Pascal "Les deux infinis"

Pascal is in the overlap of two paradigms. He has one foot in the medieval way of thinking, believing that the world has an established order. Even if he argues that we are not capable of understanding the infinite meanings and things smaller and bigger than ourselves (meanings that the medieval thought they could read in the relationship of the quality of things), Pascal still believes in the interrelationship of things by a “lien natural et insensible qui lie les plus eloignées et les plus différents” (69) which constitutes the harmony of the World and of which God is the ultimate proof.

On the other hand, his thoughts about the place of man in the Universe (“incapable de savoir certainement et d’ignorer absolument”) takes him closer to the way of thinking of man in the Modern era. The futility and limitation of man prefigures the twentieth century existentialism, which argues that man is ephemeral and limited but without Pascal's guarantee of meaning by the existance of a God.

Pascal states that there is an impossibility of knowing everything because knowledge is infinite and human beings are finite. He accepts the limits of man and renounces to the faith in reason to reach knowledge. However he will prove the existence of God by logic, saying that as we are incapable of knowing everything we cannot prove God’s existence other than by our faith:

“Nous (les homes finis) ne connaissons ni l’existence ni la nature de Dieu, parce qu’il n’a ni étendue ni bornes. Mais par la foi nous connaissons son existence; par la gloire nous connaitrons sa nature”

“S’il y a un Dieu, il est infiniment incomprehensible, puisque, n’ayant ni parties ni bornes, il n’a nul rapport à nous. Nous sommes donc incapables de connaitre ni ce qu’il est, ni s’il est.”

Borges reply to this argument in the text “Argumentum Ornithologicum” (1960) mocks the need of humans to prove the existence of God by reason. Would Pascal have honestly agreed with him if he had read him? Or would he have been offended by the joke?