Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference - (Catholic Ideas for a Secular World) by Pierre Manent (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Manent turns to Pascal to recover the distinctiveness of the Christian proposition, to remind contemporary readers what Christianity is, and why it matters." --Thomas S. Hibbs, author of A Theology of Creation

"Manent ventures boldly into the centuries-long conversation on the interpretation of Pascal, armed with a lifetime of deep study of the human condition, and distracted by no concern or agenda other than to see the truth in all possible clarity. The fruit of his effort is a sustained and multifaceted reflection that is clearly an epochal contribution to Pascal studies and gift of the highest value to all those who ponder what it means to be human." --Ralph C. Hancock, author of Calvin and the Foundation of Modern Politics

About the Author

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.

Paul Seaton is an independent scholar of political philosophy, with a special focus on French political thought. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary French thinkers, as well as translated works by Rémi Brague, Benjamin Constant, Chantal Delsol, and Pierre Manent.

Daniel J. Mahoney is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus at Assumption University.