The experience and the certainty. Side notes on Pascal, “Opere complete. Prima traduzione italiana”, edited by M.V. Romeo, Firenze-Milano, Giunti-Bompiani, 2020, XXXIX-3133 pp.

Abstract

The recent publication of Pascal’s “Opere complete” fills a certainly unjustifiable absence. Released last autumn in Bompiani’s “Il pensiero occidentale” series, the volume is now presented by Maria Vita Romeo and collects texts and documents never translated before. For the very first time the Italian public has so the opportunity to fully appreciate the author’s philosophical and scientific production. In this way, for the non-specialist reader, the vast panorama of single and sometimes partial translations of pamphlets, physical treatises, letters, biographical testimonies and minor Pascalian autographs is integrated and enriched, consequently favoring their more agile and broad consultation, as well as an approach more detailed and rigorous to the primary bibliography, even in its often neglected and yet fundamental offshoots.

Keywords

• pascal
• geometric method
• principle of authority
• progress of science