
Playing with Truth
Language and the Human Condition in Pascal's Pensees
Nicholas Hammond(Author)
Clarendon Press
Published on 23. June 1994
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-19-815893-6 (ISBN)
Description
Pascal's Pensees is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest masterpieces of seventeenth-century France, an unfinished work which has both inspired and perplexed readers in succeeding centuries.
Playing with Truth is the first comprehensive book on Pascal to be devoted to his use of key terms depicting the central subject of the Pensees, the human condition. Nicholas Hammond explores such fundamental notions as language and order, proceeding with a detailed analysis of the words inconstance, ennui, inquietude, bonheur, felicite, and justice. Developing and challenging the most recent scholarship about the text, Hammond identifies the crucial notion of play (as exemplified in the term divertissement) which underlies all these words and applies his findings to the notoriously unstable concept of truth. Through the fragmentary nature of the Pensees and the shifting meaning of terms, Pascal is shown to be deliberately engaging the reader in a game to make sense of the text.
Giving an in-depth account of a many important critical controversies of the day, as well as offering a novel and provocative insight into the persuasive purpose of the Pensees, this study will be of interest to specialist and undergraduate readers alike.
Playing with Truth is the first comprehensive book on Pascal to be devoted to his use of key terms depicting the central subject of the Pensees, the human condition. Nicholas Hammond explores such fundamental notions as language and order, proceeding with a detailed analysis of the words inconstance, ennui, inquietude, bonheur, felicite, and justice. Developing and challenging the most recent scholarship about the text, Hammond identifies the crucial notion of play (as exemplified in the term divertissement) which underlies all these words and applies his findings to the notoriously unstable concept of truth. Through the fragmentary nature of the Pensees and the shifting meaning of terms, Pascal is shown to be deliberately engaging the reader in a game to make sense of the text.
Giving an in-depth account of a many important critical controversies of the day, as well as offering a novel and provocative insight into the persuasive purpose of the Pensees, this study will be of interest to specialist and undergraduate readers alike.
Reviews / Votes
`Hammond probably knows the Pensees better than anyone in England, and his use of Pascal's manuscript - his eye, for instance, for the significance of Pascal's erasures and rewritings - is particularly impressive ... his central claim ... is new and persuasive.'Times Literary Supplement Hammond is extraordinarily well-informed as to what mnodern editors and scholars have had to say about Pascal's language and modes of thought. As a result of all this we get an unusually clear appreciation of Pascal's resources and choices...This is a well-conceived and well-executed investigation. It deserves and will receive, I am sure, careful study. The author faces squarely issue after issue as they come up, resolving them judiciously along the line of thought that I have tried to indicate and always against his very rich background of reflection both on source materials and on recent critical discussions. * French ForumMLR 91.1 * A refreshingly new angle of reading the text is ...persuasively presented here. vigorous, rollicking stuff that reads very differently from Christopher Fry's free-verse adaptation. * Forum for Modern Language Studies *
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Oxford University Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
2 plates
Dimensions
Height: 220 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
462 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-815893-6 (9780198158936)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Content
Introduction - etat present, terminology, de l'esprit geometrique and Port-Royal. Part 1 Language and order in the "Pensees": language in the "Pensees" - parole/mot, the tyranny of speech - dire/contredire, interpretation; ordre - ordonner, order and fragmentation, L532 - "le veritable ordre", ordre as dispositio, memoria, order, truth and language. Part 2 La condition de l'homme: inconstance - inconstance et bizarrerie, inconstant/constant, constance; ennui - ennui/neant, ennui and divertissement, ennui and the possibility of salvation; inquietude - the anxiety of man's fallen state, inquietude and curiosite, inquietude and continued spiritual endeavour; repos - pyrrhonism and stoicism - tranquilite, paix, human repos, spiritual repos; bonheur/felicite - sur la conversion du pecheur, false happiness, happiness and divertissement, spiritual happiness; justice - injustice, human justice, natural justice, political justice, les justes, divine justice, Christ as mediator. Part 3 Playing with truth: truth and play, verite, truth and corruption, raison des effets, figures and miracles.