Il faut savoir désespérer où il faut. Pascal et le désespoir de la philosophie

Whether it's a question of "human philosophy" or of the Christian understanding of action in a regime of efficacious grace, for Pascal despair is always the effect of an error of appreciation. We overestimate our misery and powerlessness, we make them the whole of our being and our action, and so we consider ourselves only miserable and totally powerless. Despair should therefore be prevented and neutralised when it takes hold of the soul, never advocated or fed. Never - except perhaps in one case, and it is this case that we would like to address in this paper. A case that is all the more paradoxical because it is precisely in its proper place, where it is opportune and necessary, that despair appears difficult if not almost impossible to produce.