In the Pensees, Pascal introduces the idea of the imaginary self-versus the real self. He states that it is impossible for us to love the substance of a person's soul, and it would also be wrong to do so. Our inability to find the essence of the soul is attributed to our corrupted nature, while the wrongness is ascribed to our pride of trying to transgress the natural order. After proving the emptiness of self-love, it is then necessary for us to look at the essentiality of self-annihilation, which, according to Pascal, is not the same as self-destruction but a healthy way of living life. Unlike Thomas Aquinas, who believes that there is a balance between maintaining the private self and submitting ourselves to God, Pascal thinks that the two are inherently contradictory, and the only way to solve the problem is to annihilate ourselves. He equates self-annihilation to faith and explains that there is no end to this self-annihilation but a constant practice.
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