Infini Rien: Pascal's Wager and the Human Paradox

The wager fragment in Blaise Pascal’s Penseés opens with the phrase "infini rien"—"infinite nothing"—which is meant to describe the human condition. Pascal was responding to what was, even in the seventeenth century, becoming a pressing human problem: we seem to be able to know much about the world but less about ourselves.

The traditional European view of human beings as creatures made in the image of God and potentially capable of a mystical union with God was increasing…