Word: pascale
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos: Lee shuns the metaphysical altogether, while Marcos relies little on astrologers or mediums. It is likely that they will be the exceptions for a long time to come. In a sense, the leaders are pursuing the same reasoning as the 17th century French Philosopher Pascal did in his "wager" on God. It can hardly hurt to call in an otherworldly adviser-and it just might help...
...Nuit Chez Maud exists simultaneously on both of these levels and depends on the tension between them, a kind of inverted love story that's interesting mainly for the reasons the love doesn't come off, which are metaphysical, contradictory, and above all, intellectual. A knowledge of Pascal seems important in sorting out patterns of thought, since the sophisticated conversations ("you're more of a Jansenist than I am") are often elliptical, but don't be put off: with Rohmer, as with his New Wave cohorts, academic expertise is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding his intellectuality. Most...
...Pascal's Wager proposes that the promise of infinite gain makes belief in God's existence worthwhile no matter how small the possibility might seem, and that life should be devoted to renouncing the endless contradictions and passions of self which interfere with maintaining a consciousness of God. Jean-Louis rejects this doctrine, first on the grounds that it's bad probability ("a lottery"), and secondly that accepting certain worldly pleasures (within reason) doesn't lessen his religious faith. He lives by a sort of operational dialectic, using the science of probability to calculate his freedom within the limits...
...already assimilated. syncretized, digested as an alien but allowed point of view, to be heard but not listened to. For the same reason the film makes no argument, no appeal to the liberal mind: A. espouses no revolutionary ideology-no Marx, Lenin, or Mao-only obscure observations of Pascal, Rochefoucauld, and Herzen. Also The Revolutionary remains on a level of abstraction that defies quibbling over the analysis of specific locales or historical events. Williams simply focuses his efforts against cultural syncretism, and avoids drowning in bourgeois reasoning and rhetoric. His anti-ideological polemic takes a form similar to the thought...