 39, however, Pascal died from his

2:55 lifelong escalating battle with poor

2:57 health.

2:58 The precise cause never fully

2:59 being determined.

3:00 He never managed to

3:01 finish the book.

3:03 Instead, [music] the notes, ideas, and arguments that he left

3:06 behind during the early development

3:07 process [music] were collected and

3:08 pieced together, forming what is now

3:10 known as Pon, an apheristic style book

3:14 exploring nearly all aspects of the

3:15 human condition.

3:17 Somewhat ironically, Pon would go on to become far more

3:20 famous for its secular philosophical

3:22 insights than its religious defenses.

3:26 Pascal originally intended the book to

3:28 be divided into two parts.

3:30 The first part was supposed to be a diagnosis of

3:32 the human condition as an ailment.

3:34 The second part was supposed to function as

3:36 a prescription of Christianity as the

3:38 treatment.

3:39 The surviving Pon, however,

3:41 lays out into several sections,

3:42 primarily an exploration of existential

3:44 despair, the human longing for hope and

3:46 meaning, the primary modes of thought

3:48 and reason, and attempts at a

3:50 theological defense for redemption.

3:53 In the work, Pascal covers just about

3:55 everything that is terrible about human

3:56 existence.

3:57 From corruption to anxiety to

3:59 hubris to our frenzy for distraction

4:01 from ourselves and our reality.

4:03 With the weight of each word in line, Pascal

4:06 pulls us down from the surface of our

4:07 day-to-day lives and into the underbelly

4:10 of existence.

4:11 Down here, he shows us the

4:12 despair, the depravity, and the

4:14 vacantness of humanity, a museum of

4:17 existential horrors.

4:19 Pascal argued that people generally avoid this museum at

4:21 all costs.

4:22 Nearly everything we do is to

4:24 add more layers and distance between us

4:26 and this realm.

4:27 All of man's unhappiness

4:28 comes from his inability to stay

4:30 peacefully alone in his room.

4:32 He wrote, "The Museum of Existential Horrors does

4:35 not contain skulls or vats of blood, but

4:38 merely the emptiness of space and time

4:40 to sit with ourselves and our thoughts."

4:42 Pascal writes, "So who does not see it

4:45 apart from young people whose lives are

4:47 all noise, diversions and thoughts for

4:49 the future?

4:50 But take away their

4:50 diversion and you will see them bored to

4:52 extinction.

4:53 Then they feel their nullity

4:54 without recognizing it.

4:56 For nothing could be more wretched than to be

4:57 intolerably depressed as soon as one

4:59 [music] is reduced to introspection with

5:01 no means of diversion."

5:03 Crucially for Pascal, the initial point

5:06 of facing up to the wretchedness and

5:07 barrenness of our condition is to know

5:09 ourselves fully and accurately.

5:11 An accurate self-conception is the first

5:13 step to greatness and salvation.

5:16 He writes, "Man's greatness comes from

5:18 knowing that he is wretched.

5:20 A tree does not know it is wretched.

5:21 Thus, it is wretched to know that one is wretched.

5:24 But there is greatness in knowing one is

5:25 wretched." We overcome ourselves and our

5:28 condition not by being something other

5:30 than what we are but by recognizing what

5:32 we are and working toward living well

5:34 within this condition.

5:35 For Pascal, we live well within this condition through

5:38 God.

5:39 In the words of historian Michael

5:41 Sigru, Pascal's idea is you have to make

5:44 individuals fear for the good of their

5:45 soul.

5:46 Make them fear the possibility

5:47 that they're not going to get what

5:49 religion might offer to them.

5:50 You have to show them how wretched they are.

5:52 Pascal wants to inspire in the reader a

5:54 kind of terror, a kind of morbid hatred

5:56 of the nuts and bolts, tables and

5:58 chairs, facts of the human condition.

6:00 Though explicitly for Pascal, the cure

6:03 to the ailment of being is God, more

6:05 fundamentally, it is the search for God.

6:08 And deeper than that, arguably it is

6:10 really the search for a cure.

6:13 Deviating from Pascal, this cure need not be God.

6:16 It need not be religious.

6:18 It need not even be spiritual in the traditional

6:20 sense.

6:21 Arguably, God is merely a

6:23 stand-in [music] for transcendent hope

6:25 and meaning beyond reason.

