After Pascal, “Reasons for Effects 3” (Laf. 83, Sel. 117), Pensées, 1669.
Pascal explicitly criticizes this common figure of the “semi-skilled,” undoubtedly inspired by Montaigne. Bourdieu, for his part, refers to “half-learned people.” What is important here is the idea that ignorance is both the starting point and the end point of the path to knowledge—which invites a posture of humility. Beyond this philosophical perspective, Pascal also hints at a dimension that could be described as Gnostic.
About ignorance
When we were born, we knew nothing, and most of us are still ignorant. Is this so serious? Indeed, the greatest philosophers and scientists readily admit that they know nothing.
What I know is that I know nothing
(“hén oȋda hóti oudèn oȋda“, Latin: “scio me nihil scire“) would have said Socrates (470-399), following Plato (427-347)1- The physicist Max Planck (1858-1947)2 said:
In this aim for an absolute reality, and its inability to be achieved, lies the irrational element inherent in scientific activity
.
Of course, there is a difference between the “absolute” ignorance and the “qualified” ignorance of the great scientists. Pascal (1623-1662) put it this way:
The people judges many things, because it is in the natural ignorance that is the true seat of man. Science has two ends that touch each other. The first is pure natural ignorance, where all men find themselves when they are born; the other end is where great souls arrive, who, having gone through all that men can know, find that they know nothing, and find themselves in the same ignorance from which they started, but it is a learned ignorance that knows itself. 3
However, it is their common ground that counts here: the most conscious humility, and it is the same that is found in the ignorant as in the learned who know their ignorance.4
This is a far cry from the arrogance of a Kant or a Heidegger, who date the beginnings of true metaphysical knowledge to their own work 5 and many others.
We see here what Rachid Benzine (1971-) formulates as follows: “the opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, it’s certainties” (Lettres à Nour, 2019), or what Flaubert called “the rage of wanting to conclude”:
- Yes, stupidity is in wanting to conclude.6
- The rage of wanting to conclude is one of the most fatal and sterile manias that belong to humanity. […] What pride and what nothingness! I see, on the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.7
The semi-clever
Pascal (1623-1662) invented the notion of semi-skilled (“demi-habile”), in reference to the way in which “persons of great birth” are honored:
Common people honor people of great birth. The semi-skilled despise them, saying that birth is not an advantage of the person, but of chance. The clever honor them, not by the thought of the people, but by the thought of behind.8.
These semi-skilled, whose contempt for the illusions of the people leads to contempt for the great, since the people revere them, develop this contempt from the little partial knowledge they have acquired and from incomplete reasoning. These are Bourdieu’s half-wits (“demi-savants”); they undergo the “obscurantism of reason”9).
So are we all semi-skilled? Wouldn’t arrogantly claiming not to be one confirm that we are?
Pascal draws this notion of demi-habile from Montaigne, who “places himself among the ”mestis[ métis] qui troublent le monde””10, but “he sees in Montaigne himself a form of demi-habileté”11
A similar view is found in Averroes, who asserts that while philosophy is necessary for scholars, it is not suitable for those who lack the necessary abilities (Fasl al-maqâl fîmâ bain ashsharî’ah wa al-hikmah min al-ittisâl (1179), “Book of the decisive discourse establishing the link between revelation and philosophy,” known as “The decisive discourse”).
Beyond skill
Pascal, however, doesn’t stop at skill. The rest of his text (still on the subject of how “persons of great birth” are honored) mentions devotees, then perfect Christians:
Devotees who have more zeal than knowledge despise them, despite that consideration which makes them honored by the skilled, because they judge them by a new light which piety gives them. But perfect Christians honor them by another, superior light. In this way, opinions flow from pro to con, according to the light one has.
Admittedly, this theme of honoring (or not) people of great birth is no longer of great importance today, but Pascal’s gradation: common people, semi-skilled, skilled, devout, perfect Christians, remains fundamentally interesting.
- The first stratum could be called “philosophical”, where we recognize our ignorance whether we are “common people” or “skilled”.
- The second could be called “gnostic”, in the sense of the “superior light” that enlightens the intelligence, as opposed to the small “lights” of reason, this illusion being known as the “obscurantism of the Enlightenment”.
This crucial distinction between reason (discursive thought and hypothetico-deductive reasoning subject to strict logic) and intelligence (where meaning is received)12 yet was not enough for Pascal. “Opinions go this way”, he writes, not even placing “perfect Christians”, despite their “superior light”, at an absolute summit.
This is because he is well aware that intelligence, however divine its receptivity, needs to be “pneumatized” (Borella), or spiritualized. Without the epiphany of the Spirit, this intelligence remains nothing but expectation, even if this expectation is recognition of its “ontological ignorance” (Borella).
In this respect, if ignorance is similar between the common man and the skilled man, it is just as similar between the common man and the perfect Christian. This is because gnosis, which can affect anyone of them, is necessarily “infinite ignorance”, “Learned ignorance,” said Nicolas of Cusa13. Thus: Blessed are the intelligences that know how to close their eyes
(St. Dionysius the Areopagite) in front of that which, in any case, “is beyond the eye” (Malebranche).
So let’s not try to be clever, at the risk of being only half clever; let’s simply acknowledge that we are ignorant.
Footnotes
- Socrates’ Apology (21d), Menon (80d 1-3), Hippias Minor (372b-372d).[↩]
- L’image du monde dans la physique contemporaine, Gonthier, Paris, 1963; Das Weltbild der neuen Physik (1929).[↩]
- Pensées, “Raisons des effets 3” (Laf. 83, Sel. 117).[↩]
- There is, however, the exception of “he who does not know and does not know that he does not know.” Such a person should be avoided, according to Chinese wisdom, whereas “he who does not know but knows that he does not know, educate him! He who knows but does not know that he knows, awaken him! As for those who know and know that they know, follow them!”[↩]
- e.g.: Kant, Prolegomena to all future metaphysics that will have the right to present itself as science (1783), trans. J. Tissot, Ladrange, 1805. “We must consider everything that has been done up to now as null and void”! he writes[↩]
- Letter of Sept. 4, 1850 to Louis Bouilhet, Correspondance, Gustave Flaubert , Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1896, t. I, p. 338.[↩]
- Letter of Oct. 23, 1863 to Melle Leroyer de Chantepie, Correspondance, Gustave Flaubert , Paris : L. Conard, 1929, 5esérie, p. 111.[↩]
- “Raison des effets. – Gradation”, Pensées, 1669.[↩]
- “Pierre Bourdieu, Blaise Pascal et les demi-savants de la philosophie”, Le Monde.fr, Jan. 23, 2012.[↩]
- Anselmo Gaia, “Les mestis qui troublent le monde”, in Ferrari (Emiliano), Gontier (Thierry), Panichi (Nicola) (dir.), Montaigne, penser en temps de guerres de Religion, Garnier, 2022.[↩]
- Thirouin Laurent, “Montaigne demi-habile? Fonction du recours à Montaigne dans les Pensées”, in Meurillon Christian (ed.), “Pascal. L’exercice de l’esprit”, Revue des sciences humaines, 244, Oct.-Dec. 1996, pp. 81-102[↩]
- see article “Reason and intelligence, the two sides of the mind”[↩]
- De docta ignorantia (1440).[↩]
