27 novembre 2020
Pierre Lyraud, « "L'homme passe l'homme". Figures de la finitude dans l'œuvre de Pascal. », HAL-SHS : littérature, ID : 10670/1.i62kww
In an article entitled “L’ascension et la chute”, Philippe Sellier showed how these antithetical movements structure Pascal’s imaginary world. But Pascal does not strictly oppose them: rather, he highlights the dialectical tension which leads man to surpass his limits and yet brings him back to these limits. My thesis aims to synthetize the way Pascal explores the finite human condition and its paradoxical tensions, from a rhetorical and philosophical point of view. I argue that we can see in Pascal’s writings a poetics of finitude, encapsulated in a phrase that I regard as its “spiritual etymon”: “L’homme passe l’homme”. The first part focuses on the incarnate dimension of man and its linguistic consequences : how to write about the union of body and soul that is man, if one can’t understand it ? The second part focuses on the limits of the mind and on the way Pascal makes room – textually – for what one cannot comprehend and demonstrate. A third part studies the links between the will and its ultimate end – happiness, unattainable without the grace of God : how then can we understand the idea of inciting man to the search for God ? A fourth part questions the collective dimension of finitude and explores Pascal’s enunciative choices in the Pensées, oscillating between irony and benevolence. A fifth part, eventually, draws the portrait of the Christian condition which humiliates and transforms bodies and language.