An atheism that is not humanist emerges in French thought / Stefanos Geroulanos.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Geroulanos, Stefanos, 1979-

Series:

Cultural memory in the present.

Cultural memory in the present

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Atheism--France--History--20th century.

Atheism.

Humanism--France--History--20th century.

Humanism.

Philosophical anthropology--France--History--20th century.

Philosophical anthropology.

Philosophy, French--20th century.

Philosophy, French.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (450 p.)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 Kojève, Levinas, Heidegger, Koyré, 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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Man Under Erasure: Introduction

Introduction: Bourgeois Humanism and a First Death of Man

1 The Anthropology of Antifoundational Realism: Philosophy of Science, Phenomenology, and “Human Reality” in France, 1928–1934

2 No Humanism Except Mine! Ideologies of Exclusivist Universalism and the New Men of Interwar France

3 Alexandre Kojève’s Negative Anthropology, 1931–1939

4 Inventions of Antihumanism, 1935: Phenomenology, the Critique of Transcendence, and the Kenosis of Human Subjectivity in Early Existentialism

Introduction: The Humanist Mantle, Restored and Retorn

5 After the Resistance (1): Engagement, Being, and the Demise of Philosophical Anthropology

6 Atheism and Freedom After the Death of God: Blanchot, Catholicism, Literature, and Life

7 After the Resistance (2): Merleau-Ponty, Communism, Terror, and the Demise of Philosophical Anthropology

8 Man in Suspension: Jean Hyppolite on History, Being, and Language

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804774246

0804774242

OCLC:

646066556