Dal Pra e il "problema Pascal"

A Question of Method. Mario Dal Pra's engagement with Blaise Pascal was an unusual theoretical hand-­to-­hand combat that lasted for three decades. This tenacity or, perhaps better, this obstinacy of Dal Pra in his engagement with Pascal seems attributable to the fact that, in his view, the French philosopher embodies a problem: a historiographical problem of interpreting a precise moment in modern thought but also a problem of method. After briefly recalling the aspects of the historiographical problem embodied by Pascal, the Author then dwells on a series of annotations which Dal Pra consigns to some manuscript pages «On the History of Philosophy» and on the figure of «the Intellectual». We will thus show how Pascal is a challenge to Dal Pra in his own work as historian of philosophy and intellectual. [Publisher's Text].