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
5 - The Politics of the Post-Theological I: Justifying the Political
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
Si j'ai supprimé Dieu le père, il faut bien quelqu'un pour inventer les valeurs.
We now turn to consider the ethical and political implications of the three different approaches to post-theological thinking under discussion, namely Nancy's ‘atheology’, Badiou's ‘atheism’ and Meillassoux's ‘philosophy’. In pursuing its aims, this chapter and the next will be asking two broad questions. In the present chapter, we shall seek the criteriology of any possible relation between atheism/atheology/philosophy and any ethics or politics whatsoever, opening the question of justice. In the final chapter we shall return to the question of justice in order to investigate how each position seeks to secure a notion of universal justice. The question of justice will allow us to explore to what extent each position is a post-theological integration that neither ascetically renounces the notion of universal justice nor parasitically strives for it on the basis of theological assumptions. The decision to treat ‘ethics’ and ‘politics’ side by side in these chapters is neither innocent nor unproblematic. It is a decision necessitated by the desire to do full justice to each position, for an exclusion or sequestration of the ethical would prohibit reference to material in all three authors that is germane to our two questions. Notwithstanding, care will be taken not to conflate the ethical and the political, and to allow each thinker to reconstruct his own understanding of what is meant by these terms, as well as their relation to each other.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Difficult AtheismPost-Theological Thinking in Alain Badiou Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux, pp. 168 - 205Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011