Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.”
Blaise Pascal · Early modern philosophy · Early modern · notes of the 1650s–1662; published 1670
What does it mean?
The usual reading is a warning against a false height: human beings are a middle thing, and the attempt to live as a pure angel does not make an angel, it produces the beast you were trying to skip. A competing reading hears a plea to be mediocre. The fragment does not praise lukewarmness. It sits among the Pensées on the human mixture of greatness and wretchedness, near the thinking reed. Pascal thinks the two sides have to be known together. Acting the angel is refusing the condition. The unfortunate result is brutality, the thing the pose was meant to have left behind. It is a moral psychology in one sentence, written as a note, not as a finished chapter.
Did Blaise Pascal really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Trotter's English, which follows the Brunschvicg numbering. Lafuma and Sellier number this fragment differently, and those numbers are not asserted here. The French is: L'homme n'est ni ange ni bête, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la bête.
Where it comes from
Pensées, Brunschvicg 358, in W. F. Trotter's translation
Approximate date: notes of the 1650s–1662; published 1670.
How to use it
A manager in Edinburgh who declares a zero-tolerance culture of pure integrity, and then hides a mistake because saints do not make mistakes, has acted the angel and produced the brute. The sentence does not say standards are naive. It says a picture of yourself that cannot include failure will be maintained by force and fibs. Colleagues see the brute. The pose was the method. Pascal's point is the reversal, not a shrug.
A mindset reading
Watch the moral posture that cannot admit a mixed motive. The habit is to ask what brutality is being used to protect the angel costume. He is severe about grandeur that will not look at misery. The thinking reed, already in this library, is the other half: weakness that knows itself is not contemptible. This fragment is what happens when weakness will not know itself.
Understand the philosophy
The Pensées are notes toward an apology for Christian faith, ordered differently by later editors. Brunschvicg 358 is one note in the cluster on man's disproportion. The key contrast is angel and brute. Pascal's wager and the silence of the infinite spaces are other notes, not this argument. Here the claim is psychological. Pretending to a nature you do not have does not elevate you. It degrades the nature you do have.
- self
- virtue
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading is a warning against a false height: human beings are a middle thing, and the attempt to live as a pure angel does not make an angel, it produces the beast you were trying to skip. A competing reading hears a plea to be mediocre. The fragment does not praise lukewarmness. It sits among the Pensées on the human mixture of greatness and wretchedness, near the thinking reed. Pascal thinks the two sides have to be known together. Acting the angel is refusing the condition. The unfortunate result is brutality, the thing the pose was meant to have left behind. It is a moral psychology in one sentence, written as a note, not as a finished chapter.
Did Blaise Pascal really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Trotter's English, which follows the Brunschvicg numbering. Lafuma and Sellier number this fragment differently, and those numbers are not asserted here. The French is: L'homme n'est ni ange ni bête, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la bête.
Which work is it in?
Pensées, Brunschvicg 358, in W. F. Trotter's translation Approximate date: notes of the 1650s–1662; published 1670.