If we were truly happy

A retraction concerning Pascal

Dear H,

A few essays back I made fun of Pascal and Marcus Aurelius for writing bad books. What I didn't know is that they had been handed to me by the wrong people.

“But J,” you might ask me: “what does it matter who hands you Marcus Aurelius?” Simply put, every translation I’d been handed was either too stuffy, obtuse, or written like a silly self-help girl-boss. As such the book came across so flat and uninspiring and corny that I didn’t only not enjoy it — in many cases I didn’t even understand it. Sentences were either bloated until they lost charm or cut off until they bled out*. In many cases they were so bad that in my essay I combined several translations to get something that hit right; and until I'd read the Kochon translation, Marcus Aurelius was almost totally lost on me. So I recommend Marcus Aurelius now, but only in the Kochon translation. So here’s the link; and no, I’m not being paid to say this.

The situation with Pascal was an even bigger train wreck. My entire life people handed me Pascal for spiritual reasons — Pascal’s Wager, et al. But now that I’ve read Pascal, I realize he should be read mostly for earthly reasons. The theological parts of the Pensees are fragments of thought, mostly, and almost totally nonsensical. The parts on people are mostly brilliant — and fun regardless of the translation you get them in. And even more importantly, they’re timeless.

Consider these passages, from either the Krailsheimer (which will be marked with a K) or Trotter translations, which fit anyone in any age:

Imagination has its happy and unhappy men, its sick and well, its rich and poor; it makes us believe, doubt, deny reason; it deadens the senses, it arouses them; it has its fools and sages, and nothing annoys us more than to see it satisfy its guests more fully and completely than reason ever could. Those who are clever in imagination are far more pleased with themselves than prudent men could reasonably be. They look down on people with a lofty air; they are bold and confident in argument, where others are timid and unsure, and their cheerful demeanour often wins the verdict of their listeners, for those whose wisdom is imaginary enjoy the favour of judges similarly qualified.

Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame. Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval. (K)

To those who think “a good life” consists in drinking and partying and vacationing in Tahiti, he says

If our condition were truly happy, we would not need diversion from thinking of it

and further,

Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.

He makes sport of both the too-loose and the uptight,

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

And a reminder (in a backhanded way) that we take the everyday beauty of creation for granted:

How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals! (K)

Anyone who witnessed the rise of the Woke Left will nod his head at

Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is. (K)

And for those who expect us to give what they don’t deserve,

Tyranny is wanting to have by one means what can only be had by another. We pay different dues to different kinds of merit; we must love charm, fear strength, believe in knowledge. These dues must be paid. It is wrong to refuse them and wrong to demand any others. (K)

Likewise, there are people who value “diversity” above talent and character and know-how. Pascal says to them as he said to the aristocrats,

We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard. (K)

We might just as easily say the most diversely born aboard. And to those of us who saw America hit its peak and then, having nowhere to go, how both liberty and security became caricatures of themselves,

It is not good to have too much liberty. It is not good to have all one wants.

And further along those lines, confirming that getting too high and hitting rock bottom are the same thing,

Solomon and Job have best known and best spoken of the misery of man; the former the most fortunate, and the latter the most unfortunate of men; the former knowing the vanity of pleasures from experience, the latter the reality of evils.

Pascal is of course around 400 years old, and this will earn him detractors — as maybe he anticipated. To those who believe STEM is real progress and philosophy is outdated, he says,

Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences.

It's rare for a book to have this much depth and charm, so I apologize for clowning on Pascal, and he has my recommendation — at least until he gets to evangelizing.

Yours,

-J

P.S. Pascal is at top form through whole sections of the Pensees, but he never gives better advice than about arguing.

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides.

And further,

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

In short, a smart man appeals to vanity first — and then after vanity, to reason.

*It might be asked here whether I’m being shallow about writing. Isn’t it the idea, after all, which we’re after here — not necessarily the form of it?

Pascal would say otherwise,

The tone of voice influences the wisest of us and alters the force of a speech or a poem.

I’d add that when reading, your nose matters just as much as your eyes. If you sniff out a pedant or a bimbo, who's to blame there?  Vibe is just as important as principle — we ingest people, not books. If we sense the wrong spirit, how can we just swallow a treatise? Who wants to think like someone they don't admire on some level? I doubt anyone likes to read downward.  

Pascal says of great writing,

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a man. Whereas those who have good taste, and who seeing a book expect to find a man, are quite surprised to find an author.

— an organicness and easiness I always aim for, but don’t always get. Either way I’d rather have my readers enjoy reading about subjects because of me — not reading me for the subject I’m writing about. I would rather read Ben Franklin’s biography of Kim Kardashian than Kim Kardashian’s biography of Franklin.

And I hate being lumped in with “conservative” writers, who bore me:

There's a theory in the "conservative" world that prose ought to be plain and bald and that this plainness and baldness will allow the ideas to stand out more. I say to hell with it. It's a dumb idea in the first place, like saying women ought to dress ugly so we can focus on their personalities; and beyond this it’s responsible for not even getting us to the good ideas. Reading conservative papers isn't a test of your intelligence but your endurance. That’s why I gave up reading The National Review.  The magazine, like all "conservative" rags I'm aware of, is all facts and no art.  It was founded by men who "loved the classics."  If this is the case, then where the hell is the rhetoric?

The Muslims (and St Paul) had a parallel idea, and it was to rob women of their makeup and jewelry and throw a blanket over them. The theory was that then, when you were forced to confront their personalities, you would go your way out of sheer boredom and forget every notion of sex — a successful idea compared to purity rings, which in my opinion only make a woman more of a conquest, and thus far more attractive,  But there are those of us who never treat an idea like a Muslim treats a woman.  We say deck it out in all the jewelry of style.  Let its hair shine in the sun of reason.  We see the eyes — let’s see some lips and a neck and some shoulders too.  Let’s fall in love with the beauty of ideas — and if they're ugly, let’s turn away to better ones.

And to those who say I’m rehashing themes the greats like Montaigne and Pascal already covered, I’ll let Pascal defend me in his own words:

Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better. I had as soon it said that I used words employed before. And in the same way if the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a different discourse, no more do the same words in their different arrangement form different thoughts! Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.