God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal's Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism Reprint Edition

by Leszek Kolakowski (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0226450537

ISBN-10: 0226450538

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God Owes Us Nothing reflects on the centuries-long debate in Christianity: how do we reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the goodness of an omnipotent God, and how does God's omnipotence relate to people's responsibility for their own salvation or damnation. Leszek Kolakowski approaches this paradox as both an exercise in theology and in revisionist Christian history based on philosophical analysis. Kolakowski's unorthodox interpretation of the history of modern Christianity provokes renewed discussion about the historical, intellectual, and cultural omnipotence of neo-Augustinianism.

"Several books a year wrestle with that hoary conundrum, but few so dazzlingly as the Polish philosopher's latest."—Carlin Romano, Washington Post Book World

"Kolakowski's fascinating book and its debatable thesis raise intriguing historical and theological questions well worth pursuing."—Stephen J. Duffy, Theological Studies

"Kolakowski's elegant meditation is a masterpiece of cultural and religious criticism."—Henry Carrigan, Cleveland Plain Dealer

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009) was professor of philosophy at the University of Warsaw until the Polish political crisis of March 1968 when he was formally expelled. He then moved to universities in North America and the United Kingdom. From 1981 to 1994 he was a professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the department of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is best known for his critical analyses of Marxist thought, especially his three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism (1976). In his later work, he increasingly focused on philosophical and religious questions. He was the author of numerous books.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; Reprint edition (May 22, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226450538
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226450537
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,133,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #54 in Jainism (Books)
- #465 in Roman Catholicism (Books)
- #498 in Philosophy of Good & Evil

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Quentin D. Stewart

A good Introduction to Jansenism

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2008

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There is very little in print about Jansenism in the English language. This book probably serves as a tentative introduction to the subject. St. Augustine, the foremost doctor of the Catholic church, has always vexed the Catholic church with his more extreme views on the fallenness of the human will and predestination. Jansenism could be seen as a reappropriation of some of Augustine's "unorthodox" views in the 16 and 1700s. The Jansenists are portrayed here as having a gloomy religion for the select few. Therefore the Catholic church and the Jesuits, in particular, had to crush them. To the point of razing their most famous monastery to the ground.
If you believe the Church has remained faithful to Augustine then read Henri de Lubac as he goes to great lengths in "Modern Augustinianism" to debunk the notion that Jansenius was a faithful interpreter of Augustine.

20 people found this helpful

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Sue Biggers

God owes us nothing

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2019

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It is too deep for us

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Bill Bacon

I love the words of Leszek Kolakowski

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2014

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Read me read me read me read me... I love the words of Leszek Kolakowski.. He simply has a way of making the complex simple.

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Brent Tryon

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2018

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Great Read. Very interesting.

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Black_Unicorn

The glaring limitations of modern criticism.

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2012

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The quintessential delusion that modern man suffers from is his presupposition that historical criticism must be viewed through the biased eyes of present thought, even and especially when dealing with those dark days before the so-called "Enlightenment". Historical revisionism is a gentleman's game after all, for it provides us with an agreeable assortment of rationalizations for explaining away the atrocities of the past, all in the name of advancing civilization of course. And nowhere is this depraved sense of personal and societal grandeur more present than in modern critiques of Christianity, more specifically the predestination based view of Christianity that roots all power in the will of God and see man for the wretch that he is. Leszek Kolakowski's latter day fascination with the relationship between history and religion is something of a double-edged sword in this respect, as it brought forth a book of marginal integrity to bring the Jansenist controversy to a generation that knows little, if nothing regarding the more than thousand year struggle between Augustinian and Pelagian thought within all of Christendom, Roman Catholic and Protestant respectively, even though it presents a blatantly lopsided picture in favor of the semi-Pelagian argument.

It is necessary for the sake of disclosure to note that the author of this review is a modern adherent to the Jansenist view of Catholicism, though more directly influenced by Antoine Arnauld's and Pasquier Quesnel's works, which are more widely available in languages other than Latin. As such, the perspective presented here is wholly Augustinian, and also presupposes in much the same manner as another reviewer of this book by the name of G. Stucco that Cornelius Jansenius' views are in full harmony with Augustine's original arguments. However, it will be further assumed that Augustine's view was also in complete harmony with that of the Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament, and therefore that the Jansenist cause is a defense of Christian orthodoxy in the most basic sense. Thus the semi-Pelagian view advocated by the Jesuits and also by Leszek Kolakowski in this particular work are a thinly veiled attack on the same orthodoxy in the name of making Christianity more agreeable to man's fallen sense of personal lionization and rebelliousness rather than representing what the Church and the Holy Scriptures have actually taught.

