Seattle Philosophy Club

We'll continue with the rest of the section titled The Torment from Bataille's 1943 work Inner Experience (reading is available in the Google folder linked at the bottom of this event description)

SOME NOTES ON THE TEXT
Bataille culminates the section on the torment with a "schema” of inner experience, a term borrowed from Kant. Yet a schema, which has the function of prefiguring a universal law, can only be paradoxical in Bataille's usage. For there is no law or concept that can encapsulate inner experience that goes "to the limit of the possible.” The only accurate designation of such experience would be "non-knowledge,” and this too can only be an empty designation with no intelligible sense.

Non-knowledge, or the impossible, is the void at the heart of human subjectivity. Desire endlessly revolves around this void and tries to fill it with acquisitions and “experiences.” These efforts are in vain, and indeed they present the very definition of vanity in the biblical sense. The intellect, for its part, incessantly subsumes the void under a general concept, only to discover that its radical singularity escapes every possibility of conception. Another gloss on the void is “death,” philosophically defined as the possibility of the inevitable yet uncertain end of life to come, experienced by each individual in the first person. The void is the uncanny horizon of death that wraps human existence in finitude. Death, like non-knowledge, marks out the limit of the possible and of intelligible sense. The register that lies beyond it cannot be understood but can only be approached in ecstasy and anguish. Inner experience thus involves what psychologists have called “ego death” and what later French philosophers would refer to as the death of the subject, a theme already distinct in Bataille's writings.

The schema of inner experience begins with setting this experience as a project to be actively pursued. Without project, the full human being cannot be activated. However, every project involves a stance of knowledge and sense—this is one of Bataille's axioms. Hence project must annul and extinguish itself to attain the ecstasy of the ineffable: non-knowledge lies on the other side of projective activity. One must enter a receptive state, since ecstasy is always an effect of the other upon the self, right up to the dissolution of the self.

Anguish registers the indecision, the horror of confronting the surrender of the ego. Just as in Heidegger and Kierkegaard, decision puts an end to anxiety and lets one surrender to the vastness of being. Ecstasy is then experienced in a sacred darkness of non-knowledge. Yet it is a fleeting encounter that cannot be expressed through definitive signs nor possessed through a concept. Soon one falls back to the level of the profane, and then the ecstatic seems like a dream, shrouded in doubt that questions if it ever even occurred. The intellect promptly steps in, as is its function, to dispel the doubt with a formula: “non-knowledge produces ecstasy.” Yet this is already a perversion of the ineffable and signals the profane incapacity of reason to be equal to ecstasy. The project of reason’s self-effacement must be adopted again for inner experience to recommence.

Bataille's extended critique of evasion also is worth noting. Non-knowledge produces overwhelming anxiety, and it is tempting—in fact it is inevitable—for a human being to seek a way out of the surrender. Bataille's general name for evasion is “project.” To project oneself into the future is to set a value as authoritative and pursue it as a source of meaning. The project fills out the void and gives it a determinate shape in the life of an individual. It marshals a person's generative activity by applying means to the end of accomplishing the project, creating productive satisfaction in the process. Project belongs to the sphere of homogeneity, which for battle has an overall profane character. Ecstasy and non-knowledge, on the other hand, belong to the heterogeneous and are approached only through an unproductive expenditure. The void should not be filled with relative projects but should be kept open as the highest authority. This is Bataille's meaning when he assigns contestation the sole sovereign value.

Evasion comes in many forms, and it seems that each of Bataille's predecessors succumbed to it—with the sole exception, perhaps, of Nietzsche. Kierkegaard explored existence to a profound depth, yet his leap of faith remained bound to church dogmatics. Pascal seemed to throw life into the void as a gamble of chance, yet he did it with the goal of eternal salvation. And salvation is for Bataille the utmost sublimation of project (the concern for metaphysical self-preservation). Dostoevsky, in Notes from Underground, penetrated to the bottom of sacred abjection. Yet he took shameful spite to be an unshakable frame that subtly holds the void at bay. The Marquis de Sade did something similar with erotic sadism when he barricaded himself in a house of terror. He used the imaginary project of death as a shield against the terror of death itself. In Heidegger, the early meditation on death was superseded by an ontological poetics, with the aim of encompassing being, language, and humanity in a cosmos akin to that of the pre-Socratics. But poetry for Bataille is also project—the most aesthetic and indefinite, yet project nonetheless, and thus an evasion of the void. Rimbaud, perhaps sensing this poetic impasse, chose to trade his pen for a long silence in order to recover his decisive vitality.

