Existential Choice as Repressed Theism

Jean-Paul Sartre and Giorgio Agamben in Conversation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3387404
AutoresMarcos Norris (Loyola University Chicago, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen9
Número4
Páginas106
Fecha de publicación2018-04-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditorialMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel9040106
OpenAlexW2795485507
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas8

This article brings Sartre's notion of existential authenticity, or sovereign decisionism, into conversation with the work of contemporary political theorist Giorgio Agamben, who argues that sovereign decisionism is the repressed theological foundation of authoritarian governments. As such, the article seeks to accomplish two goals. The first is to show that Sartre's depiction of sovereign decisionism directly parallels how modern democratic governments conduct themselves during a state of emergency. The second is to show that Sartre's notion of existential authenticity models, what Agamben calls, secularized theism. Through an ontotheological critique of Sartre's professed atheism, the article concludes that an existential belief in sovereign decision represses, rather than profanes, the divine origins of authoritarian law. I frame the argument with a reading of Sartre's 1943 play The Flies, which models the repressed theological underpinnings of Sartre's theory

Atheism · Conversation · Epistemology · Existentialism · Political science · Politics · Sovereignty · State of exception · Theism · Theology · Law · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification