Pascal's texts: the type of narrative instance, the status of truth, and the theme of nuance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31649/sent01.01.022Keywords:
textual criticism, typologies of philosophical texts, Modern philosophy, truthAbstract
The article interprets the specificity of the author’s narrative instance in Pascal's texts. In order to clarify this specificity, the author formulates two typologies: (a) the typology of Pascal's philosophico-theological texts; (b) the typology of persons participating in dialogues (dialogue is one of the key types of Pascal's texts).
The author also formulates 5 key meanings in which Pascal uses the concept of truth and assesses their representation in the text of the Thoughts. Such an assessment is particularly important because, according to the author's typology, the Thoughts fall into a separate category of texts for which it is problematic to identify a particular narrative instance with the author's position. Based on this consideration and taking into account the outlined specifics of the Thoughts, the author argues for the irreducibility of Pascal's pluralistic conception of truth to any of these basic meanings, even though they are abundantly found in the text. According to author, this constitutes a direct argument against the possibility of a literalist reading and interpretation of Pascal's texts, which is based on a non-problematic vision of the narrative instance in these texts.
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