french philosophy – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

A Summer with Pascal

By Scott J. Pearson | November 10, 2025November 10, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I’m a huge fan of French polymath Blaise Pascal simply because he provokes thought. Besides his scientific and mathematical contributions, he died before forming his greatest philosophical work into a coherent defense of the plausibleness of Christianity. Instead, they were left as a series of fragments for us to ponder in the following centuries. Simply titled Pensées (or “thoughts”), they give us insight into the spiritual life of one of history’s greatest scientific geniuses. This…

Religion-Philosophy

Gravity & Grace by Simone Weil

By Scott J. Pearson | January 8, 2023January 8, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Simone Weil, a twentieth-century French philosopher and political activist, possessed excellent academic training and worked in the Spanish leftist political movements. Around the advent of World War II, however, she became disillusioned with the totalitarian politics of Europe and made a reflective move inward. She began to convert to a Roman Catholic form of Christianity. Unfortunately, she died in obscurity before the war’s end as a result of a longstanding struggle with anorexia. She had…

History

The Death of Camus by Giovanni Catelli

By Scott J. Pearson | January 18, 2021January 18, 2021 by Scott J. Pearson

Albert Camus was a towering intellectual figure during and after the Second World War in France. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature and tried to stand for truth in an era of ideology. However, on January 4, 1960, he tragically died in his prime in a car wreck while traveling back to Paris. This book tries to make sense of this tragedy, approximately fifty years after. Catelli excels at setting up the circumstantial case…