Existential Choice as Repressed Theism

Jean-Paul Sartre and Giorgio Agamben in Conversation

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3387404
AutoresMarcos Norris (Loyola University Chicago, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume9
Fascículo4
Páginas106
Data de publicação2018-04-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditoraMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel9040106
OpenAlexW2795485507
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências 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