Library

The 195 works by 127 writers drawn on in the essay's “In literature” boxes, from the oldest to the most recent.

9th century BCE

Homer9th century-8th century BCE

Iliad (8th century BCE) Simone Weil

5th century BCE

Sophocles496-406 BCE

Antigone (c. 442 BCE) Simone Weil

Euripidesc. 480-c. 406 BCE

The Bacchae (405 BCE) Girard

Aristophanes445-385 BCE

The Clouds (423 BCE) Plato

Xenophon430-354 BCE

Memorabilia (4th century BCE) Leo Strauss

1st century BCE

Horace65-8 BCE

Odes (23 BCE) Epicurus and Lucretius · Pierre Hadot

Ovid43 BCE-17 CE

Metamorphoses (8 CE) Boyer: why gods are easy to think

2nd century

Lucian of Samosata120-180

On the Death of Peregrinus (c. 165) Celsus and Origen: the first critique of Christianity, and its answer

10th century

Abu l-ʿAla al-Maʿarri973-1057

Luzûmiyyât (11th century) Islam before the exit from religion: Arkoun and Bidar

11th century

Omar Khayyam1048-1131

Rubáiyát (11th-12th century) Islam before the exit from religion: Arkoun and Bidar

13th century

Rumi1207-1273

Mathnawi (13th century) Plotinus

Dante1265-1321

Divina Commedia (1321) Aristotle

14th century

Petrarch1304-1374

Secretum (c. 1347-1353) Porphyry and Augustine: the last adversary and the first synthesizer

Boccaccio1313-1375

Decameron (1353) Leo Strauss

16th century

John of the Cross1542-1591

Noche oscura (c. 1578) Plotinus

Miguel de Cervantes1547-1616

Don Quixote (1615) Berger and Luckmann

William Shakespeare1564-1616

Richard II (1595) Carl Schmitt
Hamlet (1601) Montaigne
King Lear (1606) Jaspers
The Tempest (1611) Montaigne

17th century

Pierre Corneille1606-1684

Polyeucte (1642) Justin Martyr

Jean de La Fontaine1621-1695

Le Chartier embourbé (1668) Malinowski
Les Animaux malades de la peste (1678) Girard

Angelus Silesius1624-1677

Cherubinischer Wandersmann (1657) Meister Eckhart

Jean Racine1639-1699

Phèdre (1677) Pascal

Daniel Defoe1660-1731

Robinson Crusoe (1719) Weber

Jonathan Swift1667-1745

Gulliver's Travels (1726) Bayle

Alexander Pope1688-1744

An Essay on Man (1734) Leibniz

Montesquieu1689-1755

Persian Letters (1721) Bayle

Voltaire1694-1778

Zadig (1747) Leibniz

18th century

Denis Diderot1713-1784

Letter on the Blind (1749) Hume
Conversation of a Philosopher with the Maréchale de \ \*\** (1776) A constructed debate: can morality do without God?

Laurence Sterne1713-1768

Tristram Shandy (1759-1767) Hume

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing1729-1781

Nathan der Weise (1779) Leo Strauss
Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780) Jürgen Habermas

D. A. F. de Sade1740-1814

Juliette (1797) Bataille

Sade1740-1814

Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man (1782) d'Holbach

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749-1832

Prometheus (1774) Hans Blumenberg
Grenzen der Menschheit (1781) Comte-Sponville and Ferry: the quarrel of the two wisdoms
Das Göttliche (1783) Ludwig Feuerbach
Faust (1808) Friedrich Schleiermacher · Jürgen Habermas
Dichtung und Wahrheit (1814) Spinoza

William Blake1757-1827

The Tyger (1794) Rudolf Otto

Friedrich Schiller1759-1805

Die Götter Griechenlands (1788) Weber

Jean Paul1763-1825

Siebenkäs (1796) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Germaine de Staël1766-1817

De l'Allemagne (1813) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

François-René de Chateaubriand1768-1848

René (1802) Charles Taylor

Friedrich Hölderlin1770-1843

Hyperion (1797) Friedrich Schleiermacher
Patmos (1803) Heidegger
Hälfte des Lebens (1804) Jaspers

William Wordsworth1770-1850

Tintern Abbey (1798) Friedrich Schleiermacher

Heinrich von Kleist1777-1811

Michael Kohlhaas (1810) Kant

Stendhal1783-1842

The Red and the Black (1830) Voltaire

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm1785-1863

Der Gevatter Tod (1812) Becker

George Gordon Byron1788-1824

Manfred (1817) Max Stirner
Cain (1821) Leibniz

Alphonse de Lamartine1790-1869

Méditations poétiques (1820) Why do people believe? A constructed debate

Percy Bysshe Shelley1792-1822

Queen Mab (1813) d'Holbach

Heinrich Heine1797-1856

Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (1844) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Mary Shelley1797-1851

Frankenstein (1818) Hans Blumenberg

Alfred de Vigny1797-1863

Le Mont des Oliviers (1843) The sigh without a heaven

Giacomo Leopardi1798-1837

Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia (1830) Why is there something rather than nothing? A constructed debate
La ginestra (1836) Epicurus and Lucretius

