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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Bataille, Kojve, Nietzsche, October 27, 2010

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Theory of Religion

By Joseph Martin "pomonomo2003"

(8 customer reviews)

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This review is from: Theory of Religion (Paperback)

It is remarkable that none of the previous reviews here on Amazon mention Alexandre Kojve.
At the end of this book Bataille lists several authors who provided 'reference points' that guided
his steps. The note for Kojve, and his "Introduction la lecture de Hegel", is twice as long as
the next longest entry. (Others here singled out by Bataille are: Georges Dumzil, Emile
Durkheim, Sylvain Lvi, Marcel Mauss, Simone Ptrement, Bernardino De Sahagn, R. H.
Tawney, and Max Weber.) Of Kojve's book Bataille says, "The ideas that I have developed here
are substantially present in it." Now, even though their two positions are not reconcilable, and
Bataille does not expect them to be reconciled, Bataille says of Kojve's "Introduction" that, "
[n]o one today can claim to be educated without having assimilated its contents. (p. 124)"
Note also that the long Epigraph that Bataille places at the beginning of this book comes from
Kojve. This epigraph ends thusly:
"In contrast to the knowledge that keeps man in a passive quietude, Desire dis-quiets him and
moves him to action. Born of Desire, action tends to satisfy it, and can do so only by the
'negation,' the destruction or at least the transformation, of the desired object: to satisfy
hunger, for example, the food must be destroyed or, in any case, transformed. Thus all action is
'negating'." (Kojve, "Introduction to the Reading of Hegel", p. 4 of the English translation.)
Who exactly is Alexandre Kojve? Well, it is he, not Fukuyama, who is the originator of the socalled 'End of History' debate. In the lectures that became his "Introduction la lecture de
Hegel" Kojve interpreted Hegel to the cream of pre-WWII French intelligentsia in a dramatic
manner that his auditors, Bataille included, found electrifying. These lectures on Hegel, which
took both Marx's materialism and Heidegger's understanding of Death into account, mark the
beginning of existential Marxism in France. The story he tells is of unrequited Desire fighting for
Recognition while working its way through the world, and thus blindly (until Hegel) changing
that world in a process that inevitably leads to the Universal State. According to Kojve, Hegel is
the first one to see this. Technically, for Kojve, History 'ended' with Napoleon. There is nothing
beyond the "Libert, galit, fraternit" of the French Revolution; what Napoleon was doing and
what has been happening since Napoleon in our current 'post-history' is nothing more than the
spreading of the ideals of the French Revolution throughout the world. For Kojve, there simply
isn't anything else to do. And when this Work is finally Done? The "Universal Homogenous State"
(UHS) rises, forever...
Now, for Bataille, Kojve's interpretation of Hegel is the only authoritative understanding of our
real workaday historical world. However, for Bataille, this world was never, and could never be,
enough. So then, what could be 'enough'? Bataille believed that the lost intimacy of (especially
primitive) religion was once, long go, 'enough'; and, who knows, perhaps he thought it could be
so again!
But first, I want to stress that Bataille is not calling for some sort of return to a pre-human
'animality'. Animalistic apathy, this immanent moving in the world as 'water within water' (as
Bataille characterizes it, p. 23) is not at all what our author is after. He doesn't want to be
merely 'one with nature', he wants to enjoy, fear and reflect on nature too!
"Moreover, the animal accepted this immanence that submerged it without apparent protest,
whereas man feels a kind of impotent horror in the sense of the sacred. This horror is
ambiguous. Undoubtedly, what is sacred attracts and possesses an incomparable value, but at
the same time it appears vertiginously dangerous for that clear and profane world where
mankind situates its privileged domain. (p. 36)"
It is this 'vertigo', at once joyful and fearsome and thought-provoking, that Bataille is pursuing
in this book! There are two worlds:
"The reality of a profane world, of a world of things and bodies, is established opposite a holy
and mythical world. (p. 37)"
"The real world remains as a residuum of the birth of the divine world: real animals and plants
separated from their spiritual truth slowly rejoin the empty objectivity of tools, the mortal body
is gradually assimilated to the mass of things. Insofar as it is spirit, the human reality is holy,
but it is profane insofar as it is real. Animals, plants, tools, and other controllable things form a
real world with the bodies that control them, a world subject to and traversed by divine forces,
but fallen. (p. 38)"
In the profane world (this is Kojve's World) we tend to become the tools of our own tools, that
is to say, the means of our own purposes. Take, for example, a farmer, "during the time when
he is cultivating, the farmer's purpose is not his own purpose, and during the time when he is
tending the stock, the purpose of the stock raiser is not his own purpose. The agricultural

