The Age of Atheists - 9781476754314

From one of England’s most distinguished historians comes the thrilling story of one of the modern world’s most important and controversial intellectual achievements: atheism.

Since Friedrich Nietzsche declared that “God is dead” in 1882, a raft of courageous, reflective and brilliant individuals have devoted their creative energies to devising ways to live without God, turning instead to invention, enthusiasm, hope, wit, and above all self-reliance. Their brave, innovative story has gone untold—until now. In The Age of Atheists, famed British historian Peter Watson offers a sweeping narrative of the secular philosophers and poets, psychologists and other scientists, painters and playwrights, novelists, and even choreographers who have forged a new, bold path in the absence of religious belief.

Synthesizing nearly a century and a half of recent history, The Age of Atheists is a stunning, magisterial celebration of life without recourse to the supernatural. From William James and George Santayana to Richard Rorty and Ronald Dworkin, from Paul Cézanne and Claude Monet to Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg, from André Gide to Philip Roth, from Rudolf Laban to Merce Cunningham, from Henrik Ibsen to Samuel Beckett, from Wallace Stevens and Rainier Maria Rilke to Elisabeth Bishop and Ceszlaw Milosz, from Sigmund Freud and Benjamin Spock to E.O. Wilson and Sam Harris, The Age of Atheists brilliantly explores how atheism has evolved, deepened, and matured and gained unprecedented popularity and resonance as it has sought to replace an unknowable God in the Afterlife, with the pleasures and warmth of this life: art, philosophy, science all woven into a rational, secular morality. An intelligent, fascinating, and ultimately triumphant history, this stirring narrative explores the revolutionary ideas and big questions in the first full story of our efforts to live without God.