Philosophy and religion. Reflections on nihilism and the return of the religious

This article offers a philosophical meditation on the relationship between nihilism and the return of religion in contemporary culture, written by the French Orthodox philosopher Bertrand Vergely. Drawing on a critical reading of Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Bergson and Jaspers, the author analyzes the symmetrical dead ends of militant atheism and religious fanaticism, which he interprets as two sides of the same "perverse closure." He carefully distinguishes the religion of order, founded on myth and ritual, from the religion of conscience, embodied by mysticism — from Meister Eckhart to Gregory Palamas. The theological contribution of the article lies in the valorization of a creative religiosity, rooted in the apophatic tradition of Dionysius the Areopagite, capable of resisting idolatry as well as nihilism, and in the call for a renewed alliance between philosophy and theology in the face of contemporary dehumanization.