Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction: Atheisms Today
- 1 The God of Metaphysics
- 2 The God of the Poets
- 3 Difficult Atheism
- 4 Beyond A/theism? Quentin Meillassoux
- 5 The Politics of the Post-Theological I: Justifying the Political
- 6 The Politics of the Post-Theological II: Justice
- General Conclusion: How to Follow an ‘Atheism’ That Never Was
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The God of Metaphysics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction: Atheisms Today
- 1 The God of Metaphysics
- 2 The God of the Poets
- 3 Difficult Atheism
- 4 Beyond A/theism? Quentin Meillassoux
- 5 The Politics of the Post-Theological I: Justifying the Political
- 6 The Politics of the Post-Theological II: Justice
- General Conclusion: How to Follow an ‘Atheism’ That Never Was
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
On dit fort bien que si les triangles faisaient un Dieu, ils lui donneraient trois côtés.
Mathematics is the science in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
‘Je prends au pied de la lettre la formule « Dieu est mort ». […] Dieu, c'est fini. Et la religion aussi, c'est fini’ (CT 12). This striking intervention in the prologue of Badiou's Court Traité d'ontologie transitoire is not merely a claim that the moral God is dead, much less that the death of God is one move in a wider Christian dialectic. By claiming that God is dead Badiou is doing more therefore than echoing Nietzsche's madman. For Badiou as for Heidegger, Nietzsche's claim that God is dead is not yet without God, for the theistic schema of the sensory and the suprasensory still dominates Nietzsche's thought. In other words, there remains in Nietzsche's thinking the Pascalian infinite abyss that can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object. When pressed, therefore, Badiou maintains a position more radical than Nietzsche's: ‘Mon propos n'a rapport à aucune religion, et c'est pourquoi il peut librement les traiter toutes comme schèmes de l'esthétique historiale. Dieu n'est pas même mort, pour moi (ce mort est encore l'interlocuteur constant de Nietzsche)’ (19R 262).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Difficult AtheismPost-Theological Thinking in Alain Badiou Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux, pp. 22 - 57Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011