On Nietzsche

by Georges Bataille

Hailed by Martin Heidegger as "one of France's best minds," Georges Bataille has become increasingly recognized and respected in the realm of academic and popular intellectual thought. Although Bataille died in 1962, interest in his life and writings have never been as strong as they are today--Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva have all acknowledged their debt to him.

In his book, On Nietzsche , as translated by Bruce Boone, Bataille comes as close as he would ever come to formulating his own unique system of philosophy. One could say that reading Nietzsche was something of a revelation to Bataille, and profoundly affected his life. In 1915, in a crisis of guilt after leaving his blind father in the hands of the Germans, Bataille converted to Catholicism. It was Nietzsche's work that lead him to abandon traditional religion for an idiosyncratic form of godless mysticism.

In this volume, Bataille becomes, and goes beyond, Nietzsche, assuming Nietzsche's thought where he left off--with God's death. At the heart of this work is Bataille's exploration of how one can have a spiritual life outside religion. On Nietzsche is essentially a journal that brilliantly mixes observations with ruminations in fragments, aphorisms, poems, myths, quotations, and images against the background of World War II and the German occupation. Bataille has a unique way of moving breezily from abstraction to confession, and from theology to eroticism. He skillfully weaves together his own internal experience of anguish with the war and destruction raging outside with arguments against fascist interpretations of Nietzsche and praise for the philosopher as a prophet foretelling "the crude German fate."

With an introduction, "Furiously Nietzschean," by Sylvere Lotringer, an Appendix in which Bataille defends himself against Sartre, and an Index, this volume reconfirms Michel Foucault's assertion that Bataille, "broke with traditional narrative to tell us what has never been told before."

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, French Literature, France, 20th Century, Religion

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 9, 1945

About the author

French essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Georges Bataille seems, like me - though he was more famously akin to his role model Nietzsche - to have had quite an unsettled emotional reaction to life's hard knocks.

Gotta hand it to him, though - his work in Occupied France during the Second World War was pivotal to the work of French Intellectuals within the Resistance movement.

A brave man indeed.

And this book of apercus, with his own commentary, shows why.

Most readers today are merely fascinated by Nietzsche's brilliance.

His books are nice places to visit, desultorily, but they sure wouldn't want to Live there!

But Nietzsche kept the indiscrete lid on his raging schizoid storm clamped shut far too long for his health.

As witness his ultimate terminal descent into its flames. Poor soul! For therein hangs Satan's tail.

Nietzsche has been long put in his place by the middle class, but hey - relax, folks! - he was only made ill by his unbalanced (but deep) rantings. And...

To modern ears, he is a harmless nut case. A danger to himself and society.

So forgive him, and look at your many over-simplifications made aporetic here - with true, pointed accuracy, if somewhat disjointed by futile rage.

Nietzsche saw modern life only as the impasse of a world in violent progress toward seeing the truth about the end result of its own actions.

These excerpts HURT to read.

They hit us where we live.

And, in the end, they hurt Nietzsche too.

If only he had known...

That he was one of God's chosen Dark Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:

Death, the Pale Rider on a Pale Horse!

Poor guy.

Shoulda taken his meds.

[Theo Austin-Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Don’t take our word for it! Alas, we’re not all that logical. We say God - though in reality God is a person, a particular individual. We speak to him. We address him by name - he is the God of Abraham and Jacob. We treat him just like anybody else, like a personal being...”

“So he’s a whore?”

“____________________________________”

This work is turgid with concepts structured like thicket bushes, with terms such as ‘summit’, ‘chance’, ‘risk’, ‘impalement’, ‘laughter’ and ‘theopathy’ bristling with contradictory value judgements. We have here limit concepts that induce a pendulum to continually swing between anguish and unbridled joy, clinging on to a minute prospect of naked chance. Us, the race of gamblers, not being able to recognise the permeable border between eroticism and ascetic mysticism - of a God we make a whore out of, a God weak due to his immutable nature.... never taking a chance (and chance, against the vicissitudes of time, being the most affable thing) - we are forever lacerated by attempts to communicate with one another, by trying to tell one another about the labyrinthine logic of the summit we each clamour towards.

I believe this work, in conjunction with Virilio’s Speed and Politics, really does provide a bulletproof anthropology, a perfect assessment of the current state of affairs. Speed and Politics has a macroscopic lens which becomes hyper focused in Bataille’s own interior monologue, with the fraught tension of occupied France being the backdrop of these contemplative diary entries seeing Bataille pushing toward the beyond of his particularlity, attempting to affect an abortive summit toward a transcendent nothingness.

This book’s a real beauty.

