'The first modern man'
Lionel Trilling elucidates , “The French Marxist critic Lucien Goldmann speaks of Pascal as 'the first modern man'. By this he means that Pascal anticipated the ideas of the German thinkers who followed Kant, in particular Goethe, Hegel, and Marx. One may the more readily suppose this to be true because of the affinity the three men felt with Diderot-if it is Diderot rather than Pascal himself whom Hegel chose to exemplify the modern anthropology, one reason is that in Rameau's Nephew, even more decisively than in the Pensees of Pascal, society is understood to be the field on which man runs his spiritual course.” Pascal illustrates his modernism through the deconstruction of spirituality; he realistically explains obstacles that are inherent in safeguarding authentic Christianity. He efficaciously constructs his argument by stressing how humans are intrinsically estranged from cosmic which is intended to magnify their spiritual lives.
Money - "The principle of the inauthentic in human existence"
Lionel Trilling affirms, “Money, in short, is the principle of the inauthentic in human existence. 'If I have no money for travel, I have no need-no real and self-realizing need-for travel. If I have a vocation for study but no money for it, then I have no vocation, i.e. no effective, genuine vocation. Conversely, if I really have no vocation for study but have money and the urge for it, then I have an effective vocation.' And the section of the Manuscripts on money ends with these words: 'Let us assume man to be man, and his relation to the world a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, etc.” Money sponsors synthetic associations by quantifying connections which should not be monetized. Over-dependence on money obstructs humanity from unqualifiedly relishing existence. Money cannot be exploited to replace aspects such as affection and conviction; an attempt to swap them with money spontaneously provokes inauthenticity.
‘The Wordsworthian epiphany’
Lionel Trilling expounds, “The Wordsworthian epiphany has two distinct though related forms. In one, spirit shows forth from Nature; the sudden revelation communicates to the poet a transcendent message which bears upon the comprehension of human existence or upon the direction his own life should take. An example of this kind of epiphany is Wordsworth's experience of the mountain dawn which dedicates him to the priesthood of the imagination. The other, less grandiose and more closely connected with Joyce's epiphanies,' has as its locus and agent some unlikely person-a leech, gatherer, a bereft and deserted woman, an old man on the road-who, without intention, by something said or done, or not done, suddenly manifests the quality of his own particular being and thus implies the wonder of being in general.” ‘Wordsworth’s epiphanies’ expound the various formulas of being. The epiphanies manifest God’s assortment in terms of formations of human beings. Even the deprived human beings experience the epiphanic spiritual appearance of God. Through the epiphanies a reader construes that human presence is not unequivocally immaculate.
