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  1. What do you think he was like in his early years? Pascal lived only 39 years. From the age of 14 to the age of 23, he is actually engaged only in pure exact science, but at the age of 23 he becomes quite an ardent Jansenist – this is a philosophical trend in religious, Christian, rather Catholic than Protestant thought. Since then, he has written many Christian philosophical works in the spirit of Protestant ethics, arguing with the Jesuits. He was against orthodoxy, dogmatics, but he was never against religion and, in particular, contemporary Christianity. It occupied all his thoughts, and he interpreted it in the context of Platonic philosophy and the new teachings of rationalism for his time. At the age of 31, he experienced mystical experiences and visions-like a number of other thinkers of different times – and decided to leave the world and live in seclusion, continuing to write philosophical and spiritual works. Religious visions almost never occur to non – religious people-on the contrary, they come exclusively to those whose thoughts are completely captured by religious ideas. But his Jansenist community did not leave him alone, and he actively engaged in its affairs and religious disputes with the Papists until his death.

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