James Baldwin Essay Prize

Cotsapas received his BA in Philosophy and Modern Languages (French) and an MSt in Modern Languages, both from Oxford.  His dissertation, from which the prize-winning essay is derived, examines early modern atheism as it tested the limits of philosophy.  In “Consoling les vrais athées: Diderot and the Problem of the Afterlife” Cotsapas explores Denis Diderot’s attitude toward mortality and his unease about dying in a godless universe. The essay studies two perspectives on death that Diderot tries out, each offering the possibility of meaningful transcendence without an immortal soul. The first is historical transcendence through posterity, the second material transcendence through a living being’s material oneness with the whole of nature.  Neither can provide perfect consolation, Cotsapas suggests, but through the philosophical reflection involved in considering these possibilities, Diderot arrives at a kind of reconciliation with the value of a finite existence.