Finally there is Hegel, whose absolute knowing is intended to preempt every possibility of non-knowledge by incorporating it into a dialectical circle continuous with knowledge. The result is a teleology that asserts, in effect, that there is no being that is not project. Every other is brought into the fold of recognition, and heterology is merged within homogeneity through a dialectical unity. To pursue Bataillean inner experience is thus to wage endless struggle against the Hegelian tendency of absolute knowing.

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This is a reading group of several texts from Georges Bataille with a focus on his philosophy of life. See below for a tentative reading schedule and for some notes on Bataille. Check back here later for the specific topic and reading for this week.

Georges Bataille stands out as an eclectic, fascinating and controversial figure in the world of French letters. A contemporary of Sartre and Lacan, he combined ideas from diverse disciplines to create a unique position that he labeled 'base materialism' and which could equally be called 'ecstatic materialism'. Keeping outside the academic mainstream (he worked as a librarian), Bataille writes at the intersection of multiple disciplines including philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, mythology, and mystical theology. His works develop a libidinal economy, offer a critique of fascism and embrace marginal experiences in the style of the French poets. He is a formative precursor to the post-structuralist philosophers of the '60s -- and may well be more relevant in our time than ever.

We'll start with Bataille's early writings on Nietzsche and make our way through his important concepts over a number of weeks. We'll aim to understand Bataille's thought on its own terms as well as to place him in the context of the German thinkers that preceded him and the French philosophers who followed his lead. In view of Bataille's early relationship with Surrealism, the referenced artworks will spotlight this movement.

Note: Bataille's texts, while philosophically important, discuss difficult themes such as mortality, the unconscious, eroticism, primeval social practices, etc. Keep this in mind, especially if this is your first experience with French philosophy.

Tentative reading Schedule
Feb 15: Bataille’s reading of Nietzsche
Feb 22: The psychological critique of Fascism
Mar 1: Bataille's Dionysian materialism
Mar 8: On chance, myth and the erotic
Mar 15: The notion of unproductive expenditure
Mar 22: Personal sovereignty and inner experience

You can find all readings in the Google folder linked at the BOTTOM of this description -- scroll all the way down 👇

Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.

***

GROUP RULES

• Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
• Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
• Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
• Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
• We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.

***

A FEW NOTES ON GEORGES BATAILLE
Much of the philosophical value and fascination of Georges Bataille lies in his eclectic reading of the European ‘masters of suspicion’, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Bataille borrows important concepts from each, while resisting the rationalistic and orthodox readings of these thinkers prevalent in his time. From Nietzsche he takes the distinction between the Apollonian/celestial and Dionysian/chthonic regions of experience. This distinction sets him up for a highly original investigation into the sacred in modernity. As a key originator of the “return to Nietzsche” in France, Bataille staunchly resists fascist appropriations of Nietzsche’s thought. In the process he develops the notion of heterogeneity, a precursor to the problematic of difference/différance central to the 1960s.

From Marx, Bataille adapts the analysis of production. As Marx shows, labor — the class that performs it, the energy it expends and the matter it works on — has always been a repressed dimension of social life. This is because precisely labor holds the key relation of domination and exploitation in society. Yet Bataille steers clear of orthodox readings of Marxism that ultimately issue into its Stalinist, totalitarian corruption (what has been called ‘right-wing’ or ‘reactionary’ Marxism). But how to preserve Marx's materialist insights without falling prey to a worship of use value and a repression of the individual? Also steering clear of easy humanist solutions, Bataille offers the innovative notion of unproductive expenditure: a loss of economic energy expended strictly for its own sake, as in the practices of sacrifice and potlatch. Bataille finds in this ‘principle of loss’ a general economic axiom that governs the human energetic system on both the social and the individual level. He argues that the ‘restricted economy’ of production, exchange and consumption that we all participate in is in fact subordinated to the ‘general economy’ of unproductive expenditure. In brief, he proposes an economic, sociological and essentially materialist way to think of the absolute, that is the unconditioned or the end in itself, as a sovereign process of loss for its own sake.

