New Books in Secularism16 Jun 2025

Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism.
Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond, (University of Chicago Press, 2024) Brook Ziporyn proposes an alternative that avoids both totalizing theomania and atomizing reductionism. What we need, he argues, is a deeper, more thoroughgoing, even religious rejection of God: an affirmative atheism without either a creator to provide meaning or finite creatures in need of it—a mystical atheism.
In the legacies of Daoism and Buddhism as well as Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bataille, Ziporyn discovers a critique of theism that develops into a new, positive sensibility—at once deeply atheist and richly religious. Experiments in Mystical Atheism argues that these “godless epiphanies” hold the key to renewing philosophy today.You can download the supplementary materials here.

Other works recommended by Brook Ziporyn in this Interview

Mercedes Valmisa, All Things Act, Oxford UP.

Jana S. Rošker, Chinese Philosophy in Transcultural Contexts, Bloomsbury Academics

Gregory Scott Moss, Absolute Dialetheism, forthcoming. But for a taste of a similar argument in a book chapter format, please check here.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Whiat is Intelligence? Penguin Random House

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Episoder(170)

Will Gervais, "Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species" (Prometheus Books, 2024)

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28 Aug 54min

Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism" (Oxford UP, 2026)

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29 Jul 57min

Steven Nadler, "Spinoza, Atheist" (Princeton UP, 2026)

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2 Jun 37min

Drew M. Dalton, "The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

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17 Mai 1h 10min

Elliot B. Hanowski, "Towards a Godless Dominion: Unbelief in Interwar Canada" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023)

In recent surveys, one in four Canadians say they have no religion. A century ago, Canada was widely considered to be a Christian nation, and the vast majority of Canadians claimed they were devoutly ...

9 Mar 1h 9min

Zalman Newfield, "Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey Out of Hasidism" (Temple UP, 2026)

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23 Feb 1h 14min

Todd H. Weir and Lieke Wijnia, eds., "The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

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23 Feb 1h 25min