LA FENOMENOLOGIA DELLE PENSÉES
TRA INDIFFERENTISMO E DIVERSIONE

Manlio Antonio Forni

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the phenomenon of diversion and that of indifference in Pascal’s Pensées, in an attempt to identify the specificities of each of these phenomenological-existential modalities and understand how these interact with the anthropological model that Pascal outlines throughout the entire work. Starting from the multiple forms assumed by existence in the relationship that the human being has with himself, the figures of the deversus man and that of the indifferent one will be defined as the main protagonists, together with the religious man, of Pascal’s meditation, which detect in dictate of self-knowledge the fundamental pivot in relation to which to conceive individual variations within the phenomenological spectrum of the human. In this theoretical framework, man’s peculiar disposition towards sociality draws an anthropologically ambiguous image; in this regard, a critical comparison with V. Carraud’s analysis will bring out the strict link between existential postures that seem to be based on different ontological assumptions. Search for truth, awareness regarding the immortality of the soul and relationship with one’s own death will be the primary coefficients to be examined to account for the variety of human phenomenology and the contextual unity of its principles.