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Reviewer
Joseph Martin
"pomonomo2003"
Location: NJ, USA
Top Reviewer Ranking: 42,220
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product and the livestock are things, and the farmer or the stock raiser, during the time they are
working, are also things. (p. 42)" One suspects that for Bataille even our concerted action to
bring "libert, galit, fraternit" to all the world also turns us into mere things...
So then, how did our poor farmer long ago escape his fate? - Sacrifice! "Sacrifice destroys an
object's real ties of subordination; it draws the victim out of the world of utility and restores it to
that of unintelligible caprice. (p. 43)" Readers of Bataille are not mistaken to find Nietzsche's
'Amor Fati', Chaos, and Dionysus precisely here:
"The sacrificer declares, 'Intimately, I belong to the sovereign world of the gods and myths, to
the world of violent and uncalculated generosity, just as my wife belongs to my desires. I
withdraw you, victim, from the world in which you were and could only be reduced to the
condition of a thing, having a meaning that was foreign to your intimate nature. I call you back
to the intimacy of the divine world, of the profound immanence of all that is.' (p. 44)"
In the profane world there is work and property, mine and yours, friends and enemies; in the
intimate world of myth and sacrifice there is a violent, but blessed, unanimity. Now, in arguing
that the real profane world isn't enough I don't think we should hear Bataille to be claiming that
the 'intimate order' is Actual; rather, and this is perhaps even more profound, he believes it is
Necessary! But the real profane order "does not so much reject the negation of life that is death
as it rejects the affirmation of intimate life, whose measureless violence is a danger to the
stability of things, an affirmation that is fully revealed only in death. The real order must annul neutralize - that intimate life and replace it with the thing that the individual is in the society of
labor. But it cannot prevent life's disappearance in death from revealing the invisible brilliance of
life that is not a thing. (pps. 46-47)"
The 'invisible brilliance of life that is not a thing' - this is poetry! For Bataille, the profane world
(and make no mistake upon this point, he means any profane world, whether capitalist or
communist, ancient or modern) must turn us into things. But don't we love this ordinary life?
After all, we cry at funerals. "Far from being sorrowful, the tears are an expression of a keen
awareness of shared life grasped in its intimacy. (p. 48)" Death isn't only pain; it is a Revelation
that there is something else besides this everyday life, and as such, it always borders on poetry.
Many of these books of Bataille can be regarded as a first attempt at a new form of sacred
poetry that speaks to our secular (and now postmodern) times.
In still another way Sacrifice breaks out of the profane world. "Sacrifice is the antithesis of
production, which is accomplished with a view to the future; it is consumption that is concerned
only with the moment. (49)" There is your opposition! Sacred vs. the Profane means the useful
vs. the useless. Farther down this same page we read,
"[...] in sacrifice the offering is rescued from all utility.
This is so clearly the precise meaning of sacrifice, that one sacrifices what is useful; one does
not sacrifice luxurious objects."
So, sacrifice is the antithesis of production. It is a prayer. The hope that there is something
beyond production; something beyond being a cog in a wheel that is itself a cog in a larger
wheel... and so on, forever.
"Sacrifice is made of objects that could have been spirits, such as animals or plant substances,
but that have become things and that need to be restored to the immanence whence they come,
to the vague sphere of lost intimacy. (p .50)"
This 'intimacy', what does that mean to our author? "Paradoxically, intimacy is violence, and it is
destruction, because it is not compatible with the positing of the separate individual. (p. 51)" So
the intimate order is the end of both individuality and our profane existence. But how is it that
both the intimate and the profane occur in human experience? Bataille explains that Man,
"is afraid of death as soon as he enters the system of projects that is the order of things. Death
disturbs the order of things and the order of things holds us. Man is afraid of the intimate order
that is not reconcilable with the order of things. Otherwise there would be no sacrifice, and there
would be no mankind either. The intimate order would not reveal itself in the destruction and the
sacred anguish of the individual. (p. 52)"
Bataille is claiming that the intimate order is an anthropological category that will subsist so long
as Man, desiring Man, exists. But we no longer Sacrifice; is the intimate order now only
encountered in death?
No, Sacrifice is violence; carried to its extreme, which is where violence always tends, it is the
end of our humanity. "But if man surrendered unreservedly to immanence, he would fall short of
humanity; he would achieve it only to lose it and eventually life would return to the unconscious
intimacy of animals. The constant problem posed by the impossibility of being human without
being a thing and of escaping the limits of things without returning to animal slumber receives
the limited solution of the festival. (p. 53)"
You see, the Sacred is dangerous: "The sacred is exactly comparable to the flame that destroys
the wood by consuming it. (p. 53)" The Festival, however, is a 'controlled burn': "there is an
aspiration for destruction that breaks out in the festival, but there is a conservative prudence
that limits and regulates it. (p. 54)" The festival is thus a (partially) unintelligible Joy that does
not destroy us. That is to say, it is both useful and useless. "The festival is tolerated to the
extent that it reserves the necessities of the profane world. (p. 54)" Now, the festival is not a
recovery of our lost intimacy, it is a compromise between 'the sacred' and 'the profane'; and,
according to our author, it is upon the compromise between these two that all History has been
built.
We have now traversed almost half of this book. I will stop here and leave it to the interested
reader to pursue it further. (I believe Amazon still limits review length.) Bataille at this point

