The Experience of Atheism: Phenomenology, Metaphysics and Religion

Description

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.

Robyn Horner is Associate Professor within the School of Theology, Australian Catholic University, Australia.
Claude Romano is Associate Professor at Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV), France, and Professorial Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, Australia.

Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Atheism, Faith and Experience, Claude Romano (Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV), France) and Robyn Horner (Australian Catholic University, Australia)
PART I The Experience of Atheism Chapter 2. Atheistic Experience, Jean-Luc Nancy (University of Strasbourg, France)
Chapter 3. Desire and Inertia, Jeffrey Bloechl (Boston College, USA)
Chapter 4. No Gods, No Masters – Anarchism and Religious Experience, Catherine Malabou (Kingston University, UK)
Chapter 5. Nothingness Against the Death of God – Mallarmé’s Poetics after 1866, Quentin Meillassoux (University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, France)
Chapter 6. There is no Experience of Pure Atheism: Michel Serres and the Schema of Unbelief, Christopher Watkin (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia)
PART II The Atheisms of Faith Chapter 7. Theism, Atheism, Anatheism, Richard Kearney (Boston College, USA)
Chapter 8. Apocalypse or Revelation? Emmanuel Falque (Catholic Institute of Paris, France)
Chapter 9. Atheism and Critique, Anthony Steinbock (Stony Brook University, USA) PART III The Phenomenality of the Religious Chapter 10: The Death of God: Sartre against Heidegger, Philippe Cabestan (Husserl Archives, Paris) Chapter 11. Materialism, Social Construction, and Radical Empiricism: Debating the Status of ‘Experience’ in the Study of Religion, Tamsin Jones (Trinity College, USA) Chapter 12. Atheism, Religion, Experience, (and Metaphysics?), Patrick Masterson (University College Dublin, Ireland) Chapter 13. On Seeing Nothing: A Critique of Marion’s Account of Religious Phenomenality, Christina M. Gschwandtner (Fordham University, USA)
Chapter 14. Doubling Metaphysics, Jean-Luc Marion, (University of Chicago Divinity School, USA, and Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV, France) Index

Additional information