Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference

Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference is the first English translation of Pierre Manents penetrating engagement with the seventeenth century polymath and apologist for the Christian faith, Blaise Pascal. Blaise Pascal (16231662), 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 Manents investigation of Pascals 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 Pascals writings, including his famous Penses, appeals to the readers 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.