@ARTICLE{Stępnik_Andrzej_Pascal_2023,
 author={Stępnik, Andrzej},
 number={No 4},
 pages={443-457},
 journal={Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria},
 howpublished={online},
 year={2023},
 publisher={Komitet Nauk Filozoficznych PAN},
 publisher={Wydział Filozofii Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego},
 abstract={The juxtaposition of Blaise Pascal’s view with the philosophy of Epictetus is important for at least two reasons. First, Epictetus and Michel de Montaigne were the authors whom Pascal enjoyed reading more than any other writers. They were also his main philosophical inspiration. Secondly, the Stoics proposed a way of dealing with human misery, which was competitive to Pascal’s. The author of Les Pensées, by way of producing an apology of the Christian religion, presents the following alternative: we must either suffer misery of a man living without God, or we may rejoice in happiness with God. Thus Pascal’s effort to discredit Stoicism should be read as a proposal to find an alternative to Christianity. The aim of this article is to analyse Pascal’s objections to Stoicism and to compare Stoicism with Pascal’s positive proposal, which was Christianity. As it seems, Pascal’s objections to Stoicism are not confirmed in real life, as what Stoicism offers is a real possibility of obtaining happiness in this life, which is a view that undermines the position adopted by Pascal. The author of Les Pensées treats Stoicism as a remedy for human misery, which is a rival position to Christianity. This also means that Pascal failed to notice that Stoicism offered tools that could help the Christians cope with the challenges of worldliness and with the subordination of man’s will to God’s will.},
 title={Pascal and Epictetus: Two Ways of Dealing with Human Misery},
 type={Artykuł},
 URL={http://czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/134649/PDF/2023-04-PFIL-28.pdf},
 doi={10.24425/pfns.2023.148670},
 keywords={anthropology, Epictetus, happiness, B. Pascal, stoicism},
}