Abstract
“It was the least philosophical and least serious part of their lives,” wrote Blaise Pascal about Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s Politics; “it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse.” Pascal’s evaluation of these texts was not merely some provocative hyperbole but an extract of the place of political philosophy in the Pensées. For Pascal, our quest for justice is profoundly short-sighted and destructive. In searching for it, we come to see all laws as unjust; but because our quest is based on faulty knowledge, it cannot see that truly just laws are impossible. For Pascal, political philosophy undermines laws without leading to more just ones and thus reveals the wretchedness of humanity, leaving us ready to accept our Christian redemption. But in so doing, political philosophy also shows how humanity rules unjustly through custom, and how the heart and imagination dominate over reason.
