Wagering on an Ironic God - by Thomas S Hibbs (Hardcover)

About the Book

Pascal thus wagers all on the irony of a God who both startles and astonishes wisdom's true lovers.

Book Synopsis

"Philosophers startle ordinary people. Christians astonish the philosophers."
--Pascal, Pensées

In Wagering on an Ironic God Thomas S. Hibbs both startles and astonishes. He does so by offering a new interpretation of Pascal's Pensées and by showing the importance of Pascal in and for a philosophy of religion.

Hibbs resists the temptation to focus exclusively on Pascal's famous "wager" or to be beguiled by the fragmentary and presumably incomplete nature of Pensées. Instead he discovers in Pensées a coherent and comprehensive project, one in which Pascal contributed to the ancient debate over the best way of life--a life of true happiness and true virtue.

Hibbs situates Pascal in relation to early modern French philosophers, particularly Montaigne and Descartes. These three French thinkers offer distinctly modern accounts of the good life. Montaigne advocates the private life of authentic self-expression, while Descartes favors the public goods of progressive enlightenment science and its promise of the mastery of nature. Pascal, by contrast, renders an account of the Christian religion that engages modern subjectivity and science on its own terms and seeks to vindicate the wisdom of the Christian vision by showing that it, better than any of its rivals, truly understands human nature.

Though all three philosophers share a preoccupation with Socrates, each finds in that figure a distinct account of philosophy and its aims. Pascal finds in Socrates a philosophy rich in irony: philosophy is marked by a deep yearning for wisdom that is never wholly achieved. Philosophy is a quest without attainment, a love never obtained. Absent Cartesian certainty or the ambivalence of Montaigne, Pascal's practice of Socratic irony acknowledges the disorder of humanity without discouraging its quest. Instead, the quest for wisdom alerts the seeker to the presence of a hidden God.

God, according to Pascal, both conceals and reveals, fulfilling the philosophical aspiration for happiness and the good life only by subverting philosophy's very self-understanding. Pascal thus wagers all on the irony of a God who both startles and astonishes wisdom's true lovers.

Review Quotes

Wagering on an Ironic God is clear and bright, brisk and vigorous. These are excellences in any work but hold a special luster in a book on Pascal, about whom it is so difficult to write well and so easy to falter. It offers an interpretation of his thought that is complex and nuanced--one is tempted even to say profound, if the use of that word in earnest is still permitted in Anglophone philosophy.

--Virgil Martin Nemoianu "American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly"

Thomas Hibbs's exploration of Pascal's thought offers an important corrective to a common tendency that takes Pascal's Pensées as the idiosyncratic, private musings of a solitary thinker. In Hibbs's work, Pascal emerges not as a lonely genius but as a thinker very much in conversation with the philosophical tradition, especially René Descartes and Michel de Montaigne...After engaging Wagering on an Ironic God, readers will find their encounters with Pascal complicated and enriched.

--Randall G. Colton "The Thomist"

...Thomas Hibbs is intent on bringing Pascal and his distinctive thought to the fore. In doing so, he makes a signal contribution to our understanding of modern philosophy itself. He not only rehabilitates Pascal, but sheds important light on his philosophical interlocutors, Montaigne and Descartes. This book could be profitably read merely for its treatments of Montaigne and Descartes. But the triangle of Montaigne, Descartes, and Pascal is historically apposite and philosophically quite illuminating.

--Paul Seaton "The Review of Politics"

An original and probing interpretation of Pascal's wager, reconstructed along the line of Socratic ignorance.

--John J. Conley, S.J "International Philosophical Quarterly"

Hibbs's book is appropriate for those interested in Pascal's thought, and the major philosophical influences that played a central role in the forming of Pascal's thought. It also serves as a corrective for the common tendency to focus only on the wager, while ignoring all else found in Pascal's Pensées.

--Jeff Jordan "The Review of Metaphysics"

Towards the end of Wagering on an Ironic God, Thomas Hibbs asks his reader: 'How much more rewarding would our discussions (dare we say our lives?) be if they were informed by the writings of Montaigne, Descartes, and Pascal?'. Wagering reads like an invitation to such a discussion with Hibbs, and evidences many of the delights and peculiarities of such a conversation.

--J. Columcille Dever "Modern Theology"

About the Author

Thomas S. Hibbs is Dean of the Honors College and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture at Baylor University.