now turns from primitive history to our 'civilized' history of War, Empire, States and Capital. It is
the history of how the profane has 'overcome' the sacred: "The millenial quest for lost intimacy
was abandoned by productive mankind" (p. 92). And it is a signpost pointing to the way we
might regain this lost intimacy. All this is, I thought, the more interesting part of the book but
this review is already longer than I intended it to be. - And I still want to digress and speak a bit
more of the relation between Kojve and Bataille.
Now, regarding that, I believe that the internal war that Bataille fought was between Kojve's
sui generis Marxism and Nietzsche.
"Nietzsche's position is the only one apart from communism", (Bataille, Accursed Share, p 373).
Indeed, I would argue that many of these books of Bataille can be seen as one long meditation
on the possibility, a possibility that perhaps Bataille never himself fully believed, that both
Kojve and Nietzsche were somehow right! Now, one of the things that makes the "Theory of
Religion" so difficult to understand is that Bataiile is doing a sort of 'double accounting'. He
wants to explain the sacred and secular history in a manner that will be both Nietzschean and
Kojvean (i.e., Hegelian) at the same time. Its occasional opacity testifies to the difficulty...
Briefly, Bataille thinks of the profane world as Kojve did, and he thinks of the Sacred (i.e., the
intimate order) in his own uniquely Nietzschean manner. I suspect that this is why no reviewer
before me here on Amazon even mentioned Kojve. They were interested in what Bataille had to
say regarding the 'intimate order'.
Kojve basically tells Bataille that even if one does not find (his Hegelian) Truth satisfying this is
not sufficient cause to be satisfied with dreams or lies. Kojve is always speaking of Reality, of
what is actually being done in our secular world. Kojve worked after the War, if I remember
correctly, in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs; he was a very practical person. To him,
Bataille is but another Hegelian 'Beautiful Soul', chattering on endlessly about nothing at all.
(For the origin of the term 'beautiful soul' look to Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind:
"Its activity consists in yearning, which merely loses itself in becoming an unsubstantial shadowy
object, and, rising above this loss and falling back on itself, finds itself merely as lost. In this
transparent purity of its moments it becomes a sorrow-laden 'beautiful soul', as it is called; its
light dims and dies within it, and it vanishes as a shapeless vapour dissolving into thin air."
(From the old J.B. Baillie translation, pps. 666-667. Also see pages 675-676.)
Bataille never really found an answer (I mean to say he never found an answer the profane
world would acknowledge) to that rebuke. But I believe (and the following is not Bataille's point,
it is mine) that Nietzsche did. His genealogical method demonstrates that our understanding of
History, of any particular history, can change; that is to say, past events can (eventually, but
only in certain circumstances) be given different meanings. Granting this means that the
Hegelian Circle of Absolute Knowledge can never actually be closed. Why? Well, the Hegelian
Philosopher can never know where History has (or will) lead us because he can never be certain
that our interpretation of that History will not change, or has not (unknown even by him)
already changed. Thus the Hegelo-Kojvean Sage, who wishes to recount the phenomenological
History, those dialectical steps that inevitably led to himself and his Absolute Knowledge, will
eventually find himself incapable of doing so because that History (the specific past he recounts)
is forever changing too. This (occasionally actual but always potential) Nietzschean genealogical
reduction means that the historical ground (known dialectically and phenomenologically) is
forever crumbling away beneath our feet...
Roger Caillois, who along with Bataille and others formed the so-called 'College of Sociology',
recalls that it, "was at Bataille's on the rue de Rennes that we explained our project to Kojve ...
Kojve listened to us, but he dismissed our idea. In his eyes we were putting ourselves in the
position of a conjurer who wanted his magic tricks to make him believe in magic." (This vignette
is recounted in Bataille, "The College of Sociology", p. 86) So yes, from the view of the profane
world Kojve is right; a stage magician that believes in his own magic tricks is genuinely insane.
However, we should note, again from the very same practical profane position, that if a stage
magician were to believe that the audience wants to believe in magic he would not be insane at
all...
But how could the profane Kojvean world ever accept Bataille's Sacred? "As long as History
continues, or as long as the perfect State is not realized [...] the opposition of these two points
of view (the 'philosophical' and the religious or theological) is inevitable." (Kojve, "Introduction
to the Reading of Hegel", p. 72) Kojve knew full well that if his UHS did not rise then religion is,
and must be, a permanent constituent of human social reality. You will of course note that the
Universal Homogenous State, the State in which "libert, galit, fraternit" have all been fully
realized and universal satisfaction has been achieved, has yet to arise. So long as it doesn't one
could thus argue, on perfectly secular Kojvean grounds, that one could expect to always
encounter some type of religion.
Did Kojve ever take Bataille seriously? Well, perhaps. In answer to Bataille, or so I've heard it
maintained, Kojve, in the enigmatic "Note to the Second Edition" (Kojve, "Introduction to the
Reading of Hegel", p. 159ff), announces that even after the UHS rises something that could be
thought of as 'religious sentiment' could survive. Kojve rather dismissively refers to these
behaviors as Snobbery! This is because, by definition, in the UHS there can no longer be any
(properly speaking) historical action. Snobbish behavior has no historical import, thus it too, like
Sacrifice, can be considered an 'unintelligible caprice'. But so long as there is Desire there will be
Action. This is why Bataille included this specific Kojvean quote (mentioned above, "Born of
Desire, action...") as the epigraph to his book. I should, in fairness, also mention that others say
that this Note on snobbery, far from being a concession to Bataille, was little more than a joke
that Kojve found amusing to tell...
There is included in the material collected in "The College of Sociology (CS), (pps. 89-93)" a
letter Bataille wrote Kojve in 1937. In this letter Bataille introduces his notion of 'unemployed

