On The Vertigo of The Infinite

Blaise PascalPenséesSection III OF THE NECESSITY OF THE WAGER

Swallowed by Eternity

Featured Excerpt

Blaise Pascal

Pensées

...the objections of this one and that one only go against themselves, and not against religion. All that infidels say ... 202 [From those who are in despair at being without faith, we see that God does not enlighten them; but as to the rest, we see there is a God who makes them blind.] 203 Fascinatio nugacitatis.[87]--That passion may not harm us, let us act as if we had only eight hours to live. 204 If we ought to devote eight hours of life, we ought to devote a hundred years. 205

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?

Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis.[88] 206 The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. 207 How many kingdoms know us not! 208 Why is my knowledge limited? Why my stature? Why my life to one hundred years rather than to a thousand? What reason has nature had for giving me such, and for choosing this number rather than another in the infinity of those from which there is no more reason to choose one than another, trying nothing else? 209 Art thou less a slave b...

In Plain Terms

Pascal looks at the new, scientifically expanding universe and feels not wonder, but claustrophobia. He realizes that his specific existence—being alive in this exact moment, occupying this exact physical space—has no obvious justification. The sheer scale of the cosmos reduces a human lifespan to a rounding error. Without a clear reason for why he is here rather than anywhere else, the universe feels less like a home and more like a void that is actively erasing him. The physical metaphors of being swallowed and engulfed translate a mathematical concept of infinity into a visceral panic attack. The individual is not just small; the individual is entirely unjustified.

The Root Issues

The terror of the infinite forces a reckoning with the grounds of our own reality.

Why am I here rather than elsewhere, now rather than another time, given the vastness of eternity and infinity?

If values are human creations, can they resolve the dread of arbitrary placement?

Why Blaise Pascal Cares

Pascal writes from within the austere Augustinian-Jansenist tradition, which insists on the absolute misery of human beings left to their own devices. This excerpt is not a diary entry of a depressed mathematician; it is a calculated apologetic weapon. By adopting the persona of a secular person confronting the new Cartesian cosmos—a universe stripped of medieval spiritual hierarchy—Pascal forces the reader into a corner. He wants to induce existential vertigo. The goal is to shatter the illusion of human self-sufficiency. If the universe is a silent, infinite abyss, the only escape from the crushing weight of arbitrary existence is to seek a transcendent creator. The dread is the necessary prelude to grace.

Order vs Chaos

A Kindred Spirit

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

...om one sociable kind action without intermission to pass unto another, God being ever in thy mind. VII. The rational commanding part, as it alone can stir up and turn itself; so it maketh both itself to be, and everything that happeneth, to appear unto itself, as it will itself. VIII. According to the nature of the universe all things particular are determined, not according to any other nature, either about compassing and containing; or within, dispersed and contained; or without, depending.

Either this universe is a mere confused mass, and an intricate context of things, which shall in time be scattered and dispersed again: or it is an union consisting of order, and administered by Providence. If the first, why should I desire to continue any longer in this fortuit confusion and commixtion? or why should I take care for anything else, but that as soon as may be I may be earth again? And why should I trouble myself any more whilst I seek to please the Gods?

Whatsoever I do, dispersion is my end, and will come upon me whether I will or no. But if the latter be, then am not I religious in vain; then will I be quiet and patient, and put my trust in Him, who is the Governor of all. IX. Whensoever by some present hard occurrences thou art constrained to be in some sort troubled and vexed, return unto thyself as soon as may be, and be not out of tune longer than thou must needs. For so shalt thou be the better able to keep thy part another time, and to...

Analysis

Marcus Aurelius confronts the exact same fork in the road: either the universe is governed by providence, or it is a chaotic, accidental heap. Like Pascal, the Roman emperor recognizes that a universe without deliberate administration renders human striving absurd. However, their traditions dictate entirely different responses to this abyss. Where Pascal uses the threat of chaos to induce a desperate leap toward a transcendent God, Marcus Aurelius uses it to cultivate Stoic detachment. If it is chaos, the emperor reasons, one should simply accept the return to dust without complaint. Pascal demands salvation from the void; the Stoic prepares to dissolve peacefully into it.

Man as Valuator

A Reasoned Opposition

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

...the people from whom cometh my name—the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me. “To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will”—this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and became powerful and permanent thereby. “To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses”—teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.

Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven. Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself “man,” that is, the valuator. Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things. Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones!

Change of values—that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator. Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation. Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables. Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the...

Analysis

Nietzsche looks at Pascal’s trembling persona and diagnoses a catastrophic failure of will. For Nietzsche, the realization that the universe does not care about us is not a reason to despair, but the very precondition for human freedom. He argues that values and significance are not discovered in the fabric of the cosmos, nor are they handed down by a divine ordainer; they are forged by human beings to make survival possible. Pascal’s desperate question regarding who placed him here is, in Nietzsche’s framework, the plea of a slave looking for a master. The hollowness of existence is a feature, not a bug. It is the blank canvas upon which the human valuator asserts their own meaning, transforming the terrifying nowhere into a deliberate here.

Synthesis

The collision between Pascal’s demand for an external ordainer and Nietzsche’s insistence on internal creation leaves the modern individual in a precarious bind. If Pascal is right, the attempt to generate our own meaning is merely a psychological coping mechanism, a temporary distraction from the crushing silence of infinite space.

If Nietzsche is right, Pascal’s terror is a self-inflicted wound, born of an outdated need for cosmic parental supervision. The remaining pressure is whether human-generated values possess enough density to withstand the sheer mathematical weight of eternity.

One must decide if the self is robust enough to anchor its own existence, or if a self-authored purpose will eventually be swallowed by the very abyss it tries to ignore.