6:26 And perhaps that could be found in reason or meaning

6:29 or hope itself.

6:30 It can be [music]

6:31 existence itself.

6:34 One of Pascal's most famous arguments is

6:36 what is known as Pascal's wager.

6:38 In short, the argument claims it is a

6:40 better bet to believe in God than to

6:42 not.

6:42 [music] This is because if you're

6:44 right and God exists, you gain eternal

6:46 salvation in heaven.

6:47 If you're wrong, you only lose some finite earthly

6:50 pleasures, which for Pascal are

6:52 ultimately trivial relative to the

6:54 stakes.

6:55 And even if God doesn't exist,

6:57 Pascal argues that living as if he does

6:59 leads to a more stable and meaningful

7:00 inner experience [music] here on Earth.

7:03 He doesn't see this argument as proof of

7:04 God, but rather proof that it's worth

7:06 searching for him, the hope in striving

7:09 toward him.

7:10 However, could not the same

7:11 fundamental argument and wager be

7:13 applied to the [music] search for the

7:14 value and meaning of earthly human

7:16 existence without belief in God?

7:19 Could not a compelling wager look like this?

7:21 It is a better bet to believe this life

7:23 is meaningful, valuable, and good in and

7:26 of itself, and that this life is all

7:28 there is.

7:28 Because if you're right, then

7:30 you win the reward of experiencing the

7:32 only time you have as positively as

7:34 possible.

7:35 Not with disdain or dejection,

7:37 not with the hope in holding out for

7:38 something else, but with the embrace and

7:41 love for this right now.

7:43 If you're wrong and there is some kind of afterlife,

7:45 then you also gain the upside of

7:47 whatever that may be, which surely no

7:49 human can know enough about to predict

7:50 the terms of.

7:52 Likewise, this is not

7:53 proof that human existence is meaningful

7:55 and worthwhile in and of itself, but it

7:57 is proof [music] that it is worth

7:58 striving toward this belief, toward

8:00 creating its truth.

8:04 Pascal wanted to compel us toward God by

8:06 showing us how terrible our condition

8:08 is.

8:09 But in the process, arguably what he

8:11 really showed us is how strong we are or

8:14 can be.

8:15 He shows us that everything

8:16 isn't and won't be okay.

8:18 And yet somehow we can and continue to endure.

8:22 Whether through God or something God-shaped, we

8:24 can create and imagine worlds and ideas

8:27 worth living in.

8:28 The morbid absurdities of our condition, the frenzied nature of

8:31 our lives, our anxieties, our

8:33 depravities, it is all real.

8:36 It is all in everyone.

8:37 But we can survive these

8:38 qualities and the knowledge thereof and

8:41 still be compelled to seek redemption

8:43 regardless of any religious belief.

8:45 This profound impulse and ability is embodied

8:47 in Pon and it is found in every instance

8:50 where the human psyche confronts the

8:51 hardship of existence and continues

8:53 forward overcoming, transmuting [music]

8:56 and justifying.

8:58 In the end, Pascal's incomplete book

9:01 beautifully [music] and poignantly

9:02 completed his life's work.

9:04 The apheristic structure is a nod to the

9:06 fragmented nature of thought, a

9:08 long-standing literary format in

9:09 philosophy, and the disordered

9:11 progression of his life.

9:13 and it is likely what ultimately contributed to

9:15 its large-scale enduring readability and

9:17 success.

9:18 His work and legacy have and

9:20 continue to show us that no matter how

9:22 pessimistic we might be, no matter how

9:24 bad [music] things might seem, the

9:26 striving for hope, the foraging for

9:28 answers and meaning and redemption

9:29 [music] endures within us whether we

9:31 like it or not, whether it makes any

9:33 sense or not.

9:34 History is a constant

9:36 reinvention of hope and meaning in all

9:38 forms, mythological, technological, and

9:40 philosophical.

9:42 We keep questioning, answering, [music] building, destroying.

9:45 Questioning, answering, building, destroying.

9:49 We can't help ourselves from

9:51 helping ourselves.

9:57 Pascal had a very eclectic range of

9:59 [music] interests: math, science,

10:01 philosophy, theology, and psychology.

10:03 [music] As his life shows, following the

10:05 full scope of our curiosities can lead

10:07 us to so many places, often unexpected

10:09 ones.

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