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Heythrop journal, 2022-01, Vol.63 (1), p.96-110
2022

Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte
Titel
The Failed Atheism of Jean‐Paul Sartre
Ist Teil von
  • Heythrop journal, 2022-01, Vol.63 (1), p.96-110
Ort / Verlag
Oxford: Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Erscheinungsjahr
2022
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Wiley Online Library - AutoHoldings Journals
Beschreibungen/Notizen
  • I build on the existing literature to argue that Sartre's theological anthropology is based not only on God's absence, as other scholars have argued, but on Sartre's secularized theological belief that humanity bears the imago Dei, or sacred image of God. Sartre's decisionist metaphysics—his belief that human choice is the ontological origin of morality—authorize an ethical paradigm that privileges human identity as 'sacred,' which is to say, as ontologically superior to the rest of nature. But this theological view of ethics is complicated by the fact that sacred human identity, in Sartre's secularized theological view, is not determined by God, who expressly does not exist, but by the moral decision maker himself, who has taken God's place as the ontological origin of moral value. Morality is thus determined by the lawmaker who, after supplanting God as divine creator of mankind, carves out the relative boundaries of sacred human identity. The imago Dei, in Sartre's secularized theological account, is, in effect, the image of God without God, the exceptional status afforded to human identity even after the divine creator of mankind has been removed from the picture. To unpack these claims, I bring Sartre into conversation with contemporary political philosopher Giorgio Agamben. The two thinkers are not often associated and, at first glance, they may even appear worlds apart, but Agamben's notions of repressed theism, anthropogenesis, and the sovereign production of bare life illuminate Sartre's work in profound and even troubling ways. This is because Sartre's failed atheism can be framed as the object of Agamben's political critique, which seeks to correct authoritarian ethical paradigms through what Agamben calls a profanation of secularized theological views. Agamben's work is particularly helpful in diagnosing Sartrean existentialism as a form of secularized theism. That said, a full account of Agamben's philosophical solution to this problem exceeds the scope of the current project. For this reason, I limit my analysis to those aspects of Agamben's thought that best illuminate the unconscious theological elements of Sartre's atheism. My purpose is not to provide a solution to Sartre's atheistic failures, but to diagnose the problem as an essential component of Sartre's philosophy. It would appear that Sartre himself attempted to correct his secularized theological view of morality by achieving the philosophical aims of materialistic atheism, but, as he explains to de Beauvoir, he was never entirely able to do so. Sartre retained a secularized theological belief in moral authority, which grew out of his deeply felt, semi-conscious intuition that human beings were 'set apart' by God, whose existence Sartre paradoxically denied.
Sprache
Englisch
Identifikatoren
ISSN: 0018-1196
eISSN: 1468-2265
DOI: 10.1111/heyj.13974
Titel-ID: cdi_crossref_primary_10_1111_heyj_13974

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