Jesuits, Jansenists, and the Culture Wars

Abstract This introductory article explores the relevance of studying the Jesuit-Jansenist conflict in early modern France against the broader background of modernity as such and its inherent problems with fragmentation, isolation, and polarization in all areas of culture. It begins with a reference to the particular use of the study of early modernity and its religious and sociopolitical problems by the two prominent dissidents of the twentieth century, Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009) and Jan Patočka (1907–77), in order to draw some potential parallels between the contemporary “culture wars” and the conflict between the Jesuits and the Jansenists. The contributions, stemming from a conference held at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in March 2023, celebrating the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Blaise Pascal, shed light on various aspects of classical culture, education, tradition, and innovation in the areas of theatre, music, and philosophy in seventeenth-century France.