Autorentext

Pierre Manent is professor emeritus of political philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He is the author of numerous books, including Montaigne: Life without Law (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020).

Klappentext

Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference is the first English translation of Pierre Manent's penetrating engagement with the seventeenth century polymath and apologist for the Christian faith, Blaise Pascal. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was the first Christian apologist to address modern human beings on their own terms and present a defense of the Christian religion that still resonates today. A major publishing and intellectual event in France when it first appeared in 2022, Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference is Pierre Manent's investigation of Pascal's exploration of Christianity in the wake of a sharp atheistic turn at the dawn of the modern state and modern science. Comprehensive in scope and profound in treatment, this engagement with all of Pascal's writings, including his famous Pensées, appeals to the reader's head and heart. Manent emphasizes the joy that comes from engaging the truth of faith, and he argues that we are diminished by forgetting the unique and distinctive contributions of Christianity. More than brilliant exegesis, Manent enlists Pascal in a much greater endeavor: to make what he calls "the Christian proposition" concerning God and man intelligible to Europeans who have made it their business to ignore the religion that founded Europe and the larger Western world.

Inhalt

Foreword by Daniel J. Mahoney

Translator's Introduction

Author's Foreword: Europe and the Question of Christianity

1. Confronting Atheism

2. How God Comes to Man

3. To Prove God?

4. The Human Phenomenon

5. Force and Justice in Human Order

6. The Illusions of the Self

7. Greatness and Misery

8. Liberator and Mediator

9. The Style of the Gospel

10. Certainty and Salvation

    Conclusion: Fear and Joy