Barthes’s transcendental argument

That’s Barthes not Barth. As in Roland.

Prickett suggests that Barthes’ proclamation of the death of the author, his manumission of interpretation from the obsession with the limited, final, “secret” meaning, and his hope for a liberated “anti-theological” and “revolutionary” reading that refuses “to fix meaning” in fact opens the way to a transcendental argument for the existence of God. Barthes recognizes that meaning is guaranteed ultimately by God, and that if there is no God there is no meaning. Thus, “We do not need proofs of God; the concept of ‘proof’ is itself meaningless without God.” Barthes is “right . . . to insist however backhandedly that the creation of meaning is the central theological activity.”