After the Death of God: Secularization as a Philosophical Challenge from Kant to Nietzsche

A fresh history of nineteenth-century philosophy’s many ideas about secularization.

The secularization thesis, which held that religious belief would gradually yield to rationality, has been thoroughly debunked. What, then, can we learn from philosophers for whom the death of God seemed so imminent? In this book, Espen Hammer offers a sweeping analysis of secularization in nineteenth-century German philosophy, arguing that the persistence of religion (rather than its absence) animated this tradition. Hammer shows that Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, each in their own way, sought to preserve and transform religion’s ethical and communal aspirations for modern life. A renewed appreciation for this tradition’s generous thought, Hammer argues, can help us chart a path through needlessly destructive conflicts between secularists and fundamentalists today.

Espen Hammer is professor of philosophy at Temple University. He has published numerous books, including Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience, and Catastrophe.