8 - Rousseau and Pascal

Summary

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's distinct philosophy shows theology both giving matter for substantive philosophical argument and provoking doubts about the core commitments of a most influential modern intellectual project, at the very moment that philosophy is often thought to be both the source of radical doubt and its logical, emancipatory terminus. Rousseau drew heavily from Pascal's account of an exalted imagination in the Pensées. Pascal's exalted imagination, however, has two indispensable limits that Rousseau's philosophy rejects, at least before its author comes to doubt his rejection. For Pascal, to confuse a life animated by charity with other modes of being is to fall into profound corruption. Rousseau's account of imagination had always retained a theological mark or inclination from its Pascalian origins, but Rousseau regularly sought to bring it under robust philosophical control, not least by giving a divine tincture to human genius.