Here Bataille’s Freudian lineage also comes to the fore. Much of his work is an exploration of the Freudian unconscious and its dual drives of Eros and Thanatos. Bataille takes the Freudian death drive with utmost seriousness. He resists, like Lacan later would, the rationalistic reading of Freud offered by ego psychology, which sees the goal of psychoanalysis as a comfortable adaptation to reality that maximizes well-being. Instead, Bataille is drawn to the ‘speculative’ element that pushes Freud’s thought ‘beyond the pleasure principle’ and into an uncanny domain. It is this domain of the beyond, the ecstatic and the sacred that Bataille articulates throughout his career through means as varied as dream analysis, surrealist art, secret societies, political activism, fiction, poetry, eroticism, mythology, mystical meditation, philosophical writing, etc. Among other things, his work offers an innovative understanding of the erotic and of myth, pointing to both as antidotes to the existential malaise of modernity.

Some questions we may ask in the course of discussion:

Do Bataille's 'irrationalism' and his emphasis on the ecstatic constitute a viable philosophical position? Does he achieve his task of resuscitating life from the nihilism of modernity?

Philosophers have long conceived of the absolute and unconditioned in idealist terms (Platonic Ideas, Kantian self-consciousness, etc). What is the value of Bataille's materialist and energetic theory of the absolute? Can such a theory be divorced from specific practices of enacting the unconditioned?

Bataille identifies the existential problem of modernity, but he seems to part ways with phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Sartre. How does Bataille's notion of the ecstatic compare to Heidegger's ek-stasis? How is the Bataillean sovereign individual distinct from Sartre's radically free consciousness? Is Bataille really that different from his more famous contemporaries, and if so what differentiates him?

It's not difficult to see many post-structuralist concepts foreshadowed and anticipated in Bataille. For example, difference, the marginal, delirium, the exorbitant, the abject, jouissance, etc. Should we therefore think of Bataille as a post-modernist avant la lettre? What does the philosophy of the 1960s bring that Bataille himself isn't able to think -- in other words, what are the limits of Bataille's thought?

What can we learn from Bataille for our time of crisis, armed conflict, multipolarity and the renewed rise of fascist ideologies?

***

This is a reading group of several texts from Georges Bataille with a focus on his philosophy of life. See below for a tentative reading schedule and for some notes on Bataille. Check back here later for the specific topic and reading for this week.

Georges Bataille stands out as an eclectic, fascinating and controversial figure in the world of French letters. A contemporary of Sartre and Lacan, he combined ideas from diverse disciplines to create a unique position that he labeled 'base materialism' and which could equally be called 'ecstatic materialism'. Keeping outside the academic mainstream (he worked as a librarian), Bataille writes at the intersection of multiple disciplines including philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, mythology, and mystical theology. His works develop a libidinal economy, offer a critique of fascism and embrace marginal experiences in the style of the French poets. He is a formative precursor to the post-structuralist philosophers of the '60s -- and may well be more relevant in our time than ever.

We'll start with Bataille's early writings on Nietzsche and make our way through his important concepts over a number of weeks. We'll aim to understand Bataille's thought on its own terms as well as to place him in the context of the German thinkers that preceded him and the French philosophers who followed his lead. In view of Bataille's early relationship with Surrealism, the referenced artworks will spotlight this movement.

Note: Bataille's texts, while philosophically important, discuss difficult themes such as mortality, the unconscious, eroticism, primeval social practices, etc. Keep this in mind, especially if this is your first experience with French philosophy.

Tentative reading Schedule
Feb 15: Bataille’s reading of Nietzsche
Feb 22: The psychological critique of Fascism
Mar 1: Bataille's Dionysian materialism
Mar 8: On chance, myth and the erotic
Mar 15: The notion of unproductive expenditure
Mar 22: Personal sovereignty and inner experience

You can find all readings in the Google folder linked at the BOTTOM of this description -- scroll all the way down 👇

Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.

