Abstract: Pascal’s Les Lettres Provincials records and reveals one important religious and thought debate in “The Age of Louis XIV,” which happened between the Society of Jesus and the Jansenists. The contradiction represents not only the divisions inside Catholicism but also the conflicts between modernity and the philosophy of the Fathers of the church. Pascal engaged in this debate directly, and wrote a series of letters about it, which are Les Lettres Provincials. In order to understand and reflect upon our life, institutions, and crises fully and holistically, it is necessary to go back to this battle of thoughts around the birth of modernity. We should pay attention to the reaction and criticism to modern philosophy from the defenders of the ancient tradition. Pascal, a rare talent in the age of Louis XIV, must have had profound insights full of wisdom and could offer us a perspective beyond our own condition. This “work of genius” provides us with the firsthand materials of the theological controversy in the age of Louis XIV, with its values far beyond artful rhetoric or eloquent tactics. It can be taken as a book of history, and also a thoughtful book on religion, morality, and politics. What is noticeable is his detailed descriptions of the differences between the two factions and their theological principles. Being an observer of the debaters, he presented his readers this “battle of thoughts”; being a defender of Catholicism, he criticizes the Protestantism and the reformers inside the Catholic Church.Pascal’s criticism of the Society of Jesus is still helpful to us reflecting upon modernity. His criticism of the theory of casuistry echoes with the criticism of nihilism by contemporary philosophers and is a valuable intellectual resource for our thinking of issues of modernity.

Key words: Pascal, modernity, Jansenism, the Society of Jesus