Insofar as academic names go, Alban Krailsheimer is hard to beat. He has produced a solid, brief summary of Pascal's life and works.

Krailsheimer writes very much from Pascal's corner. This is a welcome change: many of these 'short lives' of great philosophers adopt a sneering, superior tone. This is a sympathetic, useful work, but if you're new to Pascal, you are likely better off just reading the Pensees. Krailsheimer himself would probably say the same.

"The cult of the noble savage, like that of the golden age or the pastoral idyll, was vaguely nostalgic, a picturesque idealism rather than a serious philosophy. The desire to make a fresh start, individually or collectively, expressed dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs rather than a positive desire for a return to cruder things. In any case, even the professedly anti-intellectual Montaigne gave the game away when, like every other humanist, he chose as his ideal man Socrates and not some feathered brave from Brazil. In so doing he acknowledged that the right use of reason leads to greater moral excellence than mere obedience to instinct, even if the worse use of reason led to a worse than bestial depravity." ( )