Aspects de l’illusion : Nietzsche lecteur de Pascal

Abstract

As he began to write what would become Dawn, thoughts on the Presumptions of Morality (1881), Nietzsche read Blaise Pascal’s Pensées. This reading strongly influenced the development of his critique of prejudice and, more generally, his analysis of the structural processes of the phenomena of illusion and belief as well as of their effects. This article focuses on this theoretical basis, with the aim of showing both the proximity and the points of divergence of the two authors. It shows the very fine way in which Nietzsche truly appropriates some concepts, images or patterns of Pascal’s thought. Their diametrically opposed assessment of faith, in particular, receives a new interpretation thanks to this approach through illusion.