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HandWiki. Pascal's Wager. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/35887 (accessed on 19 September 2026).
HandWiki. Pascal's Wager. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/35887. Accessed September 19, 2026.
HandWiki. "Pascal's Wager" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/35887 (accessed September 19, 2026).
HandWiki. (2022, November 23). Pascal's Wager. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/35887
HandWiki. "Pascal's Wager." Encyclopedia. Web. 23 November, 2022.
Pascal's Wager
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Pascal's Wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–62). It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not. Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell). Pascal's Wager was based on the idea of the Christian God, though similar arguments have occurred in other religious traditions. The original wager was set out in section 233 of Pascal's posthumously published Pensées ("Thoughts"). These previously unpublished notes were assembled to form an incomplete treatise on Christian apologetics. Historically, Pascal's Wager was groundbreaking because it charted new territory in probability theory, marked the first formal use of decision theory, and anticipated future philosophies such as existentialism, pragmatism and voluntarism.

existentialism voluntarism probability

References

  1. null
  2. Pensée #72 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_72
  3. Pensée #272 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_272
  4. Pensée #294 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_294
  5. Pensée #565 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_565
  6. Pensée #387 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_387
  7. Pensées Section III note 233, Translation by W. F. Trotter
  8. Hájek, Alan (November 6, 2012). "Pascal's Wager". http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/index.html. 
  9. Laurent Thiroin, Le hasard et les règles, le modèle du jeu dans la pensée de Pascal, Vrin, Paris 1991, p.170
  10. Laurent Thiroin, Le hasard et les règles, le modèle du jeu dans la pensée de Pascal, Vrin, Paris 1991, p.176
  11. Podgorski, Daniel (December 18, 2015). "A Logical Infinite: The Constrained Probabilistic Definitions of Chance and Infinity in Blaise Pascal's Famous Wager". http://thegemsbok.com/art-reviews-and-articles/friday-phil-pascals-wager/. 
  12. Dawkins, Richard (May 21, 2007). "Chapter 3: Arguments for God's existence". The God Delusion. Black Swan. pp. 130–132. ISBN 9780552773317. 
  13. Voltaire (1728). "Remarques (Premiéres) sur les Pensées de Pascal" (in French). http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/22/07_Pascal.html. 
  14. Durant, Will and Ariel (1965). The Age of Voltaire. pp. 370. 
  15. Vous me promettez l’empire du monde si je crois que vous avez raison: je souhaite alors, de tout mon coeur, que vous ayez raison; mais jusqu’à ce que vous me l’ayez prouvé, je ne puis vous croire. […] J’ai intérêt, sans doute, qu’il y ait un Dieu; mais si dans votre système Dieu n’est venu que pour si peu de personnes; si le petit nombre des élus est si effrayant; si je ne puis rien du tout par moi-même, dites-moi, je vous prie, quel intérêt j’ai à vous croire? N’ai-je pas un intérêt visible à être persuadé du contraire? De quel front osez-vous me montrer un bonheur infini, auquel d’un million d’hommes un seul à peine a droit d’aspirer?
  16. À vrai dire le célèbre pari de Pascal, ou plutôt le pari que Pascal propose au libertin n'est pas une option désintéressée mais un pari de joueur. Si le libertin joue «croix», parie que Dieu existe, il gagne (si Dieu existe) la vie éternelle et la béatitude infinie, et risque seulement de perdre les misérables plaisirs de sa vie actuelle. Cette mise ne compte pas au regard du gain possible qui est infini. Seulement, l'argument suppose que Dieu accepte le pari, que Dieu dit «je tiens». Sans quoi, nous dit Souriau, le libertin « est comme ce fou : il voit une feuille au fil de l'eau, hésiter entre deux côtés d'un caillou. Il dit : «je parie un million avec Rothschild qu'elle passera à droite». La feuille passe à droite et le fou dit : «j'ai gagné un million». Où est sa folie? Ce n'est pas que le million n'existe pas, c'est que Rothschild n'a pas dit : «je tiens». ». (Cf. l'admirable analyse du pari de Pascal in Souriau, L'ombre de Dieu, p. 47 sq.) – La Philosophie, Tome 2 (La Connaissance), Denis Huisman, André Vergez, Marabout 1994, pp. 462–63
  17. Diderot, Denis (1875–77) [1746]. J. Assézar. ed (in French). Pensées philosophiques, LIX, Volume 1. pp. 167. 
  18. Mackie, J. L. (1982). The Miracle of Theism, Oxford, pg. 203
  19. Wetsel, David (1994). Pascal and Disbelief: Catechesis and Conversion in the Pensées. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, p. 117. ISBN:0-8132-1328-2
  20. Pensée #226 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_226
  21. Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief, p. 370.
  22. Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief, p. 238.
  23. Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief, pp. 118 (quotation from Jean Mesnard), 236.
  24. Pensée #251 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_251
  25. Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief, p. 181.
  26. Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief, p. 182.
  27. Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief, p. 180.
  28. Saka, Paul. "Pascal's Wager about God". http://www.iep.utm.edu/pasc-wag/. 
  29. For example: Jeff Jordan, Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal's Wager, 1994, Rowman & Littlefield.
  30. http://www.stat.ucla.edu/history/pascal_wager.pdf
  31. Pensée #233 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_233
  32. Pensée #904 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm#p_904
  33. Pensée #233. Gérard Ferreyrolles, ed. Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2000.
  34. Al-Islam.org. (2017). Tradition of the Myrobalan Fruit. https://www.al-islam.org/tradition-myrobalan-fruit-hadith-al-halila-imam-jafar-al-sadiq/hadith
  35. al-Kulainī, M. (1982). al- Kāfī. Tehran: Group of Muslim Brothers.
  36. al-Juwayni A Guide to Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief, 6
  37. Boyarin, Daniel (2009). Socrates & the fat rabbis. University of Chicago Press. p. 48. ISBN 0-226-06916-8. 
  38. Weaver, John B. (2004). Plots of epiphany: prison-escape in Acts of the Apostles. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 453–454, 595. ISBN 978-3-11-018266-8. 
  39. Aleksandrovich Florenskiĭ, Pavel (1997). The pillar and ground of the truth (1914). Princeton University Press. p. 37. ISBN 0-691-03243-2. 
  40. Ostler, Nicholas (2005). Empires of the Word. HarperCollins.
  41. 24 and Philosophy (2014) https://andphilosophy.com/2014/07/16/24-and-philosophy/
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