Abstract
The year 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the French mathematician, physicist, philosopher and, above all, Christian Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662). The title of the planned conference contains the three essential facets of Pascal's life, thought and work: philosophical skepticism, geometric precision and evidence, humility of surrender to God's grace, and the will that overcomes and holds everything else together.
Pascal is a critic of Galilean-Cartesian rationalist natural philosophy and all metaphysical onto-theology, which he describes as the "geometrical spirit" against which he contrasts the "gentle spirit" of surrender with its "logic of the heart." This "step back" from objectifying imagination allows us to assume a thinking position of relaxed attentiveness, with which Pascal, in an almost "genealogical" method of Nietzschean fashion, analyses and describes human nature as well as the hidden but all the more effective motives of human action and indulgence. Pascal holds the philosophical primacy in the discovery of the basic human mood of "boredom", which is taken from him and elaborated by Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Heidegger.
The critique of morals, society and especially hypocritical Christianity inspired not only Voltaire and Kierkegaard, but also Friedrich Nietzsche, who owes more to Pascal than is acknowledged, and later Léon Bloy, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and, in the 20th century, Max Scheler, Romano Guardini, Max Picard and Jan Sokol.