Review: William Ramp on The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred

Alexander Tristan Riley. Godless Intellectuals: The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010, 328 pp. $US 95.00 hardcover (978-1-84545-670-2)

The title of this engaging work might seem paradoxical, but while the intellectuals it describes may have been godless, they were deeply concerned with some of the central issues addressed by religion. In explaining how, Riley gives us an historical sociology of a stream of Durkheim-influenced thinking that has only recently gained recognition, and indeed, is still ignored in certain quarters. His Durkheim is one whose approach, ideas and preoccupations, mediated through the French cultural avant-garde, neglected, and re-appropriated in various ways, had a formative influence on French post-structuralist thought, and thence on the wider world of letters.  Read more