Pascal and the Arts of the Mind

by Hugh M. Davidson

Overview

This book examines the ways in which Pascal posed and solved intellectual problems in his immense and varied output. Hugh Davidson shows how three of the classical "liberal arts"— rhetoric, dialectic and geometry—pervade Pascal's method as liberating and guiding influences in his search for truth, both in his attacks on and in his defenses of tradition. Professor Davidson throws new light on both the diversity and the unity of Pascal's thought, and places it in the context of other seventeenth-century innovations in the use of traditional disciplines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521032629
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/23/2006
Series:	Cambridge Studies in French , #46
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	990,233
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.46(h) x 0.63(d)

Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgments; 1. Nature and the world; 2. Elements, complexes and geometric; 3. Multiplicity, unity and dialectic; 4. Ends, means and rhetoric; 5. Restatement and conclusion; Bibliography; Index.