Stefanos Geroulanos - An Atheism that Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought [2010]

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.

Reviews
"An Atheism That is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought examines a complex series of debates in mid-twentieth century French philosophy that culminates in the rise of antihumanism during the 1960s. The book is a rich and sophisticated intellectual history, offering food for thought for the specialist and non-specialist alike. . . Geroulanos argues convincingly that French antihumanism is rooted in the historical onset of this crisis during the pre-war period, in what separates the twentieth century from the nineteenth, and that an archaeology of antihumanism is utterly necessary if we wish to understand the present age."—Ryan Coyne, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

"Focusing on a narrow period, roughly 1930 to 1954, and proceeding as an investigation into the emergence of antihumanism as a cultural figure in the overlapping spheres of philosophy, literature, theology, and politics, the book augurs a sea change in our historical approach to French intellectual currents . . . Geroulanos has irrevocably upended the conventional genealogy of the field."—Knox Peden, History and Theory

"[T]he approach Geroulanos takes—putting atheism at the center of things—leads to insights . . . Geroulanos pays subtle respect to a range of intellectual positions and demonstrates the extreme complexity of the conversations, and the fierce disappointment that animated them."—American Historical Review

"This book introduces a terrifically learned new intellectual historian who has provided a strikingly novel and philosophically interesting genealogy of the antihumanism that most observers associate with too recent an era of thought. Of interest to anyone concerned with the the rich traditions of Continental philosophy, Stefanos Geroulanos's investigation gives the French scene in the 1930s its due, with neglected figures, new departures, and influential breakthroughs that still challenge the temptation to make the humanity of man the basis of reflection."—Samuel Moyn, Columbia University

"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, Geroulanos's book unsettles, reframes, and provokes at every turn. A work of true consequence by a compelling new voice in European intellectual history."—Peter E. Gordon, Harvard University

About the Author
Stefanos Geroulanos is Assistant Professor of Modern European Intellectual History at New York University.
He is the author of an account of antihumanism's rise in France during the second quarter of the twentieth century, titled An Atheism that is not Humanist Emerges in French Thought (Stanford UP, 2010). A second book, with Todd Meyers, on the German-Jewish neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein was published in German in 2014: Experimente im Individuum: Kurt Goldstein und die Frage des Organismus.
Geroulanos is also the co-translator of two books by Georges Canguilhem, Knowledge of Life (Fordham UP, 2008), and the co-editor of an anthology of Henri Atlan's essays (Fordham UP, forthcoming Fall 2010).