Like a number of biblically impoverished modern pagans being gradually weaned off a one-sided diet of Marxist historicism, Kolakowski at several points conflates the Augustinian view with Gnosticism and uses Augustine's past association with the Manichean sect to bolster the point (an argument that was also made by Pelagius during his conflict with Augustine). At no point does our esteemed Polish philosopher attempt to square the Gnostic concept of dueling Old and New Testament deities (ergo seeing YHWY of the Old Testament as a vindictive tyrant who was deposed by a wholly separate god bringing forth the Gospel message) with Augustine's arguments in favor of the cohesion of the Holy Trinity, nor does he fully comprehend the fairly blatant distinction between the inherited curse of Original Sin and the Gnostic concept of temporal existence being inherently evil from its beginning (something that contradicts the notion of creation being good, as noted multiple times in Genesis 1, a point that Augustine never disputed in his writings on Original Sin). In essence, Kolakowski sees more profit in playing the emotional card by begging the question regarding Original Sin and Gnosticism by making a few periphery comparisons (both in contrast to the Pelagian view), and then dwelling upon their most frightening aspects, all the while angling the reader towards concluding that if Rome had not have gotten rid of its morbid Augustinianism that all of Christian Europe would still be trapped in the Medieval period or otherwise would have shrunk in significance (yes, Christianity's life and death as a faith depends upon its utility to man's fancies and caprices, the Christian view of God as being wholly Sovereign and omnipotent not withstanding).

Kolakowski's treatment of Pascal in the second half of this book is even more amateur in its intent, largely painting the picture of a semi-deranged and twisted genius who was somehow a modernist yet also a throwback to the primitivism of extreme Augustinian thought. Anyone familiar with Pascal's "Pensees" will note that despite his retreat into asceticism, he was intellectually lucid to the end and the faithful republications of his unfinished works detail a logical progression from a skeptical scientific mind to one applying that mode of thought in a theological way. But instead of presenting Pascal's thoughts as they actually progressed in a summed up format, "God Owes Us Nothing" takes care to accent the condemnatory and Law oriented elements of "Pensees" (aka all the fire and brimstone material) and depicts the same mathematician as a reclusive misanthrope. This particular line of attack while also noting Pascal's supposed modernism is actually remarkably similar in nature to Marx's own irrational attacks on Edmund Burke's nuanced views regarding the American and French revolutions and should warn anyone interested in the history of one of France's more renowned thinkers to get the true story from the horse's mouth before approaching this particular secondary source.

To Kolakowski's credit, he does make citations to support his case, and someone who is already equipped to ignore his biases in favor of Pelagian thought will find a rich number of quotes from both "Augustinus" and "Pensees", the former of which is not available outside of the original Latin and is not widely quoted in modern non-fiction literature. Likewise, he makes continual allusions to history both before, during, and after the time of the subjects in question like any good Marxist would, and thus in his final summation he reveals the deepest self-contradiction in his entire thesis. He admits that the ebb and flow of modern history has been tantamount to an ultra-Pelagian nightmare, fraught with devastating wars between nations in the name of human concocted ideologies (including but not limited to his own former Marxist party), and thus rationalizes a semi-Pelagian view as being the appropriate compromise between the illusive boogieman of Augustinianism which allegedly kept mankind in the dark for centuries, and the seeds of modern perdition in ultra-libertarian free will where man can do no wrong from his own wit and reason. Since when do mixing two alleged brands of poison yield anything that is less fatal, let alone an antidote to hold off or otherwise limit man's self-destructive nature? Leave us not forget that the only consistent example of semi-Pelagianism presented in this book is the one of the Jesuits, which left a similar path of bloodshed and violence in France, and the resulting de-Augustinization of said nation with the murder and expulsion of the Huguenots and Jansenist clergy later brought much of Europe to a similarly sad state when it paved the way to the tyranny of Napoleon. Leave us also not forget all of the additional clandestine chaos the same holy order brought not only to Protestant Holland, Germany and British Isles, but to steadfastly Catholic Europe, so much so that Pope Clement XIV, at the behest of numerous Catholic monarchs, suppressed and dissolved the entire Jesuit order in 1773.

