The author of this book is a French conservative and classical liberal. His take on the famous Wager — in chapter 2 — is that Pascal is urging the reader to adopt a mindset in which he is at least open to the possibility of Christian belief; in that regard I note (21-22, footnotes omitted) the closing of the the immediately preceding first chapter of the book (see especially the quote from Pascal in the first sentence, which I’ve italicized):
As surprising as this might be for us who imagine a century when the faith went without saying, it was by looking around him that Pascal made this judgment: “Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid that it might be true.”
In reading the authors of this century, we believe we hear the voice of a believing world, but most often it is the voice of human beings who know the difficulty and rarity of belief and who address themselves to humans who for the most part do not believe, or who doubt, or are indifferent. Pascal had the strong sentiment and conviction of living in a society that was in the process of losing the knowledge of its religion, a society that in the depths of its soul was atheist. In any case, it is to atheists, and to the atheist in each human being, that he addresses himself. Far from fleeing from them, from turning away from them, or taking them to task, he seeks to engage them in a sincere conversation: “That is why, when he had to talk with some atheists, he never began with a dispute, or by establishing the principles that he wished to articulate, but he wanted to know beforehand if they sought the truth with their whole heart, and he acted accordingly with them.” It is into such a conversation that we wish to enter with him.
Here’s hoping that M. Manent is successful in his attempt to reach out to atheists as Pascal did.