title: Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
author:  Dominique Janicaud 
description: Dominique Janicaud is known to American readers from his work on Heidegger in Heidegger from Metaphysics to Thought.
zlib_text: ## 1657
  
  
  ### THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS
  
  
  
  
  
  by Blaise Pascal
  
  
  translated by Thomas M’Crie
  
  
  LETTER I
  
  
  
  
  
  Paris, January 23, 1656
  
  
  SIR,
  
  
  We were entirely mistaken. It was only yesterday that I was
  
  
  undeceived. Until that time I had laboured under the impression that
  
  
  the disputes in the Sorbonne were vastly important, and deeply
  
  
  affected the interests of religion. The frequent convocations of an
  
  
  assembly so illustrious as that of the Theological Faculty of Paris,
  
  
  attended by so many extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances, led
  
  
  one to form such high expectations that it was impossible to help
  
  
  coming to the conclusion that the subject was most extraordinary.
  
  
  You will be greatly surprised, however, when you learn from the
  
  
  following account the issue of this grand demonstration, which, having
  
  
  made myself perfectly master of the subject, I shall be able to tell
  
  
  you in very few words.
  
  
  Two questions, then, were brought under examination; the one a
  
  
  question of fa