Towards a Divine Atheism: Jean-Luc Nancy’s Deconstruction of Monotheism and the Passage of the Last God

In Briefings on Existence, Alain Badiou calls for a radical atheism that would refuse the Heideggerian pathos of a “last god” and deny the affliction of finitude. I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of monotheism, as well as his thinking of the world, remains resolutely atheistic, or better atheological, precisely because of Nancy’s insistence on finitude and his appeal to the Heideggerian motif of the last god. At the same time, I want to underline the danger of Nancy’s maintenance of the word “god” to name the infinite opening of the world right at [à même] the world, by considering it as a Derridean paleonymy.