[Michael A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5. This is the third book in Bataille's "Summa Atheologica" (Inner Experience and Guilty were the first and second. I'm not sure how many books he planned for it, but the rest of the work he did for it, I believe, is collected by Stuart Kendall's compilation "The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge". I think some stuff is also in "The Impossible"). It is split into three parts: Mr. Nietzsche, Summit and Decline, and (what takes up roughly 2/3rds of the book) Diary (February-August 1944). Like "Guilty", this is Bataille at his most human, his most sincere. He often describes how much pain he's suffering, how depressed he is, how anxious he is, how he's often lonely: and who could blame him? This was the "summit and decline" of the Nazi occupation of France and Bataille was battling tuberculosis the entire time of the writings.

The title is slightly misleading, at least it was for me, as I thought it might be Bataille's explications on Nietzsche's thought. This is somewhat true, but as Kendall notes in the introduction it is more of an expansion of his thought, to out-Nietzsche Nietzsche, to be "more Nietzchean than Nietzsche."

The main theme of this book seems to be morality, but it is quickly tied to "going beyond being" which includes communication and the ruptures in communication (laughter, sobbing, death, ecstasy, among other things). Bataille's concept of the moral summit was very intriguing to me, but really the best part of this book is the diary. We read about Bataille's fear of death (which he calls nothingness, particularly an "immanent nothingness", which he describes as going beyond being) and his overall negative state of mind, yet he chooses (or so he says) to laugh at his circumstances; to laugh at chance.

Chance plays a bigger role in this book than in Guilty. His thoughts on chance are extremely good to me, and I like his categorization of chance as a "series of interferences" separating being from nothingness. I think at one point he deems chance a (quasi-)God, perhaps in the spirit of Nietzsche and his previous Acephale project of trying to find a new religion, except there's pretty much no tenets other than a Nietzschean life-affirming laughter at everything that happens to you. I suspect it's not a literal laughter, but more of a joyous acceptance (I think in the notes he pretty much says joy and anguish are the same, following Nietzsche's queue that the supreme good and supreme evil are equivalent).

Overall, I thought this book was very good and the Summa Atheologica trilogy, taken as a whole, is probably the best of Bataille I've read. Definitely requires multiple re-readings: especially Inner Experience.

[Cary Aurand · Rating 5 out of 5]

battaille completely grasps the transgressive nature of philosophy. it has to be dangerous, it has to make you uncomfortable. in on nietzsche he defines the will to power as the will to evil, the will to transgress. not to say that we should go around raping and pillaging, but to transgress against ourselves, against time. thought, and life, should never be constrained.

[Deniz · Rating 5 out of 5]

En sevdiğim yazarlardan biri, yine en sevdiğim yazarlardan biri üzerine yazdığı kitabında en sevdiğim yazarın peşinden, Kayıp Zamanın İzinde'n gidiyor.

Kanıyla yazıyor Bataille, çünkü onun hakkında ancak böyle yazılabileceğini söylüyor. Unutmayın, akıl ancak kendisiyle sınırlandırılabilir.

"ALDIRIŞSIZ BİR GEREKLİLİĞİ İÇİNDE TAŞIYAN BİLİNÇLİ BİR İNSAN BU DÜNYADA NE YAPABİLİR?" (sf.68)

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Standing with GUILTY and INNER EXPERIENCE, ON NIETZSCHE is another one of Bataille's philosophical memoirs. He works through the isolated desperation of the War, separation from lovers, and his own psychic struggles in these pages. Using Nietzsche as the push off point, Bataille does a considerable bit of heavy lifting. Always looking to lacerate himself to the limits of experience and ecstasy, he mediates on how intoxicating the nonknowledge of nothingness binds and liberates him. Time and memory and the fall before God are also exploded with the Allied night bombing and laughter at the fall of Paris.

"The certainty of incoherence in reading, the inevitable crumbling of the soundest construction, is the deep truth of books. Since appearance constitutes a limit, what truly exists is a a dissolution into common opacity rather than a development of lucid thinking. The apparent unchangingness of books is deceptive: each book is also the sum of the misunderstandings it occasions."

[Jan Gálvez Rastrojo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Li donc tres estrellesperquè mha estat feixuc llegi’l, tenia ressaca igual que en Bataille en escriure’l. Molt fragmentari i per llegir amb pausa -cosa que no he pogut fer per la puta uni, pel q crec q val més del q n’he pogut gaudir.

[clinamen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Approach the summit. Lacerate. Repeat. The eternal return is for YOU.

