Audience, intention, and rhetoric in Pascal and Simone Weil. Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Stokes, Thomas Hubert, Jr. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 04/10/2021 03:52:56 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185120 INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. 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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 "AUDIENCE, INTENTION, AND RHETORIC IN PASCAL AND SIMONE WElL" by Thomas Hubert Stokes, Jr. A Dissertation Submitted to the DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH AND ITALIAN In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN FRENCH In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 199 0 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE 1 As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Thomas Hubert Stokes, Jr. "Audience, Intention, and Rhetoric in Pascal and Simone Wei1" entitled -------------------------------------------------------------------- and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement Doctor of Philosophy for the Degree of Professor Professor Ingeborg Kohn Date April 11, 1990 II 1110 prOf~~Cher Date 4dpri1 11,/1990 Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. Demorest 2 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the university Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT: . 4 CHAPTER I: PARALLEL EXPERIENCE 5 CHAPTER II: THE QUESTION OF AUDIENCE . 22 CHAPTER III: "JE EST UN AUTRE" .... • • 4 7 CHAPTER IV: THE ENIGMA OF INTENTION 69 CHAPTER V: THE INTENTION TO INSTRUCT . 140 CHAPTER VI: THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE 182 CHAPTER VII: RHETORIC AND ANTI-RHETORIC 217 CONCLUSION 262 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . 273 4 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines audience, intention, and rhetoric in the writings of Blaise Pascal and Simone weil. Despite the differences in historical period, ethnic heritage, sex, and milieux, which separate then, these two writers are astonishingly similar with regard to those for whom they wrote--audience--the subject matter of their writings-­ intention--and their skilled and self-conscious use of language in addressing their audiences and themes--rhetoric. Each of them wrote scientific or philosophical works, and polemical works, intended for a certain publici each of them then wrote, in the final years of thc:dr short lives, long notebook or journal entries, a record of spiritual experience which has since been edifying to others besides themselves. The guiding principle here is the function of language. This means how it works (rhetoric), but also, for what purpose (intention) and for whom (audience). We find many metaphors of function in Pascal and Simone Weil. The motivating concern of this dissertation is how Pascal and Simone Weil articulate, through language, God's response to man's yearnings toward God. CHAPTER I: PARALLEL EXPERIENCE :> Almost three hundred years elapsed between Blaise Pascal's death, in 1662, and the death of Simone Weil, in 1943. A great many factors separate them: historical period, ethnic heritage, experience, sex, milieux. Yet that which unites them is stronger, for it is a view of their lives and their various experiences as a dialogue with man and God, or more precisely, as a dialogue with and for man about and for God. Man's relationship to God is the central abiding issue for them in their mature writings, whether private or public. Since each of them died young--Pascal at 39, Simone Weil at 34--we must consider their writings as mature from an early age, and indeed, in the case of Pascal, his precociousness is in evidence early on. Pascal's early concern with science and mathematics, and Simone Weil's with mathematics and philosophy, no doubt evince already the seeds of t.heir mature thought, at least in so far as they prepared the ground for it, but the physical gave way to the spiritual as each began, some five years before his or her death, to write their most seriouE thoughts in journal form: Pascal, his Pensees towards an apology for the Christian faith, Simone Weil, her notebooks, published as the Cahiers, La Pesanteur et la grace (selections from the Cahiers) , and La Connaissance surnaturelle. By then they had already explored many questions. Pascal had already written the Traite des sons 6 (1634), the Essai pour les conigues (1640), the Experiences nouvelles tOl:.chant Ie vide (1647), the "Preface" to the Traite du vide (1651), and the Traite du triangle arithmetigue (1654), all presumably, according to the "esprit de geometrie." He had written the Lettres provinciales (1656- 1657) with the "espirit de finesse" (Lafuma 512). Simone Weil had written essays on Greek culture and on pre-figurements of Christianity in ancient Greece, later published in La Source grecgue and Les intuitions prechretiennes, on man in society in L'Enracinement and the writings in Oppression et liberte and certain other books, and on her (and other human beings') relationship to the Church and to God in Lettre a un religieux, in "Reflexions sur Ie bon usage des etudes scolaires en vue de I' amour de Dieti:," and in her letters to Father Perrin on her spiritual life and development. Each of them had moved from the physical (in the old, Aristotelian sense of phusis, "nature"; see C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words) to the spiritual, from the outer to the inner world of an individual. This is one way of looking at their development. Another is to consider it a movement from the mind to the heart; or from reason to faith; or yet again, from the outer to the inner life of human beings. Each of these has its advantages, but each has concomitant weaknesses. To speak of an opposition between outer and inner life is elegant 7 and economical of expression, but one must immediately ask: Does this refer to one person or to all people, to an individual or to humankind? Also, despite the "periode mondaine" which Pascal lived out and his years at Port-Royal (see Jean Mesnard, Pascal: L' Homme et I' ouevre; Robert J. Nelson, Pascal: Adversary and Advocate), Pascal intended to influence at least some others than himself at every stage of his life, from the scientific treatises to the Lettres provinciales to the planned Apology. Simone Weil spent much of her life teaching or trying to help the French working classes, both of which activities might be called "engagement," certainly in her case, as she seems to have lived her whole life in this way (see Simone Petrement, simone Weil: A Life; Jacques Cabaud, simone Weil: A Fellowship in Love; J.-M. Perrin and G. Thibon, Simone weil telle que nous I ' avons connue). She must have meant her essays to be persuasive, or if her very real humility (see Petrement, et al.) would not have permitted that, then at least she meant to be in dialogue with others, to reach out to them. The inner and outer worlds are thus interdependent.