Seattle Philosophy Club

SEA OF FAITH IN AUSTRALIA (SoFiA) - Melbourne.

Some of us are participating in SoFiA's online event.

We move on to the ethical aspects of Bataille's thought. We'll take up several texts on this topic:

From the collection Visions of Excess:
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice", p. 223
"The Sacred Conspiracy", p. 178
"The Use Value of D. A. F. de Sade", p. 91 -- revisit the last section titled "Principles of Practical Heterology"

From The Bataille Reader:
"From Programme (Relative to Acephale)", p. 121

Note: Concurrently we're reading Bataille's novel Blue of Noon (also in the Google Drive). We'll read it individually over several weeks, then have a session on it.

You can find all texts in the Google folder linked at the BOTTOM of this description -- scroll all the way down (also for Zoom link) 👇

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

Tentative schedule
Apr 19: Bataille's 'logic': On heterology
Apr 26: Bataille's ethics of excess: Chance, myth and the erotic
May 3: Bataille's ethics (cont'd)
May 10: Bataille's ethics (cont'd)

Future topics:

• Bataille's aesthetics: the rift with Surrealism
• Blue of Noon
• Personal sovereignty and inner experience
• Erotics and the 'logic' of transgression
• Bataille and/vs Deleuze
• Foucault's "A Preface to Transgression"
• Hegel, the negative and general economy
• Derrida's "From Restricted to General Economy"

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ABOUT THIS GROUP
This is a reading group of several texts of Georges Bataille with a focus on his philosophy of life. 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 as you approach him, especially if this is your first experience with French philosophy.

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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.

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A FEW NOTES ON THIS WEEK'S TEXT
André Masson's Acéphale, used on the cover of Bataille’s eponymous journal of the late 30s, depicts the main elements of Bataille’s ethics of ecstasis: the decapitation of reason to liberate passionate existence, the flaming heart of love, the violence of revolution that seeks to annihilate the decomposed social order, the labyrinth of the passions operative in the gut – plus the experience of an erotics that crosses into the realm of death and the thickness of the feet anchoring one in the depths of base matter.

In previous readings we’ve learned that homogeneous or profane existence – the rational and utilitarian conformity to societal norms – cannot satisfy the most profound human needs. These are inherently heterogeneous in nature and seek the experience of the sacred. Heterogeneity, as we know, encompasses both the noble/pure and the base/impure poles and emerges through various forms of unconditioned expenditure such as sacrifice. Bataille now gives us a comprehensive inventory of the homogeneous and then locates the heterogeneous in modern life through practices of erotics and mythmaking.

Like Hegel and Kierkegaard before him, Bataille divides life into distinct spheres. Homogeneity is insufficient because each of its spheres dissociates life, fragmenting it into compartmentalized functions unable to satisfy the human need for a total existence. The economic sphere, marked by work, utility and boredom, epitomizes modern enslavement. Science privileges the intellectual will to knowledge, unveiling a cold reality devoid of passion and personal meaning. Art, for its part, explores passions and existential meanings but remains locked within the fictive imaginary realm, disconnected from tangible reality. Political action promises to merge imaginary ideals with reality; however, Bataille views action as inherently conservative, subservient to the given world and ultimately incapable of genuine transformation. Only revolutionary action, in annihilating the old order, is capable of asserting the genuine will to live.

The homogeneous fails to fulfill the deeper existential necessity identified by Bataille: to live authentically according to one's destiny. There are unmistakable echoes of Heidegger here, whose Being and Time had come out some 10 years prior. Destiny emerges distinctly only outside the rational norms and calculations of necessity. It is actualized when individuals embrace risk, courageously opening themselves to the inherent chance character of existence—and in particular, the existential possibility of death. Life, existentially understood, is a series of chance encounters approached without rationalization or premeditated control. This attitude of ontological risk resembles the gambler’s daring and is reminiscent of Heidegger’s notion of the “powerless superior power … with readiness for anxiety”. It is an ontological courage that pushes one beyond homogeneity into the sacred, heterogeneous dimension. Here, one confronts death and and the other "without reserve," encountering simultaneously hope and terror.

In the erotic sphere, existential risk manifests through passionate, carnal encounters with the other. The tangible materiality of desire evokes the sacred behind the closed bedroom door. The shared space of lovers transcends the poverty of modern existence by linking fantasy directly to lived reality. However, Bataille acknowledges the limitation of the erotic: confined to the intimate dyad, it cannot underpin broader societal transformation or total communal life. It cannot be revolutionary.

Bataille’s alternative path is through myth-making, an attempt to re-enchant the alienated modern world. Unlike literature, myth attains concrete reality when it actively animates individuals and binds them organically within the social totality. Through collective rituals, festivals, and dances, myth manifests materially within human bodies, accessing the deepest existential drives unreachable by economics, science, art or political pragmatism. Unlike the erotic, myth opens the dimension of collective destiny. It subordinates all other spheres and mobilizes communities to assert their sacred existence by seizing existential opportunities. In the context of bourgeois society, this means in the first instance a revolution of the base, proletarian elements.

Bataille’s exemplary figure, the “sorcerer’s apprentice,” represents the modern myth-maker who channels destiny's pulse, rigorously engaging the existential chances presented by life. This figure embodies the inherent sense of the tragic, recognizing that profound human meaning faces inevitable dissolution through death. Institutionally, Bataille proposes secret societies, exemplified by his Acéphale group, as modern vehicles of sacred myth-making. Secrecy safeguards sacredness while transcending the isolation of the erotic dyad to create a broader communal bond through ritual.

Some questions:

• Could there be spheres other than the erotic and the mythical where modern life offers a genuine experience of destiny? Is there something to be said for vocation, for example?
• Fascist movements also complain of the meaningless decadence of modern life and attempt to re-enchant it through a living mythology. Yet, as we’ve seen, Bataille is deeply critical of fascism. What distinguishes his mythmaking from that of the fascists?
• Heidegger is, like Bataille, a thinker of destiny. Yet the notions of desire, erotics and the body make virtually no appearance in Heidegger’s phenomenology. How might the German have responded to Bataille’s emphasis of these themes?

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