Repetition: Pascal and Kierkegaard 1623-1855
Channel: Craig Campbell
Date: 2013-12-24

Blaise Pascal was a French Christian who wrote during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian who wrote  a time of War (1800-1848). Both wrote about Christian reason and faith. 

This is a Librivox recording of Section 4 of Pascal's Pensees (Thoughts) linked below.
https://archive.org/stream/blaisepascal00newy#page/90/mode/2up

It seems that everyone says religion is the cause of all wars but both Pascal and Kierkegaard believe Reason is the cause of all wars.  

Here is the whole audio book, Pascal's Pensees
https://archive.org/details/pensees_0906_dx_librivox1


Here is a quote from Kierkegaard's work, The Concept of Anxiety (1844)

"A person might become a heretic in his faith by wearing wide pants when everyone else in the village wears tight pants. When someone offers statistical surveys of the proportions of sinfulness, draws a map of it in color and relief, so as to guide the eye quickly in its perspicuity, he makes an attempt at treating sin as a peculiarity of nature that is not to be annulled but is to be calculated just as atmospheric pressure and rainfall are. The mean and the arithmetical average that result are nonsense of a kind that has no comparison in the purely empirical sciences. It would be a very ridiculous abracadabra if anyone should seriously suggest that sinfulness averages 3 3/8 inches in every man or that in Languedoc the average is merely 2 ¼ inches, while in Bretagne it is 3 7/8." P. 62-63

"There is only one proof of spirit and that is the spirit's proof within oneself. Whoever demands something else may get proofs in superabundance, but he is already characterized at spiritless." P. 95