The Errors of Pagan Philosophy

Abstract

While the apologetic writings which Nicole directed against the Protestants are much more extensive, the briefer and less specialised discussions found elsewhere, and chiefly in the volume De l’Éducation d’un Prince, afford a wider view of his conception of religious belief. Writing in 1670 he could draw on the old Thomist and the new Cartesian rationalisms together with appeals to intuitive sentiment. His apologetic is eclectic but independently-minded, not least in its treatment of the arguments of Pascal, whose influence is constantly perceptible. In the treatise which gives its name to the De l’Éducation d’un Prince, Pascal’s Pensées are straightforwardly summarised for the benefit of the pupil, ostensibly from the Port-Royal edition, but probably following the order of the manuscripts. And even before the publication of the Pensées or of the Essais de morale there are echoes of Pascal in Nicole’s writings, notably in a passage from the tenth of the Imaginaires of 1665, where Nicole is concerned with the roles of authority and reason in religious belief.