Jean Paul Sartre: the Mystical Atheist

Authors

  • Jerome Gellman Ben Gurion University of the Negev

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v1i2.344

Abstract

Within Jean Paul Sartre’s atheistic program, he objected to Christian mysticism as a delusory desire for substantive being. I suggest that a Christian mystic might reply to Sartre’s attack by claiming that Sartre indeed grasps something right about the human condition but falls short of fully understanding what he grasps. Then I argue that the true basis of Sartre’s atheism is neither philosophical nor existentialist, but rather mystical. Sartre had an early mystical atheistic intuition that later developed into atheistic mystical experience. Sartre experienced the non-existence of God. 

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Published

2009-09-23

How to Cite

Gellman, Jerome. 2009. “Jean Paul Sartre: The Mystical Atheist”. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1 (2):127-37. https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v1i2.344.

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Section

Research Articles