Civility According to Blaise Pascal
On Pascal’s death date today, we are reminded, as T.S. Elliot wrote, why “Pascal is one of those writers who can and must be studied afresh by men [and women] in every generation.”
Gracious reader,
Many of you know my admiration of Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher and polymath who offers us much insight into the human condition, defined by the greatness and wretchedness of man, and our penchant for distraction, diversion, and ennui—the French word for existential boredom. I have written about him many times in other CR posts, which you can search the archive for, and here.
I also had the chance to disucss Pascal for a The Book Club Recently, which you can enjoy below.
Pascal was a keen observer of human nature and the human experience, which means he had insights into the peccadilloes of human manners. I thought they were worth exploring today, as Pascal is one of many great philosophers I explore in my book, The Soul of Civility, who paid close attention to the everyday interactions of human beings—and today is the day of his death. He knew the small things had big consequences, and were revelatory of our values, aspirations and shortcomings.
Pascal on manners
Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) knew that the human condition was defined by love of others, and love of self.
He wrote in his Pensées,
100. The nature of self-love and of this human self is to love only oneself and consider only oneself. But what is a man to do? He can’t prevent this object that he loves from being full of faults and misery.
He wants to be great, and sees himself small.
He wants to be happy, and sees himself miserable.
He wants to be perfect, and sees himself full of imperfections.
He wants men to love and esteem him, and sees that his faults deserve only their dislike and contempt.
This fix that he’s in produces in him the most improper and wicked passion that can be imagined: he develops a mortal hatred against the truth that reproaches him and convinces him of his faults. He would like to annihilate it, but because he can’t destroy it he does his best to destroy his and other people’s knowledge of it. That is, he puts all his efforts into hiding his faults both from others and from himself. He can’t bear to have anyone point them out to him, or to see them.
It’s certainly bad to be full of faults; but it’s much worse to be full of faults and refuse to recognise them, because that adds the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We don’t want others to deceive us, and we don’t think it fair that they want us to admire them more than they deserve; so it’s not fair that we should deceive them, and want them to admire us more than we deserve.
So: when they discover only imperfections and vices that we really do have, they clearly aren’t wronging us, because they didn’t cause our faults. Indeed they are doing us a favour, by helping us to free ourselves from something bad, namely ignorance of our imperfections. We shouldn’t be angry at their knowing our faults and despising us: it is right that they should know us for what we are and despise us if we are despicable.
Those are the feelings that would arise in a heart full of fairness and justice. Then what should we say about our own heart when we see that it’s nothing like that? Isn’t it true that we hate truth and those who tell it to us, and that we like them to be deceived in our favour, and want them to admire us for being something that we actually are not?
One example of this horrifies me. The Catholic religion doesn’t require us to confess our sins indiscriminately to everybody; it lets us keep them hidden from everyone else except for one to whom we are to reveal the innermost recesses of our heart and show ourselves as we are. The Church orders us to undeceive just this one man in all the world, and requires him to maintain an inviolable secrecy, so that it’s as though this knowledge that he has didn’t exist. Can we imagine anything kinder and more gentle? Yet man is so corrupt that he finds even this law harsh. It’s one of the main reasons leading a great part of Europe to rebel against the Church.
How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart, which objects to being obliged to do in relation to one man something that it would be just, in a way, for him to do in relation to all men! For is it just for us to deceive them?
This aversion to truth comes in different strengths, but everyone can be said to have it in some degree, because it is inseparable from self-love. It’s because of this bad delicacy that people who have to correct others choose to do it in roundabout and toned-down ways, so as not to give offence. They have to lessen our faults, appear to excuse them, and stir into the mix praises and assurances of love and esteem. Despite all this, self-love finds such correction to be bitter medicine. It takes as little of it as it can, always with disgust, and often with a secret resentment against those who administer it.
That’s how it happens that if it’s in someone’s interests to be loved by us, he avoids doing anything for us that he knows we wouldn’t enjoy; he treats us as we want to be treated: we hate the truth, he hides it from us; we want to be flattered, he flatters us; we like to be deceived, he deceives us.
People are most afraid of wounding those whose affection is most useful and whose dislike is most dangerous, so every step up that we take in the world removes us further from truth. A prince can be the laughing-stock of all Europe and the only one who doesn’t know this. I’m not surprised: telling the truth is useful to those to whom it is told, but harmful to those who tell it, because it gets them disliked. Anyone who lives with a prince loves his own interests more than he does those of the prince he serves; so he keeps clear of doing anything that would benefit the prince while harming himself.
This wretched condition is no doubt greater and more common among the higher classes; but the poorest aren’t exempt from it, because it’s in any man’s interests to get others to like him. Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; all we do is to deceive each other and flatter each other. No-one speaks of us in our presence as he does behind our backs. Human society is grounded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each person knew what his friend said about him in his absence, even if he said it sincerely and dispassionately.
