Wagering on an Ironic God

This is the most profoundly relevant book I’ve read in years. Hibbs, with a rigorous and meticulous marshalling of all the available evidence, shows us how to live as if the truth and my particular life really matter. The ‘Christian Socratism’ of Hibbs and Pascal is the most wondrous and dialogic form of inquiry around these (and all) days, and we can hope it saves many—including most professors of philosophy—from their dreary restlessness in the midst of prosperity.

~Peter Lawler, Dana Professor in Government, Berry College

This exceptionally rich book will challenge the way many people understand modern philosophy by showing the often unnoticed continuities with ancient philosophy as the Socratic quest for the best way of life. In reconstructing the trialogue between Montaigne, Descartes, and Pascal, Hibbs also presents the claims of both philosophy and of Christianity with the radical immediacy often obscured by the common interpretations of these thinkers and by the characteristic prejudices of our time.

~V. Bradley Lewis, Associate Professor of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America

Tom Hibbs’ new book invites the reader into a fascinating debate about Socratic irony among three great French thinkers—Montaigne, Descartes, and Pascal. With many fresh insights for the scholar, Wagering on an Ironic God will draw in any reader responsive to Socrates' challenge to live the examined life.

~David O’Connor, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

Towards the end of Wagering on an Ironic God, Thomas Hibbs asks his reader: ‘How much more rewarding would our discussions (dare we say our lives?) be if they were informed by the writings of Montaigne, Descartes, and Pascal?’. Wagering reads like an invitation to such a discussion with Hibbs, and evidences many of the delights and peculiarities of such a conversation.

~J. Columcille Dever, Modern Theology

An original and probing interpretation of Pascal’s wager, reconstructed along the line of Socratic ignorance.

~John J. Conley, S.J, International Philosophical Quarterly

…Thomas Hibbs is intent on bringing Pascal and his distinctive thought to the fore. In doing so, he makes a signal contribution to our understanding of modern philosophy itself. He not only rehabilitates Pascal, but sheds important light on his philosophical interlocutors, Montaigne and Descartes. This book could be profitably read merely for its treatments of Montaigne and Descartes. But the triangle of Montaigne, Descartes, and Pascal is historically apposite and philosophically quite illuminating.

~Paul Seaton, The Review of Politics

Hibbs’s book is appropriate for those interested in Pascal’s thought, and the major philosophical influences that played a central role in the forming of Pascal’s thought. It also serves as a corrective for the common tendency to focus only on the wager, while ignoring all else found in Pascal’s Pensées.

~Jeff Jordan, The Review of Metaphysics

Thomas Hibbs’s exploration of Pascal’s thought offers an important corrective to a common tendency that takes Pascal’s Pensées as the idiosyncratic, private musings of a solitary thinker. In Hibbs’s work, Pascal emerges not as a lonely genius but as a thinker very much in conversation with the philosophical tradition, especially René Descartes and Michel de Montaigne…After engaging Wagering on an Ironic God, readers will find their encounters with Pascal complicated and enriched.

~Randall G. Colton, The Thomist