DE LA SOLITUDE DANS LES PENSÉES DE PASCAL
FROM SOLITUDE IN PENSÉES OF PASCAL

Summary/Abstract: Port-Royal, this Christian monastery in 16th and 17th century France, had among its Solitaries in search of a life of asceticism and contemplation, Blaise Pascal, man of science and letters of that period of history. He leaves to the posterity a major work that thinks about the existential state of man in search of hope. His philosophical-religious thoughts grouped under the title of Pensées take their foundation in the reflection on the state of the man locked up in this "mute universe" in which his existence takes place. There is in him an awareness at the same time of an ontological lack and a cosmic loneliness which mark infinitely the man in his search of happiness. Thus, the misery of the Pascalian man rises from this ontological emptiness and this loneliness which surround his existence. Pascal, through this fragmentary work, involves in the philosophical questioning of our being in the world, and this with regard to this loneliness that one constantly feels. How is solitude apprehended in Pascal's thoughts? This capital interrogation calls for an analytical approach and an anthropo-philosophical approach in the apprehension of solitude in the Pascalian work which leads to the religious hope.

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