Paperback / softback | |
May 7, 2021 | |
9780813233840 | |
English | |
264 | |
8.50 Inches (US) | |
5.50 Inches (US) | |
$29.95 USD | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Why Read Pascal?
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is known in the English-speaking world principally for the wager (an argument that it is rational to do what will affect belief in God and irrational not to), and, more generally, for the Pensées, a collection of philosophical and theological fragments of unusual emotional and intellectual intensity collected and published after his death. He thought and wrote, however, about much more than this: mathematics; physics; grace, freedom, and predestination; the nature of the church; the Christian life; what it is to write and read; the order of things; the nature and purpose of human life; and more. He was among the polymaths of the seventeenth century, and among the principal apologists of his time for the Catholic faith, against both its Protestant opponents and its secular critics.
Why Read Pascal? engages all the major topics of Pascal's theological and philosophical writing. It provides discussion of Pascal's literary style, his linked understandings of knowledge and of the various orders of things, his anthropology (with special attention to his presentation of affliction, death, and boredom), his politics, and his understanding of the relation between Christianity and Judaism. Pascal emerges as a literary stylist of a high order, a witty and polemical writer (never have the Jesuits been more thoroughly eviscerated), and, perhaps above all else, as someone concerned to show to Christianity's cultured despisers that the fabric of their own lives implies the truth of Christianity if only they can be brought to look at what their lives are like.
Why Read Pascal? is the first book in English in a generation to engage all the principal themes in Pascal's theology and philosophy. The book takes Pascal seriously as an interlocutor and as a contributor of continuing relevance to Catholic thought; but it also offers criticisms of some among the positions he takes, showing, in doing so, how lively his writing remains for us now.
Why Read Pascal? engages all the major topics of Pascal's theological and philosophical writing. It provides discussion of Pascal's literary style, his linked understandings of knowledge and of the various orders of things, his anthropology (with special attention to his presentation of affliction, death, and boredom), his politics, and his understanding of the relation between Christianity and Judaism. Pascal emerges as a literary stylist of a high order, a witty and polemical writer (never have the Jesuits been more thoroughly eviscerated), and, perhaps above all else, as someone concerned to show to Christianity's cultured despisers that the fabric of their own lives implies the truth of Christianity if only they can be brought to look at what their lives are like.
Why Read Pascal? is the first book in English in a generation to engage all the principal themes in Pascal's theology and philosophy. The book takes Pascal seriously as an interlocutor and as a contributor of continuing relevance to Catholic thought; but it also offers criticisms of some among the positions he takes, showing, in doing so, how lively his writing remains for us now.
About the Author
Paul Griffiths is the author of Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar and The Practice of Catholic Theology: A Modest Proposal (both CUA Press).
The Catholic University of America Press | |
Why Read | |
|
|
Paperback / softback | |
May 7, 2021 | |
9780813233840 | |
English | |
264 | |
8.50 Inches (US) | |
5.50 Inches (US) | |
$29.95 USD | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Other Titles by Paul J. Griffiths
The Practice of Catholic Theology
Paul J Griffiths
Sep 2016
- The Catholic University of America Press
$29.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
Intellectual Appetite
Paul J. Griffiths
Aug 2009
- The Catholic University of America Press
$24.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
Other Titles in PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Modern
The Catholic Enlightenment
edited by Ulrich L. Lehner, Shaun Blanchard
Aug 2021
- The Catholic University of America Press
$34.95 USD
- Paperback / softback
Metaphysical Disputation I
translated by Shane Duarte, Francisco Suarez
Jun 2021
- The Catholic University of America Press
$69.95 USD
- Hardback
Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx
Jonathan I. Israel
Jun 2021
- University of Washington Press
$39.95 USD
- Hardback