Page 81 - Eclipse of God

54 Chapter 5

doubt radically dissimilar, and accordingly the reply to the one
must be entirely different from the reply to the other.
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Sartre proclaims his atheism; he says, “The atheistic exis-
tentialism, which I represent. . . .” Among the representatives
of this position he has, to be sure, included Heidegger; but
Heidegger has refused to allow himself to be thus classified.
We must therefore deal with Sartre by himself. He clearly
wishes his atheism to be understood as a logical consequence
of his existential philosophy. We undoubtedly have here before
us an atheism which is basically different from any materialis-
tic one. That it follows, however, from an existential conception
of the world, that is, from one which proceeds from the reality
of human existence, cannot be substantiated.
Sartre accepts Nietzsche’s cry, or better shout, “God is dead!”
as a valid statement of fact. Our generation appears to him as
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specifically the one which has outlived God. He says once —
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although elsewhere he most emphatically asserts, as one who
knows, “Dieu n’existe pas”— that the fact that God is dead does
not mean that he does not exist nor even that he no longer
exists. In place of these interpretations he presents another
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which is singular enough. “He is dead,” he says, “he spoke to
us and now is silent, all that we touch now is his corpse.” I shall
not deal here with the shockingly trivial concluding sentence.
But let us turn to that which precedes it: “He spoke to us and
now he is silent.” Let us try to take it seriously, that is, let us ig-
nore what Sartre really meant by it, namely, that man in earlier
times believed that he heard God and now is no longer capable
of so believing. Let us ask whether it may not be literally true
that God formerly spoke to us and is now silent, and whether
this is not to be understood as the Hebrew Bible understands
it, namely, that the living God is not only a self- revealing but
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also a self- concealing God. Let us realize what it means to