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Wagering on an Ironic God - Pascal on Faith and Philosophy (Hardcover)
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Wagering on an Ironic God - Pascal on Faith and Philosophy (Hardcover)
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Philosophers startle ordinary people. Christians astonish the
philosophers."" - Pascal, Pens? (R)es In Wagering on an Ironic God
Thomas S. Hibbs both startles and astonishes. He does so by
offering a new interpretation of Pascal's Pens? (R)es 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 Pens? (R)es. Instead he discovers
in Pens? (R)es 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.
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