negativity'. If to be Human is to Act, and if Action ceases in the UHS, then what happens to
activity? (Recall that all action is 'negating' according to Kojve.) It becomes 'unemployed'.
"Most often, negativity, being impotent, makes itself into a work of art. (CS, p. 90)" So what
exactly has changed? There has always been Art. Ah, but in the UHS we know that historical
action is impossible. (And we should add, that in our current post-history, historical action is
becoming increasingly impossible.) That is new; "the man of 'unemployed negativity' [,,,]
become(s) the man of 'recognized negativity'. (CS, p. 91)" Man now knows that "his need to act
no longer has any use. [... he is] a negativity empty of content." What does the Man of
'recognized negativity' do? He transgresses! His 'science' now "brings into play representations
extremely charged with emotive value (such as physical destruction or erotic obscenity, an
object of laughter, of physical excitation, of fear and of tears.)" But why?
There is nothing left to do. Man enacts these various transgressions "within the eruption of time
that nothing changes. (CS p. 92)" The only thing left to do "is to satisfy the portion of existence
that is freed from doing: It is all about using free time." With transgression there is (in some
sense) revolt, and there is certainly crime. But these activities only effect oneself. The Man of
recognized negativity "if he does not make a virtue of crime, he generally makes the virtue of
the crime...". So you see, the pursuit of the 'Transgressive' is what one does while history is
ending or has ended. This Transgressive can be pursued in the 'lost intimacy' of the Sacred, in
sex revolution, or even in crime. But it changes nothing, it "is all about using free time."
Transgression is not in any historical sense revolutionary; it is what one does when Revolution
has become impossible, if not irrelevant. For those (increasingly few) who still think 'historically',
it is thus not imprecise to call 'the transgressive' conservative!
I hope I have shown that the engagement with Kojve was foundational to Bataille's thought.
Against him, Bataille always had recourse to (his unique understanding of) Nietzsche. It is within
the struggle between these two that Bataille's transgressive thought rises.
Be all that as it may, the most important point of this superb book is that Human Desire, which,
contra Kojve, Bataille persuasively argues can never be satisfied, requires the 'lost intimacy' of
religion. Only this bottomless Sea could ever hope to quench the thirst of our unspeakably
avaricious Desire... Four and a half stars for a brilliant discussion of the anthropological
necessity, and historical development, of religious activities and sentiments.
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Initial post: Nov 8, 2010 11:36:38 PM PST

