Open Theology 2019; 5: 182–197 Renxiang Liu* Sartre’s Godless Theology: Dualist Monism and Its Temporal Dimensions https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2019-0017 Received April 28, 2019; accepted June 17, 2019 Abstract: My task in this paper is to study Sartre’s ontology as a godless theology. The urgency of defending freedom and responsibility in the face of determinism called for an overarching frst principle, a role that God used to play. I frst show why such a principle is important and how Sartre flled the void that God had lef with a solipsist consciousness. Then I characterize Sartre’s ontology of this consciousness as a “dualist monism”, explaining how it supports his radical conception of freedom. Then, by assessing Sartre’s dualist monism through a theological lens, I disclose an inconsistency in his thought concerning the idea that the in-itself is a deterministic plenitude, which presumes a theos diferent from consciousness and hence threatens monism. Finally I argue that his inconsistency originates from the fnitude of Sartre’s frst principle and analyze this fnitude by examining the modes of temporality it implies. The entire trajectory problematizes the practice of theo-logy, the idea that a theos stands at the origin of the “logic” (organization or intelligibility) of everything such that all must be conceived under the logos of the theos. While Sartre forcefully criticized the theology of the infnite, his was nonetheless a theology of fnitude. Keywords: Jean-Paul Sartre; Dualist monism; Godless theology; Freedom; Ontology; Finitude 1 Radical freedom In most introductory works, Jean-Paul Sartre is depicted as having endorsed a radical concept of freedom early in his career (that is, before writing Question de méthode [1957]): he seemed to contend that “freedom is without limits” and that “there are no degrees of freedom”.1 This is not a total misinterpretation, as Sartre’s own words corroborated it. For example, in Being and Nothingness he famously claimed that “we are condemned to freedom,” and this applies even to a prisoner.2 Such a freedom seems indifferent to the varieties of life-situations and, consequently, is not very informative on the socio-political level. If everyone were free without qualification, it would be pointless to promote freedom. Upon a closer look, however, this charge is beside the point. Sartre distinguishes “to obtain what one has wished” from “by oneself to determine oneself to wish”.3 While we usually understand freedom as the former, which obviously comes in degrees, Sartrean freedom means only the latter: “success is not important to freedom.”4 Thus precluding any external limitation from compromising it, Sartrean freedom turns out to be absolute. 1 Bernasconi, How to Read Sartre, 47, 51. 2 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 622-623. 3 Ibid., 621. 4 Ibid. Existential and Phenomenological Conceptions of the Relationship Between Philosophy and Theology *Corresponding author: Renxiang Liu, McGill University, Montreal, Canada; E-mail: renxiang.liu@mail.mcgill.ca Open Access. © 2019 Renxiang Liu, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License. Unauthenticated Download Date | 7/11/19 2:40 PM