19th century

Victor Hugo1802-1885

Ce que dit la bouche d'ombre (1856) Tylor and Frazer
La Conscience (1859) Kant
Le Satyre (1859) Luc Ferry
Les Misérables (1862) A constructed debate: can morality do without God? · Dostoevsky
Ninety-Three (1874) Rousseau
Religions et religion (1880) Marcel Gauchet

Hans Christian Andersen1805-1875

The Emperor's New Clothes (1837) Berger and Luckmann
The Little Match Girl (1845) Freud

Gérard de Nerval1808-1855

Le Christ aux Oliviers (1844) Nietzsche

Nikolai Gogol1809-1852

The Portrait (1835) Marion

Alfred Tennyson1809-1892

In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850) David Friedrich Strauss and Bruno Bauer

Charles Dickens1812-1870

Hard Times (1854) Norris and Inglehart: existential security, the empirical arbiter

Georg Büchner1813-1837

Dantons Tod (1835) Carl Schmitt

Henry David Thoreau1817-1862

Walden (1854) Pierre Hadot

Ivan Turgenev1818-1883

Fathers and Sons (1862) Max Stirner

George Eliot1819-1880

Adam Bede (1859) Ludwig Feuerbach
O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867) Auguste Comte
Middlemarch (1871-1872) David Friedrich Strauss and Bruno Bauer
Middlemarch (1872) Iris Murdoch

Herman Melville1819-1891

Moby-Dick (1851) Rudolf Otto · Jung
Billy Budd (1924) Dostoevsky

Walt Whitman1819-1892

Leaves of Grass (1855) William James
Miracles (1856) Why is there something rather than nothing? A constructed debate

Charles Baudelaire1821-1867

Correspondances (1857) Ricoeur
The Litanies of Satan (1857) Bataille
Le Gouffre (1862) Pascal

Fyodor Dostoevsky1821-1881

The Idiot (1869) Marion

Gustave Flaubert1821-1880

Madame Bovary (1857) Why do people believe? A constructed debate · Marcel Gauchet
Sentimental Education (1869) Karl Löwith
La Tentation de saint Antoine (1874) Celsus and Origen: the first critique of Christianity, and its answer
A Simple Heart (1877) Boyer: why gods are easy to think
Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881) Auguste Comte · The spiritualities of the Universe: a dictated Christ, an enchanted physics

Matthew Arnold1822-1888

Dover Beach (1867) Marcel Gauchet

Henrik Ibsen1828-1906

Brand (1866) Søren Kierkegaard
Kejser og Galilæer (1873) Porphyry and Augustine: the last adversary and the first synthesizer
Samfundets støtter (1877) Do we have the right to believe? Clifford, James and analytic philosophy

Leo Tolstoy1828-1910

War and Peace (1869) Karl Löwith
Confession (1882) William James
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) Becker
The Three Hermits (1886) Wittgenstein
Master and Man (1895) Levinas

Lewis Carroll1832-1898

Through the Looking-Glass (1871) Boyer: why gods are easy to think

Algernon Charles Swinburne1837-1909

Hymn to Proserpine (1866) Nietzsche

Émile Zola1840-1902

Germinal (1885) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Lourdes (1894) Durkheim
Travail (1901) Luc Ferry

Anatole France1844-1924

The Procurator of Judea (1892) Did Jesus exist? The Jesus of history and the mythicist thesis
Sur la pierre blanche (1905) Paul of Tarsus
Les dieux ont soif (1912) Rousseau
La Révolte des anges (1914) Contemporary militant atheists: Onfray and the “new atheists”

Henryk Sienkiewicz1846-1916

Quo vadis (1896) Justin Martyr

Joris-Karl Huysmans1848-1907

Là-bas (1891) Bataille

Guy de Maupassant1850-1893

Auprès d'un mort (1883) Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Rimbaud1854-1891

L'Éternité (1872) André Comte-Sponville

Oscar Wilde1854-1900

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) Michel Foucault
De Profundis (1905) Michel Foucault

Joseph Conrad1857-1924

Heart of Darkness (1899) Tylor and Frazer
Lord Jim (1900) Do we have the right to believe? Clifford, James and analytic philosophy

Knut Hamsun1859-1952

Sult (1890) Norris and Inglehart: existential security, the empirical arbiter

Rabindranath Tagore1861-1941

The King of the Dark Chamber (1914) Wittgenstein

Miguel de Unamuno1864-1936

San Manuel Bueno, mártir (1931) Voltaire

Rudyard Kipling1865-1936

Kim (1901) The Buddhism of the philosophers: a spirituality without God?

