Irreligion

Leon Niemoczynski

Irreligion is a speculative condition required for access to the divine. Irreligions

opposite is fideism, characteristic of a postmodern religiosity which critiques
absolutes instead of speculating upon the absolute. In other words, against
fideism, Meillassoux states that only through thought about the absolute, not a
critique of absolutes is access to the divine possible. The challenge of
irreligion, Meillassoux claims, is to consider an eschatology of immortality (an
immortality associated with the possible future appearance of a divine being and
its resurrection of the dead) whereby one strives for a philosophy of immanence
that attains not to the finite knowledge (as in postmodernism) but to knowledge
after or beyond finitude, not just to the gods of the masses but to the nature
of the true gods.

In Immanence of the World Beyond Meillassouxs main target is post-Kantian

transcendental (and no longer speculative) philosophy. Meillassoux claims that
irreligiosity ought to stand against those post-Kantian philosophers who
prohibit the right of access to the real (the absolute) in favor of a defense of
rights to belief about the real. The outcome of defending rights to belief over
speculative access entails preserving an unthinkable transcendence that is
beyond the limits of knowledge. Meillassoux claims that since the philosophy of
Kant, a restriction upon the rights of reason has only increased, resulting in
todays postmodern anti-metaphysical philosophy (making Kant a distant
forefather of postmodernism). The restriction of reason has made possible the
recent continental return to religion wherein all truths (rights to belief) reign
equally and thought (reason) is left without power to determine, with complete
impunity our relationship to the absolute. Thus, postmodernism has secured
religious fideism in place of speculation.

Meillassoux states that in its current postmodern form, religious fideism is best
evidenced by the weak thought of Gianni Vattimo. According to Vattimo, the
end of metaphysics allows a decisive return to religious concern, since no one
can seriously argue that we can know that God does not exist. Here, however,
Vattimo prohibits any speculative access by enabling a de-absolutization of
knowledge; that is, Vattimo follows Kant in placing skeptical or critical limits upon
knowledge but also secures those limits with the very open-endedness of
possible hermeneutical interpretation. Meillassoux claims that this move opens
the floodgates for relativism as we can know nothing absolutely of God,
whether Gods existence or non-existence.

While postmodern fideism promotes a piety concerning that which is unknown,

Meillassoux claims that this not an immanent form of piety concerning what is
truly possible (or what is truly in potential, i.e. the virtual). Meillassouxs
irreligious standpoint advocates for the unbounded limits of speculation and
reason to speculate upon the absolute and its contingent conditions that may
issue a future divine being. This requires a standpoint returning to the
immanent, although an immanent that is of a world beyond (the fourth World).