Dean Templin says:

Brilliant :-) Granted, of course, that "history is pretty much over and done
with, except for the wrap-up", we may ask whether the negativity
(action=negatity in Hegel)of Bataille, his desire, his "unemployed negativity"
has anything left to do at the end of history. This book is perhaps testament to
that hegalin desire that does not disappear, but lingers on....indefinately and
unemployed.
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In reply to an earlier post on Nov 10, 2010 2:00:38 AM PST

Joseph Martin says:

Thanks. If desire does linger on than I think that this 'negativity', the very
desire to act, will prove to be the flaw in Kojve's grand construction. Let's try
again to flesh out the relation between Kojve and Bataille in another
thumbnail sketch.
If we go back to Marx (and Kojve is a Marxist) one can perhaps say that
today what we find is two Marxisms; one of revolution, the other of system. If,
as many now think, the revolutionary tide has ebbed, then all that is left is the
system. In a very small nutshell (which naturally leaves a great deal out) the
system teaches that capitalism on its own destroys (that is to say, overthrows)
itself. It is capitalist innovation and exploitation that create the socialist world
to come. And thus, even without revolution, eventually capitalism ends. The
innovations of technological, economic, and administrative rationalizations on
the one hand, and the class consciousness that inevitably rises through
exploitation and immiseration on the other, eventually (Kojve would want us
to here add 'inexorably') fuse humanity into one proletariat, universally secular

and socialist. And that would be the end of capitalism.

