Frenchify Me

American Francophobia is perhaps an understandable phenomenon, particularly given the general attitude of the French towards Americans. For my own part, however, I tend to harbor an inexplicable and utterly unfounded Francophilia. Perhaps that is simply another instance of my unprincipled contrarianism manifesting itself; I prefer to think of it as a continuation of my interest in high civilization. Whatever my motive, the fact remains that I actually know very little of French culture. I have never seen Paris, I have never read Proust, and I don’t parlay voo anything at all.

I have been wishing recently that I parlay vooed a lot. I have made a belated discovery of Pascal’s Pensees, and my admiration is without limit. Insert here [] the usual remarks on genius, prescience, etc. Those banal accolades would merely obscure the uniqueness of the work’s achievement. Insert here [] the usual accompanying regret that it was never completed.

What has chiefly piqued my interest so far (I have not yet finished reading the Pensees) is what I would call Pascal’s argument from original sin. Oddly enough for his age (mid-seventeenth century), Pascal found most of the usual arguments for Christianity insubstantial and ineffective. He thought, for example, that the old favorite, the teleological argument (the argument from design), was burdened with too much counter-evidence to be conclusive. (That is likely the case, no matter how frequently it is revived.) However, he believed that conclusive evidence for the truth of the Christian religion could be found in the explanatory power of its doctrine of original sin. According to Pascal, no other perspective, whether religious or philosophical, can sufficiently account for what he calls man’s simultaneous “wretchedness and greatness.” He found that, in the nature of the case, all other known explanations emphasized one or the other aspect of the post-lapsarian human condition, rendering them hopelessly one-sided.

Pascal believed not only that he could prove original sin simply from the now-existing human condition, but that his triumph would then evidence the logical need for a redeemer, who could be none other than Christ. (Those who find all of this hopelessly optimistic should refer to the Pensees for all the epistemological qualifications made there.) To him, the essence of the Christian religion consisted in two propositions: man is fallen and Christ has come to redeem him. The first step of his apologia would be to demonstrate the former.

Obviously, this all seems rather quaint in an age when one is hard-pressed even to convince practicing Christians of the reality of original sin. The venerable doctrine has fallen into such ill repute that one finds it cropping up repeatedly as a sort of universal punchline demonstrating the woeful ignorance of past ages. It’s the anti-religionist’s version of phlogiston. However, isn’t Pascal correct to say that the core of the Evangel is contained in his two propositions? And isn’t his insight into the insufficiency of alternative explanations still valid? (Think of the Freudian explanation of the greatness of man, or the Nietzchean explanation of man’s weakness for more contemporary examples.) Pascal’s argument from original sin merits the sort of attention that Plantinga and others have recently given to the ontological argument. Maybe then the sunny day will dawn when we can all be lost again; after that, we might even regain the hope of being found.