An idea · Early Modern · first attested 1670
The Reasons of the Heart
We know first principles by the heart, not by proof.
"The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know." Pascal is making a claim about how we actually reach our first principles. That space has three dimensions, that there will be time tomorrow, that this person loves me – none of this is deduced from axioms; the heart grasps it, a distinct organ of knowing, immediate and certain where proof is helpless. Faith, for Pascal, belongs to this same order. It is why the metaphysical proofs of God leave him cold: they convince the head and never move the person.