Introduction: The Birth of Positive Atheism

This chapter situates modern atheism within its wider context, and shows the importance of reading atheism with a positive lens in the context of the existing literature on modern atheism in the French Enlightenment. It introduces the concept of atheology, which guides the rest of the monograph, as a three-fold classification of atheistic thought. Negative atheism, it argues, is the first movement, reactive and destructive in its outlook, but supplemented by positive atheism, the attempt to create a positive philosophy without God. Metatheism, the third phase of the movement, is described further in the conclusion. The chapter situates the argument in relation to other Enlightenment studies, notably Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment and discusses the radicality of the authors discussed. It provides a structure for the rest of the monograph.