Luigi Pirandello1867-1936

Così è (se vi pare) (1917) Berger and Luckmann

André Gide1869-1951

The Immoralist (1902) Michel Foucault

Marcel Proust1871-1922

Swann's Way (1913) Bergson · Hervieu-Léger
Pastiches et mélanges (1919) Ernest Renan
The Captive (1923) Iris Murdoch
Le Temps retrouvé (1927) Porphyry and Augustine: the last adversary and the first synthesizer

Paul Valéry1871-1945

La Soirée avec monsieur Teste (1896) Descartes

Charles Péguy1873-1914

The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1911) Bergson

Thomas Mann1875-1955

Buddenbrooks (1901) Arthur Schopenhauer
Der Zauberberg (1924) Carl Schmitt · Contemporary militant atheists: Onfray and the “new atheists”
Joseph und seine Brüder (1933-1943) Philo of Alexandria
Doktor Faustus (1947) Nietzsche

Rainer Maria Rilke1875-1926

Das Stunden-Buch (1905) Meister Eckhart
Archaïscher Torso Apollos (1908) Pierre Hadot
Duineser Elegien (1923) Rudolf Otto

Hermann Hesse1877-1962

Demian (1919) Jung
Siddhartha (1922) The Buddhism of the philosophers: a spirituality without God?
Das Glasperlenspiel (1943) What the exceptions have in common

Robert Musil1880-1942

Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930-1943) Meister Eckhart

Franz Kafka1883-1924

Vor dem Gesetz (1915) Maimonides
Prometheus (1918) Hans Blumenberg
Brief an den Vater (1919) Freud
Eine kaiserliche Botschaft (1919) Heidegger
In der Strafkolonie (1919) Assessment of the refoundations
Letter to Robert Klopstock (1921) Søren Kierkegaard
Der Prozess (1925) Barth
Das Schloß (1926) Weber

Nikos Kazantzakis1883-1957

The Last Temptation (1955) Paul of Tarsus

Georg Trakl1887-1914

Gedichte (1913) Wittgenstein

Georges Bernanos1888-1948

The Diary of a Country Priest (1936) Barth

T. S. Eliot1888-1965

The Waste Land (1922) Tylor and Frazer

Fernando Pessoa1888-1935

O Guardador de Rebanhos (1914) What the exceptions have in common

Mikhail Bulgakov1891-1940

The Master and Margarita (1940) Did Jesus exist? The Jesus of history and the mythicist thesis

Louis-Ferdinand Céline1894-1961

Journey to the End of the Night (1932) Durkheim

Jean Giono1895-1970

Que ma joie demeure (1935) André Comte-Sponville

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa1896-1957

Il Gattopardo (1958) Hervieu-Léger

Bertolt Brecht1898-1956

Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe (1932) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Jorge Luis Borges1899-1986

La busca de Averroes (1947) Averroes
Spinoza (1964) Spinoza

Ernest Hemingway1899-1961

The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Malinowski

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry1900-1944

Vol de nuit (1931) Assessment of the refoundations
Le Petit Prince (1943) Ricoeur
Citadelle (1948) Plato

Ignazio Silone1900-1978

Pane e vino (1936) Voegelin and Aron

20th century

André Malraux1901-1976

Man's Fate (1933) Camus

John Steinbeck1902-1968

The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Ludwig Feuerbach · The sigh without a heaven

George Orwell1903-1950

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) Voegelin and Aron

Evelyn Waugh1903-1966

Brideshead Revisited (1945) Charles Taylor

Marguerite Yourcenar1903-1987

Memoirs of Hadrian (1951) Epicurus and Lucretius

Graham Greene1904-1991

The Power and the Glory (1940) Bonhoeffer

Isaac Bashevis Singer1904-1991

The Magician of Lublin (1960) Maimonides
The Spinoza of Market Street (1961) Spinoza

Vasily Grossman1905-1964

Life and Fate (1960) Levinas

Arthur Koestler1905-1983

Darkness at Noon (1940) Voegelin and Aron

Jean-Paul Sartre1905-1980

The Flies (1943) Sartre
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951) Sartre

Samuel Beckett1906-1989

Waiting for Godot (1952) Why is there something rather than nothing? A constructed debate

René Char1907-1988

Leaves of Hypnos (1946) Camus

Naguib Mahfouz1911-2006

Awlâd hâratinâ (1959) Islam before the exit from religion: Arkoun and Bidar

Albert Camus1913-1960

Noces (1939) André Comte-Sponville
The Stranger (1942) Camus
The Plague (1947) Bonhoeffer

Shirley Jackson1916-1965

The Lottery (1948) Girard

Primo Levi1919-1987

Se questo è un uomo (1947) The sigh without a heaven

Iris Murdoch1919-1999

The Sea, the Sea (1978) Iris Murdoch

Paul Celan1920-1970

Todtnauberg (1967) Heidegger

Jack Kerouac1922-1969

The Dharma Bums (1958) The Buddhism of the philosophers: a spirituality without God?

Flannery O'Connor1925-1964

Wise Blood (1952) Max Stirner

Umberto Eco1932-2016

Il nome della rosa (1980) Averroes

Paulo Coelhob. 1947

O Alquimista (1988) The spiritualities of the Universe: a dictated Christ, an enchanted physics