Les Pensées de Pascal : six épithètes au service de l’apologie

Abstract

In his Pensées, Pascal wants to convince his reader that Christianity, or more precisely Jansenism, represents the Truth. In order to succeed in his apologetic project, he uses a very specific rhetoric of effectiveness, to put the Truth in the mind of his reader. Specifically, to meet his goal, Pascal employs six epithets — vrai, véritable, seul, unique, petit and grand — that are recurrent throughout Les Pensées. These terms, inherited from a long Christian literary tradition, take on very different connotations according to the nouns to which they refer. In Les Pensées, all of them have a common purpose: to promote the Truth of Christianity against the misery of man without God. Consequently, they have a central function in Pascal’s apologetic project.