Abstract
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.
Highlights
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
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 wish to be a king without a kingdom, without subjects,” Orestes declares, for true authenticity lies not in one’s destiny or ontological essence, for Sartre, but in freedom, which makes humanity what it is—the sovereign bearers of pure, unencumbered choice (Sartre 1989, p. 123)
Summary
Jerome Gellman argues in a 2009 article that Sartre walks the line of mystical Christianity but fails to establish a relationship with God. “[W]hen Sartre asserts that a person has no self -substance,” he writes, “Sartre is seeing through glass darkly what the Christian mystic has [already] discovered—that a person has no distinct self being, because he exists only in the encompassing being of God”. In a two-part series published in Sartre Studies International between 2013 and 2014, John Gillespie argues that Sartre wanted to develop a truly atheistic philosophy, but Sartre remained preoccupied with religious questions throughout his life and constantly referred to God in his writings, as a result. The death of God meant the end of moral absolutes, for Sartre, who tied the transcendental authority of “universal morality” to the metaphysical nature of God’s ontological essence It is not the sheer notion of God that Sartre rejects, but, if Gillespie is right, the orthodox. There are other theological traditions through which to read Sartre’s idea of nothingness, and, as I will show different theological readings for Sartre and Agamben result in opposing critiques of ontotheology
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