This book is a brilliant presentation of debates between key figures in the recent turn to religion (even in the shape of an insistent atheism or a-theism) in continental philosophy. Chris Watkin positions his work very precisely between philosophies of the finite (Nancy) and of the infinite (Badiou). The author could not have his finger more firmly on the pulse of contemporary discussion of these matters. I cannot think of a book on such difficult material written with more sparkle or clarity.

David Wood, Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

Difficult Atheism shows how contemporary French philosophy is rethinking the legacy of the death of God in ways that take the debate beyond the narrow confines of atheism into the much broader domain of post-theological thinking. Christopher Watkin argues that Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux each elaborate a distinctive approach to the post-theological, but that each approach still struggles to do justice to the death of God.

Christopher Watkin teaches French literature and thought at the University of Cambridge where he is a fellow of Murray Edwards College. He is the author of Phenomenology or Deconstruction?: The Question of Ontology in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur and Jean-Luc Nancy (2009).