[Víctor Soho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lelo back to back co libro de Maurizio Ferraris sobre Nietzsche desvela, para min, as distancias e limitacións dos procesos de escritura académicos contra estas marabillosas maneiras de ensaio formalmente máis libres. Non hai grandes citas, nin referencias bibliográficas longas, nin tampouco unha recolección de lecturas sobre Nietzsche e tendencias interpretativas. Bataille traballa sobre procesos creativos en constante diálogo cun Nietzsche que se nos presenta fragmentado, resumido en citas fundacionais sobre o que Bataille constrúe un paratexto expansivo do que Nietzsche implica e guía a súa lectura cara seus puntos máis revolucionarios e liberadores. Contra Ferraris, que establece un fantástico estudo doxográfico sobre como se entende a Nietzsche dende a academia, Bataille replica a Nietzsche nas súas creativas e abertas formas de escritura polo que Nietzsche foi interesante nalgún punto. Un explica, anota como académico que é; mentres que o outro é un herdeiro de pensamento, dialogando, criticando e admirando dende unha nova creación que permite as súas propias lecturas.

Penso que aquí está, máis que en ningún outro texto que lera sobre Nietzsche, os seus potenciais dentro do marxismos nas súas tensión entre seu individualismo e a súa defensa de comunidade, a súa superación da ética e a forma de proxectar o impulso de vida no propio proceso de escritura. Penso na imposibilidade académica de escribir un texto así e, en como calquera aspecto intelectual, sobresae por permitirse unha escritura non anclada na xustificación e cita, senón na corrente de pensamento expansiva que se ofrece da lectura de Nietzsche. Agora, nun clínico estado depresivo, as formas enciclopédicas e arquivistas de referencias de Ferraris resúltame imposible, pero en Bataille vezo formas de pensar compatibles coas miñas poucas capacidades e forzas no estado actual. Os esforzos están dirixidos a ambición intelectual e non ao traballo burocrático de xustificación académica. Non de explica, senón que desprende pensamento e iso é algo que preciso máis agora que nunca.

[Sajid · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Demented silence as I put one foot after the other the silence of a gulp taking in heaven and earth;
delirious heaven I’m going crazy
I push the world off course and I die
I forget about it
I bury it in the grave of my bones.
nobody is home in these Jolly Roger eyes of mine.”

What should i say of Bataille? Is he a disciple of Nietzsche or a tormentor of soul interpreting Nietzsche radically? This book of course isn’t a commentary on Nietzsche,nor is it an analysis of Nietzsche in a traditional sense. It is more of a psychological diagram of Bataille himself. Or you can say, the figure of Nietzsche, the immoralist, is penetrating to the deepest realm of Bataille's soul. Nietzsche, the very powerful figure, in his glory still searching the soul of modern man even after his death. Nietzsche's ghost...still blazing through the artifice of modern world. Bataille couldn’t resist from the powerful appearance of Nietzsche's inhuman glory, submitting himself to the land of death and nothingness, only to save himself from the utter foolishness of living a life of pure goals. Thinking himself to be vanishing here and there, through the current of chance and fate. Always busy with life while negating life. Where does he go at the end? We don't know. But lets question ourselves to the last dregs of humaneness. And remember with laughter these lines of Bataille:

“With those who have motives and reasons, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything, so I’m not envious. Just the opposite. Since I encourage them to share my fate. My mistrust of motivations and fragility, are, I think, propitious. The greatest difficulty in my situation is my luck. I’m intoxicated by it.”

[Katherine]

oh god. Bataille is the genetical-embryological element which founds all thought after him - between constant confessions, of his love, of his despair, of his lacking imagination. Everyone after Bataille is either blind, by shutting their eyes to him, in denial, by ignoring how they repeat him, or brazenly plucking their entire careers wholesale from him - one can track Sartre/Deleuze/Derrida very easily onto this. See how Lacan cribs the entire idea of the way we address the Other and our ruptural nature to the letter; or how Foucault's readings of sexuality can be found in the margins; or Deleuze's avoidance, while in the same stroke essentially using this as a preliminary study on AO. In one of the fleeting few remarks Deleuze has on Bataille which is not outright dismissal, he complains precisely on this - about the way that Foucault "Bataille'd himself"; of course, Del. missed how thought itself was ruptured in the aftermath of Bataille, such that we are all Bataille'd - his influence is present in every word written after him, and probably quite a few before. Every reading of Nietzsche can only be done post-Bataille, this being the clearest example of Bataille's 20-odd year struggle to rescue a new reading of Nietzsche, a novel one, one done with lightness, which de-exhausts him (perhaps). Oh God.

I read it in a day. There is so much to Bataille and so much more to use him for.

