Паскалеанское размышление

Метаморфозис. 2016. Т. 1. № 1. С. 6–14.

Kulikov Anton A.

This article attempts to compare philosophy of Blaise Pascal and the works of Lewis Carroll. Pascalean critique of culture is contrasted with Carroll’s absurd and joyful human world. In Pascal’s “Pensées” as well as in Carroll’s fairytales the culture appears to be a number of nonsenses, pretentious and comic, based on pure arbitrariness. Habit and groundless fantasy rule this world. The culture needs unconditional value guidelines, eternal ideals, the Ideas to gain the reasonable sense but the eternal ideals are disproportionate to a finite human. And the human is torn between an absurd given and the inaccessible ideals, between nothing and the endlessness. In this regard Pascal and Carroll are remarkably similar and one could trace this similarity in details.

The New time philosophy, the philosophy of culture, tries to slay the Pascal’s arguments but in fact it rather avoids a direct fight with him. While in Carroll’s books Pascal is opposed not by the Idea of the culture but by the image of Alice, of a loving and trusting child who can make even the most absurd world the warm and home one. Fragile love of a little child is stronger, more significant than eternal nonsense of the enormous world – the Pascal’s arguments find an equal rival in this love.

Keywords: культура, culture, человек, human, Льюис Кэрролл, Блез Паскаль, Blaise Pascal, Lewis Carroll, tautologies, sense and nonsense, love and trust of a child, тавтологии, смысл и бессмысленность, любовь и доверие ребенка