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Brief Lives

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Martin Jenkins looks at the life of a mathematician-philosopher apologist.

Blaise Pascal was a physicist, mathematician, geometer, calculating-machine designer, controversialist and Christian apologist – but was he a philosopher? He would probably have said no, bearing in mind the implications of the term in his own time. In the memorial of his conversion he writes, “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the savants.” Yet Pascal is still read because he engaged creatively with the philosophical thought of his day, and still has something to say even to the thought of our time.

Blaise Pascal portrait by Darren McAndrew 2018

Early Life

Blaise Pascal was born on June 19th 1623 in Clermont in the Auvergne in central France.

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