"the Absent God" and Other Critical and Philosophical Writings

This essential work collects Susan Taubes's philosophical and critical writings, establishing her as one of the most remarkable philosophical minds of the twentieth century. At the center of the volume is Susan Taubes's dissertation on Simone Weil, "The Absent God." Also included are her previously published essays on and reviews of Weil, Heidegger, Genet and Camus, as well as an unpublished fragment on Kafka. Taken together, these rigorously philosophical works show Taubes to be a thinker preoccupied with seeking out a lexicon—of myth and symbol, image and narrative—by which to articulate the conundrum of how to live and die in a cosmos saturated with meaning but devoid of divinity. There has been a surge of interest in Taubes following the recent republication of her novel, Divorcing, and with her newly published novella, Lament for Julia. With an incisive introduction by Sarah Hammerschlag, this volume provides the necessary supplement to her fictional corpus, tracking Taubes's transformation from philosopher to novelist, while revealing Taubes to be not only an extraordinary literary voice but a profound scholarly one as well.