Sartre and Theology

Sartre was an iconic atheist, but his relationship to the idea of God and to theology is much more complex than it is often credited to be.

Kate Kirkpatrick places Sartre's early work in its theological context, showing that Sartre was greatly indebted not only to Heidegger and the phenomenological tradition, but also to French theological debates. This can be seen in his philosophical works and his literature, where themes of sin and redemption (or the impossibility of redemption) recur. In light of recently published manuscripts by Sartre this book shows just how theological Sartre's intellectual formation was.

The influence of theology on Sartre was by no means one-way. Sartre had a profound influence on Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox theology in the 20th century. Sartre is discussed at length in the systematic theologies of Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, for example, both of whom engaged directly with his notion of "nothingness" in their accounts of sin. John Zizioulas' Being as Communion explicitly engages with Sartre's negative depiction of life with others. And Sartre's own engagement with his contemporary Gabriel Marcel, as well as his influence on later Catholic thinkers such as Pope, now Saint, John Paul II, demonstrates that Sartre's atheism was, as Paul Tillich called it, a "gift" to theology.