But one wonders if even these very few Marxist 'systemizers' (for example, see
the excellent "Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of
Statist Socialism" by Meghnad Desai) are right. (And Kojve is really only
another type of Marxist Systemizer.) The 'negativity' that Bataille so loved
does not bring us together. It separates. But wait, one might say, the various
religions (these shrines to 'lost intimacy') have usually been useful in bringing
people together. Or so the anthropologists find in their study of primitive
society, and the historians also usually find this to be so. Whether we look at
the 'Ghost Dance' of the plains Amerinds or the rise of Islam we find groups
brought together and solidified by Religion. But all these religious movements
tend to fuse groups in opposition to others: Amerinds vs. the US, Islam vs.
infidels, Christians vs. pagans, and so on and so forth.
So, religion would seem to require the 'Other', that is to say, the enemy. But
Bataille's intimacy is about the unanimous. Note that even Bataille's
Transgression requires the 'Other'; it requires a victim to outrage, an
'authority' to be outraged by its actions, a Limit to efface. Technically, intimacy
itself (the religious will say the same of their mysticism) does not require an
enemy. Fundamentally, for Bataille, transgression, like the festival, are only an
ersatz intimacy; a concession to the 'order of things'. Now, it is perhaps more
than a mere curiosity to note that only Bataille's intimacy, religious mysticism,
and Kojve's Universal Homogenous State (UHS) are supposedly capable of
achieving unanimity. But we must immediately add that mystical rapture and
the intimacy of Sacrifice are temporary, after these episodes one returns to the
order of things. Only Kojve's UHS is forever; here, in this end-state (if it is
achieved), the 'order of things' is both the only, and an endless, miracle.
Foucault wrote an early essay (1963) on Bataille that deserves to be
mentioned. In 'A Preface to Transgression' Foucault presents the transgressive
(specifically, sex revolution) as a Dionysian ecstasy, the one that arises when
religion falls. "Profanation in a world that no longer recognizes any positive
meaning in the sacred - is this not more or less what we may call
transgression? (this essay collected in Foucault, "Aesthetics, Method, and
Epistemology", p. 72). So, you see, this mnage trois between religion,
transgression, and the UHS is not my private fantasy. Whenever and wherever
secularism entirely wins out over religion, transgression (most commonly, sex
revolution) replaces the Sacred. Religion is, for those exiled in the 'order of
things', the first beloved; when she disappears (the 'death of god')
transgression takes her place. "Perhaps the importance of sexuality in our
culture [...] derives from nothing else than this correspondence which connects
it to the death of God. (Foucault, p.71)"
Religious mysticism and the sex revolution both strive to reach 'the Unlimited';
while the Kojvean end-state is merely the order of things, that is to say, 'the
limited', forever. "Undoubtedly, it is excess that discovers that sexuality and
the death of god are bound to the same experience... (Foucault, p. 72)" This
Binary, limit-unlimited, and the excess that tries to pass over from the one to
the other, has been with man from the beginning. If one takes Kojve's curious
note to the second edition of his 'Introduction' seriously, then the transgressive
is what Kojve characterizes as mere snobbery. So yes, Bataille's
transgression, the accursed form the unlimited takes after the death of God,
lingers on in Kojve's UHS. Both the Sacred and the transgressive are not the
'order of things'; if the transgressive (snobbery) survives in the UHS then the
UHS is not sufficient. That is, there is no UHS at all because the limited (the
'order of things', the UHS) and the unlimited (formerly the mystical, now the
transgressive) have proven to be irreconcilable.
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Posted on Aug 29, 2012 12:44:24 AM PDT

Rex Styzens says:

I much appreciate your extended review. This is the first Bataille work I have
studied, and it has become an increasing struggle. First it was simply a
struggle to try to understand what he was talking about. Now it is a struggle
between notions I find objectionable and those I find intriguing.
I have been convinced by Heidegger that Hegel's reliance on dialectics is
insufficient for ontology. So when I find dialectics in Bataille's confrontation
between his world of order and the world of myth, I am very hesitant to accept
those without further consideration. At the same time, I find myself drawn to

his attempts to explore the dynamics of the world of myth.

