An imagined gathering
1655 · Paris, France
Pascal hosts Spinoza and Locke in Paris and puts the wager to two philosophers who will not take the bet.
Pascal has withdrawn from the world to Port-Royal, but he keeps a table in Paris for visitors whose minds he respects. Spinoza, in the city on business, and Locke, travelling as a young physician and diplomat, have both come at his invitation.
Pascal lays out the wager over mutton pottage and a game pie: since reason cannot decide the question of God, the wise man weighs the stakes. Spinoza objects that a wager cannot manufacture belief and that the argument demeans the love of understanding; Locke objects that the probabilities are not equal. Pascal, who is ill and knows he has not long to live, is unbothered. The evening ends over marchpane and a posset.
Host: Blaise Pascal
Baruch Spinoza — Dutch philosopher and lens grinder, in Paris on family business.
John Locke — English physician and diplomat, at the start of a long career.
First course
a period dish
First course
a period dish
Dessert
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Blaise Pascal
Pascal's argument that reason cannot settle the existence of God, and that the stakes make belief the rational bet.
Baruch Spinoza
Spinoza's single infinite substance in which mind and body are two aspects of the same reality.
John Locke
Locke's account of government as a trust held from the people, revocable when it fails them.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.