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Abstract
Blaise Pascal's critique of Descartes is in fact a critique of modern political philosophy, by virtue of modem political thought's being based on Cartesian epistemology. According to Descartes, reason acts autonomously and without reference to other belief-forming faculties, hence its designation here as autonomous reason.
Thomas Hobbes based his principles of justice on autonomous reason. The ability of reasoning that provided them was, in his system, made possible by an act of reasoning itself. This made reason autonomous by ridding it of all nonrational factors, but also made him vulnerable to Pascal's chief criticism of Descartes, which was that due to the frailties of human beings and the inherent structure of logical thought, reason ultimately depends on pre-rational intuitions and desires.
