5 The State of Atheism in France, 1789

With the death of d’Holbach in January 1789, the philosophical questions raised in this monograph end and the political struggle begins. With the notion of positive atheism firmly established by then, having been tried and tested for a century since Bayle, the chapter proposes to summarise the state atheism was in on the eve of the French revolution. It shows the radicalism of the four authors’ ideas – however diverse – helped shape a world where the old régime was no longer acceptable. It is notably through their defence of toleration, and their defence of republicanism that the four authors draw links between atheism and political thought. All four thinkers also contributed to the early notion of utility – though they are rarely credited for it. Finally, the chapter shows that atheism can overcome itself, that there is a movement past atheism that is present already in the eighteenth century. Diderot is the most important figure here, as a thinker for whom atheism was both a given and insufficient to describe his world view. Bataille’s atheology, Nietzsche’s death of God are later formulations of the same movement, which is described as metatheism.