Blaise Pascal and the Platonic Heart

Abstract The article analyzes the concept of the heart in Blaise Pascal’s (1623–62) Pensées in the context of the Platonic tradition. Augustine (354–430) is described as the main author who mediated to Pascal Plotinus’s view of nous as the intuitive and integrative faculty, superior to discursive and conceptual reason, which can be, ultimately, identified with Pascal’s coeur . The heart in Pascal’s philosophy is seen as the response to his diagnosis of modernity as the fallen, fragmented, and polarized mode of consciousness. From that perspective, Pascal’s opposition against that fragmented and polarized consciousness of reality, divorced from the Christian Platonic holistic and contemplative vision, can also be seen in the context of his criticism of the Jesuits as the representatives of that emerging, modern worldview.