  Having assumed that there are objective moral obligations, Pascal directs his critique, both in the Provincial Letters and in his contributions to the Écrits des Curés de Paris, to the claim, attributed to Jesuit casuists, that one can change the moral character of actions by changing one's intention at the time of their performance. On this account, if an agent acts immorally while formally intending to act immorally, nothing can excuse the action in question. In all other cases, however, Pascal described Jesuit casuisty as teaching that it is possible to modify the moral character of an action by applying the method of “directing the intention, which consists in selecting something that is permitted as the objective of one's actions” (Letters: I, 649). This escape from moral responsibility relies on the principle that “it is the intention which determines the [moral] quality of an action” (Letters: I, 679).