Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review

Volume 11, Issue 2, 2020

The Justice Potter Stewart Definition of Atheism

In 1964, the United States Supreme Court affirmed by its decision in Jacobellis vs. Ohio that the French art film, Les Amants, was not, as the State of Ohio had previously defined it, “hardcore pornography.” In his concurrent opinion, Justice Potter Stewart wrote that, though he couldn’t properly define what might constitute “hardcore pornography,” it was something that would be obvious to most of us, especially when compared to a bawdy, yet otherwise harmless, foreign film. His exact words were: “but I know it when I see it.” And while Justice Stewart’s simple acknowledgment that we might “know” what something means merely based on our personal perceptions helped justify the Court’s stance on how it approached similar obscenity laws (as well as made him famous) from that point on, it also serves us well in our own search for definitions of words like “religion” or “Atheism.” This article will use Justice Stewart’s argument as a base of discussion for the latter, providing in the process examples of Atheists across three historical periods, that will in turn support a practical description of the term itself, while simultaneously challenging the need for a “definition of Atheism” in the first place.