It is common practice to avoid writing extremely laudatory reviews of academic books. In this case, however, it is appropriate to make an exception, because Michael Moriarty's recent monograph on Pascal is nothing short of a masterpiece. And this is hardly surprising. Moriarty is indeed one of the foremost international authorities on early modern French thought, a subject to which he has devoted four other monographs and numerous articles. In this volume he continues his investigation of the reflections on human nature in early modern France, which he has explored in several studies. The question of human nature is actually at the core of Pascal's religious thought, as Moriarty points out in his new book, which concentrates on the apologetic project emerging from the Pensées.

Moriarty calls attention to Pascal's intellectual struggle with the dichotomy between human greatness and wretchedness – an intellectual struggle that played a critical role in his effort to compose an apology for Christianity. In Pascal's eyes, ‘every proof of our high capacities and aspirations merely highlights our failure to act in accordance with them’ (p. 162) and thus indicates our wretchedness, while our dissatisfaction with our miserable condition testifies to our greatness, which is grounded in the power of thought. To Pascal, only the biblical story of the Fall, with the doctrine of original sin, can shed light on the contradictions within human nature, and only the prospect of redemption that Christianity offers can provide a way out of them, thereby enabling us to find the durable happiness we long for. When examining Pascal's advocacy of the Christian religion, Moriarty revisits Pascal's style of argumentation. Far from providing arguments in an explicitly logical form, and far from trying to prove God's existence or define the divine attributes, as was typical of the scholastic tradition that he opposed, Pascal based his arguments on a consideration of human experiences and of the feelings produced by such experiences – particularly feelings of existential frustration and alienation. He inferred some arguments from what he regarded as ‘facts’ about human experience. In other cases, he drew on history – particularly on the history of religion, which he explored by adopting a sort of comparative approach. Consequently, he argued that ‘various features of human experience demand an explanation from outside the realm of experience’ (p. 15). This explanation was the Christian doctrine of the Fall. However, Pascal had to demonstrate that this was a good explanation, and he also had to offer a viable solution to the contradictions of human nature – a solution rooted in the Bible and in a Christian understanding of human history. Starting from these premises, Moriarty develops a compelling analysis of Pascal's handling of the additional questions that his own apologetic method involved – above all, the question of the compatibility between his Jansenistic, predestinarian soteriology and his endeavour to prove the truth of Christianity by means of argument.

Far from engaging in sterile polemics about the soundness or unsoundness of Pascal's methods and ideas, Moriarty's book aims to clarify Pascal's concerns, arguments and proposals. In some cases, Moriarty supports Pascal's views, while in other cases he casts doubt on the French philosopher's conclusions. In doing so, he sometimes compares Pascal to other thinkers – such as Augustine, Jansenius, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus and still others – whose works denote a significant preoccupation with the dilemmas of human nature and the meaning of life. Moriarty's painstaking discussion of Pascal's texts leads him to place this author in an ‘existentialist’ tradition that started at least with Augustine and continued well into the twentieth century. This does not mean, however, that Moriarty endorses a ‘perennialist’ approach to Pascal's and other philosophers’ writings. In fact, whereas he focuses mainly on the evidence provided by Pascal's texts, he also contextualises Pascal's reflections on issues such as human dissatisfaction, vanity, concupiscence, self-love, love and happiness, since he takes into account Pascal's intellectual context and the impact that the philosophical and theological debates of the day had on his mindset.

Another merit of this book is that it defies several assumptions, which other scholars have reiterated and reinforced, about Pascal's religious thought. Moriarty indeed demonstrates that Pascal formulated a soteriology that, although being grounded in the Augustinian and Jansenist traditions, presented several original points and differed from Augustine's and Jansenius’ theories in various respects. Moreover, contra long-lasting misconceptions of Pascal's attitude to science, Moriarty's book shows that Pascal not only continued his scientific investigation after his ‘conversion’ to Christianity, but also integrated his reflections on scientific subjects – such as, for instance, mind-body dualism – into his religious thought. Furthermore, reconsidering the multifaceted and fragmentary nature of the Pensées, Moriarty emphasises the unity and coherence of the apologetic effort emerging from these fragments while avoiding ‘a totalizing interpretation’ (p. 20) of Pascal's work. This approach enables Moriarty to reassess Pascal's views on Christian morality and his well-known ‘Wager’ argument for opting for Christian faith not as stand-alone episodes in Pascal's intellectual activity, but as important components of his apologetic project.

Briefly, this book offers a portrait of Pascal as a philosopher who was troubled by the multiplicity of human nature with its virtues as well as vices, and with its rational as well as ‘animalistic’ elements – a philosopher who eventually rediscovered Christianity as ‘a liberating energy that counteracts the apparently irresistible pressures of human history and human nature’ (p. 393). This volume also represents a valuable contribution to the rethinking of the role that religious concerns, interests and views had in the making of modernity, which, as books like this show, resulted from tensions, struggles and controversies rather than a linear process. Thanks to its originality, accuracy and convincing argument, Moriarty's monograph on Pascal is likely to become the standard book on this author's religious thought. Therefore, this book definitely deserves to be read by all those interested in early modern thought.