The experience of atheism : phenomenology, metaphysics and religion

"Religious and atheistic belief are presented anew in a volume of essays from leading phenomenologists in both France and the UK. Atheism, often presented as the negation of religious belief, is here engaged with from a phenomenologically informed notion of experience. The focus on experience, sparks new debates in readings of belief, faith and atheism as they relate to and complicate each other. What unites the contributors is their relationship to phenomenology as it has developed in France in the wake of Heidegger and Husserl. Leading French intellectuals from this context, Jean-Luc Nancy, Quentin Meillassoux, and Catherine Malabou, amongst others, contribute arresting ideas on atheistic faith, the death of God, and anarchic faith, opening up new areas of understanding in a field whose parameters and core concepts are ever shifting. Revealing the extent to which religious and atheistic belief must be seen to influence, and on a fundamental level, to co-create one another, the pluralistic society in which religious belief is counted as one option amongst many is given primacy. The fact that religious faith has become not only optional but also, in many contexts, strangely alienated from society, deeply modifies the experience of the believer as much as that of the non-believer. A focus on 'experience', over and above 'belief', moves us towards a mode of experiential knowledge which refuses to privilege the atheistic believer and deride the reality of religious belief"-- Provided by publisher Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page Contents List of Contributors Acknowledgments 1 Atheism, Faith, and Experience I. Atheism and the irreducible II. Atheism and alienation III. Literalist atheism IV. Atheism and the flight of the gods V. Before theism and atheism VI. A very brief introduction to the works in this book VII. Postlude Part One The Experience of Atheism 2 Atheistic Experience I. The spirit of a spiritless world II. Ownness and property III. The faith of Marx IV. Atheistic faith V. The refusal of assurance VI. Opening to the infinite VII. Atheism and the a-theological 3 Desire and Inertia I. Four forms of atheism II. The atheism of desire 4 No Gods, No Masters—Anarchism and Religious Experience I. The fact of being left alone II. Christian anarchism III. Anarchic responsibility IV. Ontological anarchism V. Religious anarchism 5 Nothingness against the Death of God—Mallarmé’s Poetics after 1866 I. The poetic renouncement of the divine II. Atheism as a stigma of the age III. The hole in the fullness of things IV. The destitution of the night of exile 6 There Is No Experience of Pure Atheism—MichelSerres and the Schema of Unbelief I. Is Serres an atheist? II. Umbilical atheism III. Translational atheism IV. Conclusion Part Two The Atheisms of Faith 7 Theism, Atheism, Anatheism I. Something lost that is found again II. Anatheism, atheism, and theism III. Living anatheism IV. Theopoetics as anapoetics 8 Apocalypse or Revelation? I. Apocalypse II. Revelation III. Transformation 9 Atheism and Critique I. Thinking, motivation, and critique II. Critique as discernment of the heart III. Being thrown back on myself: shame IV. Discernment of the heart V. Conclusion Part Three The Phenomenality of the Religious 10 The Death of God—Sartre against Heidegger I. Sartre, the unbeliever II. Relative indifference III. Methodological atheism IV. The dispute with Nietzsche V. Conclusion 11 Materialism, Social Construction, and Radical Empiricism—Debating the Status of “Experience” in the Study of Religion I. The materialist orientation of recent religious studies II. Interventions of trauma theory III. Returning to questions of religious experience 12 Atheism, Religion, Experience (and Metaphysics?) I. Atheism and the turn to the subject II. A phenomenology of “God” III. Marion’s phenomenology IV. A renewed appeal to metaphysical realism V. Complementarity 13 On Seeing Nothing—A Critique of Marion’s Account of Religious Phenomenality I. Evidence for experiencing phenomena of revelation II. Refusing to see III. Confusion about what is seen IV. Misinterpreting the seen V. Lacking the strength or capacity to see VI. Bedazzled blindness 14 Doubling Metaphysics I. Inversion II. Situation III. Distinctions IV. Limits V. Orders VI. Double metaphysics: make it serve a purpose other than its own Index of Names