Collective epistemic vices in Blaise Pascal's Provinciales
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21395281 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aditi Chaturvedi (Philosophy Ashoka University Sonepat India, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 253-274 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Southern Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-4283 • E-ISSN: 2041-6962 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/sjp.12613 |
| OpenAlex | W4405893006 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 39 |
Les Provinciales (1656–1657) by Blaise Pascal is best known today for its scathing attack on the Jesuits. Most contemporary accounts treat the work either as a gem of polemical epistolography or of theological and historical interest as a depiction of the debates between the Jansenists and the Jesuits in seventeenth‐century France. In general, Pascal's epistemology is either ignored in Anglophone epistemology or explored in relation to Descartes or other more “substantial” epistemologists. This article argues that such marginalization of Les Provinciales —and Pascal—is a mistake. I contend that Pascal's work offers a fruitful case study in collective epistemic vices. Contrary to the common view that Les Provinciales is merely a series of Jansenist ad hominem attacks, I argue that Pascal's true aim was to expose the epistemic corruption of the Jesuits to a broader audience. In the first section, I offer a few remarks on contemporary vice epistemology and briefly defend the theoretical framework that I rely on. In the second section, I turn to the letters themselves . I first show how Pascal was acutely sensitive to the sociality of knowledge production, then discuss Les Provinciales as a case study of collective epistemic vices
Epistemology · Mistake · Pascal (unit) · Political science · Computer Science · Historical Philosophy and Science · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
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Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism
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The Epistemology of Resistance
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A group identification account of collective epistemic vices
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The Relevance of Credibility Excess in a Proportional View of Epistemic Injustice
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |