Daniel Collette

Pascal’s wager has received the attention of philosophers for centuries. Most of its criticisms arise from how the wager is often framed. We present Pascal’s wager three ways: in isolation from any further apologetic arguments, as leading toward a regimen intended to produce belief, and finally embedded in a larger apology that includes evidence for Christianity. We find that none of the common objections apply when the wager is presented as part of Pascal’s larger project. Pascal’s wager is a successful argument in its proper place. However, the most interesting features of our first two presentations of the wager turn out to be either irrelevant or missing from our reading: infinite utility and the relativity of evidence. The successful wager is a boring wager. Still, this study shows us how the wager might profitably be incorporated into different apologetic contexts and why it often can’t.

My dissertation focuses on the moral philosophy of Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza in the context of the revival of Stoicism within the seventeenth century. There are many misinterpretations about early modern ethical theories due to a lack of proper awareness of Stoicism in the early modern period. My project rectifies this by highlighting understated Stoic themes in these early modern texts that offer new clarity to their morality. Although these three philosophers hold very different metaphysical commitments, each embraces a different aspect of Stoicism, letting it influence but not define his work. By addressing the Stoic themes on the morality of these three authors, I also hope to help better capture the intellectual climate of the time by bringing Stoic themes into the foreground. Stoicism is a Hellenistic philosophy that considered the passions a sickness of the intellect and the source of all human suffering; they believed the cure was virtue, which was obtained through replacing irrational passions with rational beliefs. Stoicism had a revival in the Renaissance ushering in a wave of Neostoic authors who play an important role in shaping the intellectual landscape of the following centuries. My first two chapters discuss Descartes, who wrote a “provisional morality” early in his public life, only (as I show) to ignore the subject of ethics until near his death. In my first chapter I argue that, though many present-day scholars misread Descartes’ first ethics as part of his final ethics, this earliest “provisional morality” mimics Neostoic Skeptics such as Montaigne and is provisional because his method of doubt is also provisional. In my second chapter I show that Descartes’ late, and more developed, moral theory attempts to synthesize a variety of ancient, and seemingly contradictory, ethical traditions: Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Aristotelianism. In many ways Descartes embraces Stoic morality, but as a mechanist he does not view passions as an intellectual sickness; rather they are a physiological event, an amoral instrument that can be used to help control one’s irrational desires. I further defend my thesis externally by showing that this is the reading supported by Descartes’ contemporaries including critics such as Leibniz and early Cartesians such as Antoine Le Grand and Pierre-Sylvain Régis My third chapter discusses Pascal, who embraces Stoicism differently. Pascal offers Stoicism as the first tier of a binary ethics: modeled after Augustine’s city of God and city of man, it is an alternative moral code for those who are ignorant of the good and true happiness. Finally, in my fourth chapter, I discuss two common misinterpretations of Spinoza’s ethics: one of them neglects the Stoic influence on his thought while the other embraces it too strongly, portraying him as an unadulterated Stoic. Although there are ways that he is more Stoic than Descartes and Pascal, such as in his panpsychism and monism, this does not extend to his morality. Rather than accepting either of the two readings, I highlight anti- Stoic themes that are also present. I conclude that if the discussion is contained to his morality, Spinoza is no more Stoic than the other Neostoics I discuss in previous chapters.

While the pedagogical benefits of experiential learning are well known, classroom technology is a more contentious topic. In my experience, philosophy instructors are hesitant to embrace technology in their pedagogy. A great deal of this trepidation is justified: when technology serves only to replicate existing methods without contributing to course objectives, it unnecessarily adds extra work for the instructor and can even be a distraction from learning. However, I believe, if applied appropriately, technology can be used to positively enhance the philosophy classroom experience in ways that are not possible in traditional classroom settings – including new ways of experiential learning. To demonstrate this, I offer a case study of implementing virtual reality as a tool for experiential learning of philosophy. I show how having students “walk a plank” off a skyscraper in VR allowed me to exceed my course objectives for my Existentialism course in particularly effective ways that I could not have done without this technology.

As a Catholic nun, to suggest Jacqueline Pascal as autonomous might at first glance seem contradictory. We show that her moral deference to the divine is not at all forfeiting her autonomy, but that aligning her own law with God's law is to align her own law with rationality itself, that is, the laws of nature. Her theoretical structure begins with a theory of virtue—viz., how and to whom we have an obligation to be moral. For her, acting in accordance with cultural restrictions or following church orders against her own conscience would be living by the laws of another and so not acting autonomously. Pascal would not live by other's laws, regardless of whether her actions conform to the categories by which society expected her to act. The framework for her laws laid in Pascal's understanding of self-governance: if she wants to act virtuously then she must autonomously follow God's law by making it her own through the sentiments of her heart. Thus, she cannot live by the laws of men, but by the laws of her human nature and in alignment with a rightly ordered universe, that is, God's law, which we show parallels with a Stoic framework of autonomy.

The goal of this text is to give an exposition of Pascal's ethics, treatments of which are still rare and mostly outdated. Although the past few years have seen several new book-length works on various aspects of Pascal's philosophy, Frigo's monograph stands out for not merely perpetuating dated readings, but instead advancing the discussion with unprecedented historical research and drawing from recent developments.The general focus of the book is to uncover Pascal's moral philosophy by means of the Morale chrétienne fragments of Pensées, 351–76 in the edition of Louis Lafuma, translated by A. J. Krailsheimer. As Frigo notes, this set...

This volume intends to offer contemporary philosophers and philosophy students a comprehensive introduction to the reception, readings, and influence of Pascal's Wager historically and today. The text is divided into three sections: the Wager's historical context and influence, critical engagements and appraisals of the Wager argument, and new discussions of the Wager in light of contemporary developments about probability, utility, and belief. In the Introduction, readers will discover a helpful primer to decision theory and infinite utility, an excellent aid for those unfamiliar with conversations beginning in Part II.A feature rather than a flaw of contemporary analysis is a series...

This edition of _Leviathan_ is intended to provide the reader with a modestly abridged text that is straightforward and accessible, while preserving Hobbes' main lines of argument and of thought. It is meant for those who wish to focus primarily on the philosophical aspects of the work, apart from its stylish but often daunting early modern prose. The editors have updated language, style, punctuation, and grammar throughout. Very long, complicated sentences have been broken into two or more sentences for enhanced readability. In some instances, terms within a sentence are rearranged for enhanced clarity. Occasionally, an equivalent contemporary word is substituted for an archaic one. Ellipses indicate omissions of more than one sentence. Care has been taken to maintain the strength, nuance, and flavor of the work, especially of Hobbes' most difficult arguments. In addition, the volume offers a general Introduction and concise headnotes to each chapter. Annotation is geared to the student or novice reader. A glossary of key terms is also included, as well as an index.

Robin Douglass and Johan Olsthoorn’s edited critical guide grew from a European Hobbes Society meeting themed on Hobbes’s On the Citizen. Hobbes intended On the Citizen to be the final treatise of his tripartite Elements of Philosophy. Sociopolitical forces demanded that he publish On the Citizen first, and he only later completed the trilogy with two preceding volumes: On the Body and On Man. Despite On the Citizen’s significance, it is often overlooked in scholarly work and in classroom instruction favoring Hobbes’s better-known Leviathan. Douglass and Olsthoorn augment the intellectual landscape by providing an engaging collection of articles that make an important and needed...