Ultimately, if we cannot logically explain why man acts and thinks in a manner contrary to his own self-interest and can also come to recognize this to any extent, yet simultaneously thinks the world of himself, Original Sin becomes a very plausible explanation from a theological standpoint, regardless to how unpleasant it may sound to the modern gentleman who seeks affable conversation rather than true assessments. Despite Kolakowski's awareness of how unflattering modern history has been, he falls into a textbook case of distraction-seeking noted in Pascal's own work he is criticizing and does a series of mental gymnastics to explain away this dilemma, using the same cliche 20th century American political tactic of playing the moderate between two supposed unreasonable extremes. It's ultimately opinion, not facts that determines our ideal course of action, and despite having researched his subject well, the author is unable to escape the fallacious nature of the underlying premise. However, opinion is ultimately what sells books, so it is unsurprising the level of praise that this work has received from critics both of note and otherwise.

This book is not an out and out failure in its attempt to criticize history, as there is much information to be found in it that is useful for those wishing to be versed in the subject, but its overreaching sense of liberty in injecting the author's opinion taints it almost to the point of losing its utility. Anyone truly interested in Jansenism from an objective, historical perspective should seek out the online version of Theophilus Gale's "Jansenisme, Both Historick And Dogmatick", which has the benefit of being written within a few decades of Bishop Jansenius' death and thus not tainted by the modernist errors exuded in Kolakowski's arguments. This is more a book that should be approached after being familiarized with its original subject matters; hence its usefulness is limited, though instructive for those who wish to understand how a secularist ex-Marxist thinker actually views Augustinian doctrine.

19 people found this helpful

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G. Stucco

Excellent and thought provoking!

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2006

The title refers to the Augustinian-Jansenist view according to which human beings are absolutely incapable, through their efforts unaided by grace, to please God and to rightfully expect his mercy. The book consists of two parts: the first part focuses on the five Jansenist propositions that were condemned by the Church; the second part deals with Pascal's "sad religion," and its overly theocentric mentality (to shed tears for the death of on'e loved ones and to laugh are unorthy of a Christian).

The main points the author makes are:

* Jansenius correctly interpreted Augustine's theology of grace. Anybody who says otherwise is in bad faith. (Has anybody gotten a chance to peruse Jansenius's opus magnus, Augustinus? I have! There are HUNDREDS of quotations from Augustine's work: anybody who rejects Jansenius' understanding of Augustine OWES a major production of eveidence to that effect!)

* The Church rightly condemned Jansenius. It had to, in order to survive and avoid holing itself up or to go out of the socio-cultural scene as an obsolete phenomenon. The alternative would have been to turn into a little sect of saints (a la Amish), unable to influence the world at large and to become a cultural oddity. The author concludes that the Church loses out when it lives with a besieged fortress mentality. The all-or nothing mentality is a recipe for disaster.

* The Church therefore rightly condemned some Augustinian theological views.

* The Church began to de-Augustinize itself. "It was a momentous event in the history of the Church when it exploited this occasion, adopting practically the Jesuit (or semi-Pelagian) doctrine in the crucial questions of original sin, grace and predestination, and thereby breaking -tacitly, needless to say - with a very important part of its theological heritage and shaping its teaching accordingly." (p. 31)

33 people found this helpful

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César González Rouco

Intellectually challenging

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2008

After reading G. Stucco "mr. Guido"'s excellent review, I will only add that, in my opinion, this work (or more precisely, its first part) achieves something pretty difficult : to provide a sociological explanation of the reasons why a theological doctrine (augustinism/calvinism/jansenism) was dropped in favour of another one (semi-pelagianism). Its second part is a lucid sketch of Pascal's thought. And all that without being dry but interesting. To some extent, it reminds me of "The fear of freedom" by Erich Fromm and "The social thought of Bernard Mandeville" by Thomas Horne. Therefore, my rating is between 5 (content) and 4 (pleasure, sometimes falling to 3, sometimes raising to 5).

Besides, I think that anyone looking for a critique from a theological point of view will fruitfully read an article available in [...] which was written by the end of 1995 by Avery Dulles (elevated to cardinal of the Catholic church in 2001, author of "A History of Apologetics").

9 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

False Advertising.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 27, 2019

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Book was described 'as in very good condition', but in reality would be better be described as 'acceptable'. For a few pounds more I could have bought a brand new copy.

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alexandra fragatos

excellent. Alexandra Fragaotosdifferent way of thinking

Reviewed in Canada on June 21, 2018

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coherent philosophical review, excellent. Alexandra Fragaotosdifferent way of thinking. With Thanks,

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Pascal und Jansenismus

Reviewed in Germany on May 23, 2016

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Da ich mit Pascal mich beschäftige brauchte ich zur weiteren Beurteilung dieses Buch. Ich bezweifele seine Schlussfolgerungen über Jansenismus und Pascal.

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