***

GROUP RULES

• Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
• Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
• Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
• Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
• We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.

***

A FEW NOTES ON GEORGES BATAILLE
Much of the philosophical value and fascination of Georges Bataille lies in his eclectic reading of the European ‘masters of suspicion’, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Bataille borrows important concepts from each, while resisting the rationalistic and orthodox readings of these thinkers prevalent in his time. From Nietzsche he takes the distinction between the Apollonian/celestial and Dionysian/chthonic regions of experience. This distinction sets him up for a highly original investigation into the sacred in modernity. As a key originator of the “return to Nietzsche” in France, Bataille staunchly resists fascist appropriations of Nietzsche’s thought. In the process he develops the notion of heterogeneity, a precursor to the problematic of difference/différance central to the 1960s.

From Marx, Bataille adapts the analysis of production. As Marx shows, labor — the class that performs it, the energy it expends and the matter it works on — has always been a repressed dimension of social life. This is because precisely labor holds the key relation of domination and exploitation in society. Yet Bataille steers clear of orthodox readings of Marxism that ultimately issue into its Stalinist, totalitarian corruption (what has been called ‘right-wing’ or ‘reactionary’ Marxism). But how to preserve Marx's materialist insights without falling prey to a worship of use value and a repression of the individual? Also steering clear of easy humanist solutions, Bataille offers the innovative notion of unproductive expenditure: a loss of economic energy expended strictly for its own sake, as in the practices of sacrifice and potlatch. Bataille finds in this ‘principle of loss’ a general economic axiom that governs the human energetic system on both the social and the individual level. He argues that the ‘restricted economy’ of production, exchange and consumption that we all participate in is in fact subordinated to the ‘general economy’ of unproductive expenditure. In brief, he proposes an economic, sociological and essentially materialist way to think of the absolute, that is the unconditioned or the end in itself, as a sovereign process of loss for its own sake.

Here Bataille’s Freudian lineage also comes to the fore. Much of his work is an exploration of the Freudian unconscious and its dual drives of Eros and Thanatos. Bataille takes the Freudian death drive with utmost seriousness. He resists, like Lacan later would, the rationalistic reading of Freud offered by ego psychology, which sees the goal of psychoanalysis as a comfortable adaptation to reality that maximizes well-being. Instead, Bataille is drawn to the ‘speculative’ element that pushes Freud’s thought ‘beyond the pleasure principle’ and into an uncanny domain. It is this domain of the beyond, the ecstatic and the sacred that Bataille articulates throughout his career through means as varied as dream analysis, surrealist art, secret societies, political activism, fiction, poetry, eroticism, mythology, mystical meditation, philosophical writing, etc. Among other things, his work offers an innovative understanding of the erotic and of myth, pointing to both as antidotes to the existential malaise of modernity.

Some questions we may ask in the course of discussion:

Do Bataille's 'irrationalism' and his emphasis on the ecstatic constitute a viable philosophical position? Does he achieve his task of resuscitating life from the nihilism of modernity?

Philosophers have long conceived of the absolute and unconditioned in idealist terms (Platonic Ideas, Kantian self-consciousness, etc). What is the value of Bataille's materialist and energetic theory of the absolute? Can such a theory be divorced from specific practices of enacting the unconditioned?

Bataille identifies the existential problem of modernity, but he seems to part ways with phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Sartre. How does Bataille's notion of the ecstatic compare to Heidegger's ek-stasis? How is the Bataillean sovereign individual distinct from Sartre's radically free consciousness? Is Bataille really that different from his more famous contemporaries, and if so what differentiates him?

It's not difficult to see many post-structuralist concepts foreshadowed and anticipated in Bataille. For example, difference, the marginal, delirium, the exorbitant, the abject, jouissance, etc. Should we therefore think of Bataille as a post-modernist avant la lettre? What does the philosophy of the 1960s bring that Bataille himself isn't able to think -- in other words, what are the limits of Bataille's thought?

What can we learn from Bataille for our time of crisis, armed conflict, multipolarity and the renewed rise of fascist ideologies?

***