Pensées – Blaise Pascal

S$65.00

Pensées – Blaise Pascal

S$65.00

Title: Pensées (Thoughts)
Author: Blaise Pascal, TS Eliot (intro)
ISBN: –
Publisher: Franklin Library, 1979. A limited edition. Long out of print.
Condition: Full leather, fair. Significant dent to cover. Slight scratches to gilt. Previous owner’s stamp blind-embossed on half title page. Photo upload not of the actual book, but identical in design.

SKU: pensees-pascal Categories: ,

This book features:

  • Full deep blue leather binding
  • Genuine 22k gold gilt to all edges, front design, spine, and back
  • Silk moire endsheets
  • Satin bookmark, sewn-in
  • Hubbed spine with raised bands
  • Smyth-sewn binding for durability
  • Premium acid-neutral archival paper that will not yellow

About the book (from wikipedia):

The Pensées (literally, “thoughts”) represented a defense of the Christian religion by Blaise Pascal, the renowned 17th century philosopher and mathematician. Pascal’s religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensées was in many ways his life’s work. The concept (but not the term) “Pascal’s Wager” stems from a portion of this work. The Pensées is in fact a name given posthumously to his fragments, which he had been preparing for an Apology for the Christian Religion and which was never completed.

Although the Pensées appears to consist of ideas and jottings, some of which are incomplete, it is believed that Pascal had, prior to his death in 1662, already planned out the order of the book and had begun the task of cutting and pasting his draft notes into a coherent form. His task incomplete, subsequent editors have disagreed on the order, if any, in which his writings should be read.

The first English translation was made in 1688 by John Walker. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that scholars began to understand Pascal’s intention. In the 1990s, decisive philological achievements were made, and the edition by Philippe Sellier of the book contains his “thoughts” in more or less the order he left them.