PASCAL TRA FILOSOFIA E TEOLOGIA

The scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal was born on June 19th 1623. The Faculties of Philosophy and Theology of the Pontifical Gregorian University, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of his birth, have decided to revive the attention and interest towards this extraordinary Catholic thinker with this international conference on 23 November, date of crucial importance for Pascal’s biography: the night of the Memorial, marked by a particular experience of God.

«What today we try to construct laboriously under the name of interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity, was lived implicitly by thinkers until the modern age within a unitary vision of knowledge» explains P. Gaetano Piccolo S.I., dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. «Pascal for example manifests with his thought, as did the great thinkers of the Middle Ages, the intimate dialogue between philosophy and theology. For this reason we have chosen to reflect on the way of thinking of this great figure of the modern age, hoping that it can help us face the complexity of our time."

The conference will offer six conferences with as many "pairs" of speakers, with one philosophical voice and the other theological, focusing in particular on the debates around freedom and grace, the meeting of reason and faith, the philosophy aimed at the supernatural, the questions that philosophy turns to theology, as does theology to philosophy.

In the afternoon there will be a lectio magistralis by Vincent Carraud, professor of History of early modern philosophy at the Sorbonne Université and Director of the Centre d’études cartésiennes. The event, promoted by the French Embassy at the Holy See/Institut Français Centre Saint-Louis, will also be an opportunity to reflect on the troubled story that saw Pascal on a barricade opposing the Society of Jesus, focusing in particular on the philosophical and theological issues at stake.