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
Introduction: Atheisms Today
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
Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars – and yet they have done it themselves.
Dieu est mort, mais l'homme n'est pas, pour autant, devenu athée.
There is a new move in French philosophy today to come to terms with the death of God more rigorously than ever, and it cannot be understood under the banner of ‘atheism’. No longer can we think in terms of a monolytic atheism or of a single agenda of thinking ‘without God’, for what we see developing is a plurality of perhaps incommensurable approaches to thinking after God. We must not mistake this for a return to God after God, or for the growth of a new postsecular or postreligious philosophy; it is a thinking that tries more fully than ever to have done with God, that tries to remake itself fundamentally as ‘without God’, and on this basis moves beyond the simple term ‘atheism’. This new thinking casts doubt on the claims of all previous atheisms to be without God and its contours indicate the possible future trajectory of French philosophy more broadly. This book will comparatively analyse its different branches and ask whether French thought has yet attained a thinking that is truly without God.
THE OLD GAME: IMITATIVE AND RESIDUAL ATHEISMS
As a prolegomenon to understanding this novelty, we shall begin by briefly sketching two dominant tendencies in post-Enlightenment French atheism, tendencies that are by no means mutually exclusive.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Difficult AtheismPost-Theological Thinking in Alain Badiou Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux, pp. 1 - 21Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011