Extract
[...] Thus, for him, his conversion also opens up to a crisis, that of reason, which demands understanding the destiny and human condition in a radically new way. In this sense, Epictetus and Montaigne were the heralds of this existential revolution that Pascal inaugurates. [...]
[...] An ancient question of Sextus Empiricus that seems to be at the heart of this interview between the two theologians present. One, Monsieur de Sacy, to refuse them any place and any truth in the conduct of our lives. The other, Blaise Pascal, to indicate that they can guide our actions and our judgment, as long as we submit their teachings to the prescriptions of revelation and faith. Indeed, the two philosophers taken as examples by Pascal, Epictetus and Montaigne, are situated in their position at the opposite end of a supernatural conception of grace. [...]
[...] However, the contribution of Stoic cosmology and morality should not be denied, as Monsieur de Sacy affirms in this discussion. Indeed, for Pascal, Stoicism incorporates a profound meditation on providence, not considered by Epictetus as a simple arbitrary logic of destiny, but as an order in which our free determination must be impressed and expressed. The Stoic man therefore embodies this order of providence in the duty he imposes on himself, that of holding himself to the height of his own destiny, to the height of the events imposed by providence, with humility and in an active way, that is to say, without fatalism. [...]
[...] The wise Stoic sins by pride, not because he is weak in the face of his duty but because he has not yet understood the deeply tragic aspect of the weakness of the human condition in the face of the necessity of fulfilling it. Paradoxically, therefore, only theology can lead philosophy to a form of truth, to a form of more just understanding of the reality of the human condition. Indeed, adherence to the mysteries of faith allows us to surpass this false belief in the unlimited power of our natural reason. [...]
[...] But the question that now arises is of a sapiental and even more spiritual order. Ancient wisdom opposes sanctity and the path it imposes on man, a path of humility and anguish, a path of sacrifice and expiation. However, the figure of the sage, here that of Epictetus, the master of life from the Manual inherited from antiquity, and that of Montaigne, the skeptical sage, inspired by the attentive reading of the Essays, also teaches us humility, the ideal of sacrifice in the fulfillment of duty, as well as skeptical doubt about the power of man to understand alone the mysteries of the universe. [...]