That’s what man is, then: disguise, lying, and hypocrisy, in himself and in relation to others. He doesn’t want to be told the truth; he avoids telling it to others; and all these dispositions—so far removed from justice and reason—have a natural root in his heart.
He knew there were dualities to our nature, greatness and wretchedness, love of others, love of self. He wrote,
417. This twofold nature of man is so evident that some have thought that we had two souls. It seemed to them that a single undivided subject couldn’t undergo such variations— such sudden variations—from inordinate self-satisfaction to a dreadful dejection of heart.
418. It is dangerous to make man see too clearly how greatly he resembles the beasts without showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to make him see his greatness too clearly, apart from his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is very advantageous to show him both.
Man should not think that he is on a level either with the brutes or with the angels, nor must he be ignorant of both aspects of his nature. He must know both.
419. I won’t allow man to rest content with either one of the aspects of his nature; I want him to be without a firm floor and without rest.
420. If he exalts himself, I humble him; if he humbles himself, I exalt him; and I always contradict him, till he understands that he is an incomprehensible monster.
Against the obsequious
Pascal thought vanity was a core symptom of man’s self-love, and rejected the way that manners—or as I might say in my book, politenesses— often puff up our vanity instead of respecting one another with candor and true civility. Pascal wrote,
57. I always feel uncomfortable with such civilities as these: ‘I have given you a lot of trouble’, ‘I’m afraid I am boring you’, ‘I fear that this is taking too long’. We either engage our audience or irritate them.
58. You are awkward: ‘Please excuse me’ you say. If you hadn’t said that I wouldn’t have known there was anything wrong....
65. What’s good about Montaigne must have been difficult for him to acquire. What’s bad about him—apart from his mœurs, I mean—could have been corrected in a moment, if he had been warned that he was telling too many stories and talking about himself too much.
Pascal is worth visiting and revisiting time and time again.
As T.S. Elliot wrote in his forward to the Pensees, “Pascal is one of those writers who can and must be studied afresh by men [and women] in every generation.”
Soul of Civility events and coverage
Loved my visit to Austin and Bastrop, Texas to have a wonderful conversation with Ryan Holiday for the Daily Stoic Podcast. Listen to my conversation with Ryan here, and get your SIGNED copies of The Soul of Civility from The Painted Porch
Thanks to Morning Joe for featuring The Soul of Civility at MS Now (formerly MSNBC)
The Los Angeles Review of Books wrote a gracious review of The Soul of Civility. calling it, “unexpectedly compelling.” Arguing Alone: On Alexandra Hudson’s “The Soul of Civility”
Join me on the Civic Renaissance Tour this fall!
One of the greatest privileges of my life is watching something beautiful happen in communities across North America.
Leaders are no longer asking me to come give a speech and move on.
They’re asking a much better question:
How do we become the kind of community where people can flourish across difference?
That question is bringing together mayors and city councils, university presidents and students, pastors and congregants, business leaders and neighbors. They come from different political parties, different faith traditions, different professions, and different generations. They don’t gather because they agree about everything.
They gather because they believe their communities are worth building together.
That’s what Civic Renaissance is.
It’s not a program.
It’s not a conference.
It’s a growing community of leaders committed to cultivating the habits, relationships, and institutions that make human flourishing possible.
The Soul of Civility provides a shared language. But books alone don’t change cultures. People do.
When a city chooses to read together, when a university commits to forming students who can disagree with humility and conviction, when pastors, public officials, business leaders, and citizens begin imagining a healthier future together, something remarkable happens.
Ideas become habits.
Habits become culture.
Culture begins to change.
This September, I’ll have the joy of returning to three communities that are continuing that journey.
In Urbandale, Iowa, local leaders will gather again to deepen the culture they began building through a community-wide reading of The Soul of Civility.
At St. Ambrose University, I’ll spend time with a flourishing Civic Renaissance Ambassador community that is helping these ideas take root across campus through reading groups, conversations, and leadership.
And in Colorado Springs, I’ll return to continue partnering with public leaders after an earlier Civic Renaissance Leadership Retreat, this time convening more than 100 civic leaders committed to strengthening their capacity to flourish across difference.
What encourages me most isn’t that these communities invited me once.
It’s that they’re choosing to keep building after reading my book and beyond my visit.
That’s the vision.
Not a memorable one-off event.
Not another initiative that fades away.
A culture that becomes more generous, more courageous, more trusting, and more capable of living with deep differences without losing our shared humanity.
If that vision resonates with you, I’d love for you to be part of it.
Whether you’re a mayor, educator, pastor, business leader, student, philanthropist, or simply someone who loves your community, there’s a place for you in Civic Renaissance.
The future of our communities won’t be shaped by people waiting for someone else to fix them.
It will be shaped by ordinary leaders who decide to become architects of a healthier common life.
I’d be honored to build alongside you.