Heidegger's early stress on personal authenticity and his later descriptions of
thing and world do not begin to adequately include the kinds of reality that
Bataille finds in the nature of life. But I do not see the human being as a
handicapped animal. I find myself at the moment tempted to pick and choose
from Bataille the elements that resonate with my own willingness to seek the
common he calls "intimacy." Hence I am torn between letting him gather dust
on my shelf (while I study the new version of MH's Beitrage) and the possibility
of having him lead me into unknown depths by continued study. Does my
ambivalence make sense?
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In reply to an earlier post on Sep 2, 2012 4:34:00 AM PDT

Joseph Martin says:

Thank you for the appreciation. Yes, if one is new to Bataille he can be quite
strange. If you decide to read more I would recommend his "Accursed Share"
which, I think, expands nicely upon themes present in this book in a manner
that I found to be a bit less ...unusual.
And yes, Heidegger indicates that dialectics is insufficient for ontology. One
wonders what is sufficient for Heidegger? - Waiting upon the next
Unconcealment? (Of course, I am thinking of the later Heidegger.) Well, yes.
But what if one isn't content to wait? What if circumstances do not allow
waiting? Or perhaps one doesn't have the luxury of no responsibility, and
therefore waiting is out of the question. - What then?
There are many methods in philosophy. The ones I most value are dialectics
(Hegel, Marx), esotericism (Nietzsche, Leo Strauss), and the phenomenology
that originates in Husserl and Heidegger. They are like languages. Now, one
might find English inadequate to say what one precisely wishes to say, and so
employ a German or Latin phrase instead. So too, I think of the above
philosophical methods as mainly applicable only in certain situations.
Phenomenology for merely seeing the world (i.e., not acting). Dialectics for
acting (or understanding action) in that world. Esotericism for managing
painful or problematic circumstances that cannot be immediately or
meaningfully changed.
In a similar manner, perhaps you can compartmentalize Heidegger and Bataille
in a way that you find useful.
As to your last question, if one doesn't often find oneself ambivalent (even
bewildered) when reading thoughtful books like these, one should stop reading
them. Anyone can be a parrot; faithfully regurgitating whatever was said.
Understanding these texts (and oneself) involves ambivalence and
bewilderment. Never be ashamed of struggling with these texts; there are
already enough parrots.
PS. Do you find the new translation of the Beitrge more readable? Besides the
new translation there is also a translation of Gesamtausgabe 71 which is
Heidegger's self-critique of the Beitrge. I have yet to see either the new
translation or the self-critique. But I would like to look at both.
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In reply to an earlier post on Sep 2, 2012 12:45:20 PM PDT

Rex Styzens says:

My copy of the new Beitrage translationContributions to Philosophy (Of the
Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) just arrived yesterday. Looking at only
a few pages, my first impression is that the arguments over translation do not
seem to help me alot. It is still mysterious.
I received Critchley's FAITH OF THE FAITHLESS The Faith of the Faithless:
Experiments in Political Theologya few days ago and have given it a first skim.
It is his contribution to the "return to the religious" of the "post atheism"
discussion. He writes wonderfully, and reads as widely as did the late Richard
Rorty. So his citations work. His advocacy of mystical anarchism justifies the
distinction between declaring the law and agreeing to live by it. Funny how the
courts distinguish between the act and the motivation, yet philosophy leaves
the latter to religion.
I don't know MH's critique of the Beitrage. I appreciate the reference. Thanks
again for your encouragement.
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In reply to an earlier post on Nov 27, 2013 2:13:24 PM PST

Last edited by the author on Nov 27, 2013 2:15:03 PM PST

Robert M. Odom says:

I really enjoy this discussion and I was wondering if there were any specific
books or papers you could recommend that are specifically about these
transgressive forms of sacred in opposition to the secular?
I feel like Norman O. Brown and Marcuse both come close to what you're
talking about, but are there any other people you could recommend?
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In reply to an earlier post on Nov 27, 2013 3:32:24 PM PST

Rex Styzens says:

Difficult Atheism: Post-Theological Thinking in Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy
and Quentin Meillassoux (Crosscurrents)
Jean-Luc Nancy
Mark C TaylorAfter God (Religion and Postmodernism)
And follow the blog. An und fur sich.
Brown and Marcuse helped to plow, but the planters are here. Nancy assumes
you know Heidegger who did the most plowing. Taylor interprets Nancy but
Nancy's Open gets closer examination in the Morin book. You will find a review
by me for the 3 texts I have cited here.
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In reply to an earlier post on Nov 30, 2013 4:20:45 AM PST

Robert M. Odom says:

Thanks for the information, a very helpful list.
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