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This book shows how contemporary French philosophy is rethinking the legacy of the death of God in ways that take the debate beyond the narrow confines of atheism into the much broader domain of post-theological thinking. The argument traces its way through the different approaches of Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux, showing how each thinker elaborates a distinctive account of the ‘post-theological’, each moving beyond atheism and seeking to follow the death of God in a different way. The term ‘post-theological’ is used to describe a position that has moved beyond the twin poles of an ‘ascetic’ or residual atheism shorn of radical political potential and a ‘parasitic’ or imitative atheism still relying on theological categories. The three positions considered in the book all seek to locate themselves differently in relation to the spectrum between the ascetic and the parasitic as they seek to occupy the territory of post-theological thought. After examining each position carefully and exposing them to a three-way mutual critique, the book concludes that, while Badiou, Nancy and Meillassoux are each sensitive in different measure to the dangers of the ascetic and the parasitic, and while they each gesture towards a post-theological thinking no longer defined in terms of imitative and residual atheisms, they each also struggle to do justice to the death of God.

Gilles Deleuze consistently hammered away at icons, overturning pretentious images taken as true copies of ideal models. He was particularly critical of religious figures. In What is Philosophy? Deleuze argued that religion and transcendence, like philosophy and immanence, always come (and go) together. What value, then, could he possibly have found in engaging theology, which is typically bound to a particular religious coalition? Chipping away at repressive religious representations was valuable in itself for Deleuze, but he also believed that religion produced something of considerable value. He insisted that every religion secretes atheism, and none more so than Christianity. Shults explores Deleuze’s fascination with theological themes and shows how his entire corpus can be understood as a creative atheist machine that liberates thinking, acting and feeling. He also demonstrates how the flow of a productive atheism can be increased by bringing Deleuzian concepts into dialogue with insights derived from the bio-cultural sciences of religion.

This book traces the notion of a world of image from its conception until today. This notion is one of the most original innovations in medieval Islamic philosophy, and is unique compared to other parts of the history of philosophy. The notion originated out of discussions on the fate of human beings after death; would this be spiritual only or physical as well? The world of image suggests that there exists a world of non-physical (imagined) bodies, beyond our earthly existence. This world may be entered after death and glimpses of it may already be witnessed during sleep or meditation. Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) was the first to suggest something along these lines, arguing that people could simply imagine their afterlife without the need for it to be actually physical. Suhrawardī (d. 1191) included this suggestion in his innovative thinking on epistemology, known as ‘knowledge by presence’, without fully ontologizing it. Shahrazūrī (d. > 1286), finally, turned Suhrawardī’s thinking into the full-blown notion of a world of image. Notably through Taftāzānī (d. 1390) and Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621), the idea gained wider popularity and continued to be discussed, especially in Shīʿī circles, up to this day. This book gives an insight into late medieval and early modern Islamic philosophy, especially the role of commentary writing. It sets the record straight for the provenance and development of the world of image and reconsiders the importance of Suhrawardī for the development of philosophy in the Islamic world.