“God is God”: Essay on the Violence of Tautological Propositions

Abstract

The name Stanislas Breton (1912–2005) is probably not familiar to many US academics. A theologian and philosopher, he taught from 1970 to his retirement at the École normale supérieure in Paris. Breton was close to Althusser’s circle; some readers will recognize his name from Étienne Balibar’s references to the essay we translate below—or from references to Breton in the work of Michel de Certeau, Paul Ricoeur, and Barbara Cassin. (“‘Dieu est Dieu’” appears in a volume dedicated to Cassin and her family.)