Self

Pascal believes that human beings are in thrall to an uncontrollable self-love, a self-centredness that sets them at odds with their fellow creatures and that is intrinsically unjust. (For this reason he rejects the ethic of honnêteté—politeness, consideration for others—as inadequate.) Self-love involves both the urge to tyrannize over others and the desire for recognition from them. A long fragment on the nature of the self establishes that we know others only through their qualities, and thus that a direct self-to-self relationship is impossible. Love between human beings is intrinsically flawed since no human being can be another’s fulfilment. Various objections to this line of argument are considered (Pascal’s conception of love is a very partial one), and the conclusion is that, powerful though his analysis his, he has not established that the nature of self-love is a further reason for believing in the Fall.