Grace under Pressure

Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal’s Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism, by Leszek Kolakowski (Chicago, 238 pp., $22.50)

attenuation of Christian faith and morals. Kolakowski is not personally attracted to Jansenism, with its utter pessimism about human nature, but as an empathetic historian he enables the reader to look at reality through Jansenist eyes.