En la desolación de la Francia en poder de las guerras de religión, para Montaigne, la imposibilidad de distinguir entre civilización y barbarie se enlaza al rechazo de la distinción misma entre el hombre y el animal: es el abandono del motivo humanístico de la grandeza y centralidad del hombre en el plano del universo. Sostiene, de hecho, una amistad 'pitagórica' con respecto a los animales. Están completamente ausentes en Montaigne aquellos animales fantásticos, monstruosos, que los bestiarios medievales a menudo (...) sitúan en regiones lejanas del espacio y el tiempo, y que una lábil frontera separaba de los animales reales. In the midst of France's desolation caused by the religious wars, Montaigne rejects the distinction between civilization and barbarism as much as the distinction between man and animal-which means a rejection to the humanistic idea of man's greatness and centrality regarding the universe. He supports, in fact, a "Pythagoric" friendship with animals. In Montaigne there will not be found those fantastic, monstrous animals that the medieval bestiaries located in a faraway space and time, and that only a labile line separated from real animals. (shrink)

I analyze the complex relations between Pascal and the three figures of Montaigne, Descartes, and St. Augustine, and the relations the first two figures bear to St. Augustine. For Pascal's philosophy, one is in effect a resource , another a way of thinking that he makes his own , and yet another serves as a model . I further investigate Pascal's anti-Augustinism, that is, some of the points of resistance in Pascal against the thought of St. Augustine. Central to this (...) investigation is the famous rapprochement between the cogitos of Augustine and Descartes, which requires a consideration of what, for Pascal, it means "to say the same thing." This analysis leads us to two conclusions: first, Augustine's The City of God should be placed among the number of works that Pascal did not read; second, there are fundamental philosophical reasons for Pascal to reject certain theses central to that work. Above all, there should no longer be any need to assume a merely abstract conception of an unproblematic Augustinianism in Pascal. (shrink)