Pascal
Born in 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, France
Noted mathematician and philosopher
His best known works are the Pensees (1646), L'Esprit des Lois (1754), Pensées
(1670s) and The Provincial Letters (1660s)
He was a mathematician, physicist, inventor, theologian, writer of fiction, and social reformer. Pascal's most famous wroks are Pensées, a series of essays written in the form of an interior monologue. Pascal began writing these "letters to himself" in 1656. It is believed that he wrote them at the behest of his friend Étienne de La Boétie, who was imprisoned for reasons unknown
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Pascal may have been motivated by his own interest in Stoicism during this period. He attempted to reconcile Christian theology with the thought of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. His prose is characterized by the use of rhetorical devices such as antithesis.
He has also influenced or had an influence on many thinkers and inventors including Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Babbage, Joseph Fourier, Alphonse de Lamartine, Christopher Latham Sholes, Alfred Vail and Gunter Grass. Noted philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre were interested in Pascal's philosophy.