An Atheism that Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought [Hardcover]

French philosophy changed dramatically in the second quarter of the twentieth century. In the wake of World War I and, later, the Nazi and Soviet disasters, major philosophers such as Koj?ve, Levinas, Heidegger, Koyr?, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Hyppolite argued that man could no longer fill the void left by the death of God without also calling up the worst in human history and denigrating the dignity of the human subject. In response, they contributed to a new belief that man should no longer be viewed as the basis for existence, thought, and ethics; rather, human nature became dependent on other concepts and structures, including Being, language, thought, and culture. This argument, which was to be paramount for existentialism and structuralism, came to dominate postwar thought. This intellectual history of these developments argues that at their heart lay a new atheism that rejected humanism as insufficient and ultimately violent. Beyond recasting the work of the best known thinkers of the mid-century, Geroulanos also highlights the significance of lesser-known figures, from the philosophy of science to theology. In incorporating these voices, he is able to show that atheist antihumanism, far from being opposed to currents of either scientific or religious thinking, was, in fact, deeply indebted to them . . . [This book] asks questions about the writing of history anew. In the process, it posits new horizons for thinking about the interrelationship between secularity and religion at a moment when these are highly charged questions in French history and politicsas well as beyond them. All too frequently anti-humanism serves as a mere slogan or a term of abuse. This broad-ranging and original new study of the anti-humanist movement in twentieth-century French thought helps us to comprehend the deeper complexities of this theme across numerous domains--philosophical, literary, religious, and political. Resisting facile judgment and alive to paradox, Geroulanosl“p