The notes on this are insane btw. Some of the sketches Bataille had for the revisions genuinely read like the CCRU diagrams but with a semblance of intelligence behind them.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is almost scary. Georges Bataille's collection of essays on one of his great heroes, Herr Nietzsche. An overlooked man of letters in my opinion. And Bataille himself is not exactly overlooked, but seriously needs to be read and studied.

[Bernardo Moreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sobre Nietzsche (...) é um livro bastante peculiar, assim como os outros volumes da Suma. Menos um livro sobre Nietzsche e mais um livro sobre o nietzscheanismo de Bataille, aqui os mesmos temas do Vol. 1 e 2 da Suma Ateológica voltam aqui sob os eixos nietzscheanos.
E assim como o resto da Suma, o estilo embriagado e angustiado é extremamente presente.
Com cem páginas de notas mais ou menos organizadas (por vezes apenas esboços e rascunhos), é difícil e indesejável fazer uma resenha sistemática do livro, assim como nos outros volumes. Por isso vou focar aqui no que mais me interessou.
Em primeiro lugar, admiro demais a militância de Bataille da recuperação de Nietzsche contra os fascistas, esforço fundamental de um certo nietzscheanismo de esquerda na França. Os vários comentários sobre a recepção de Nietzsche pelos nazistas na Alemanha e a incompatibilidade de sua filosofia com o fascismo são valiosíssimos.
A discussão sobre a moral do ápice (dispêndio, excesso) e a moral do declínio (conservação, utilidade) põe em jogo (um conceito importante pro livro) tanto a questão da economia geral de Bataille quanto a questão da imanência/transcendência e da continuidade/descontinuidade dos seres em sua estranha "ontologia" vigente em trabalhos mais sistemáticos como O erotismo (tal ontologia é bastante discutida tanto na ótima Discussão sobre o pecado, que conta com nomes célebres e um acalorado debate; quanto no Epílogo filosófico, de uma ontologia vitalista quase bergsoniana em suas discussões biológicas).
A aversão pela vontade de potência em prol da vontade de chance, apesar de interessante, não me convence muito. A ênfase nas experiências místicas já estava em jogo nos outros volumes da Suma, porém não sei se curto tanto esse certo louvor do inefável mais presente aqui. Se vamos ficar com o riso, que seja priorizando a ênfase na liberdade/autonomia/soberania (que existe no livro, mas não é o principal) que a ênfase no jogar de dados nesse jogo da chance que flerta com o Nada e com o zen.
Outro momento ótimo são as discussões sobre a guerra, não apenas nas anotações de diário e nas exposições da relação de Nietzsche com a guerra (importante pro meu mestrado), como nos poemas rimbaudianos-artaudianos de um Bataille desesperado com o horror da guerra ("em meu coração se esconde / um rato morto "; "sou a doença / sou a morte do mundo).
De resto, gosto muito das emblemáticas citações de Nietzsche que Bataille selecionou no Memorandum, especialmente na parte sobre a Política. Me interesso muito também sobre a similaridade que Bataille tem com Adorno na mobilização de Nietzsche em meio a um pensamento tão marcadamente hegeliano.
Vale muito a pena, apesar da vertigem desse estilo embriagado. E aqui termino a Suma Ateológica.
(aqui tá como Kindle Edition porque não consegui incluir a versão paperback no site - que tem umas 70 páginas a mais. se alguém conseguir incluir a edição física no site, serei muito grato ao anjo).

[Solar Anus · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ο καταναγκασμός είναι το όριο του παρελθόντος που αντιστρατεύεται αυτό που έρχεται."

...

"Πολύ τυχαίο (γραμμένο στην τύχη και σαν σε παιχνίδι):
Πως ο χρόνος είναι το ίδιο πράγμα με το ον, το ον το ίδιο πράγμα με την τύχη... με τον χρόνο.
Που σημαίνει πως: Αν υπάρχει το ον-χρόνος, ο χρόνος εμπερικλείει το ον στην τύχη που του έπεσε, εξατομικευμένα. Οι δυνατότητες καταμερίζονται και αντιτίθενται η μια στην άλλη.
Χωρίς άτομα, δηλαδή χωρίς καταμερισμό των δυνατοτήτων, δεν θα μπορούσε να υπάρξει χρόνος. Ο χρόνος είναι το ίδιο πράγμα με την επιθυμία. Η επιθυμία έχει ως αντικείμενο να μην υπάρχει χρόνος. Ο χρόνος είναι η επιθυμία να μην υπάρχει χρόνος. Να μην το θες να είσαι το παν, σημαίνει να θες τον χρόνο, να θες την τύχη.
Να θες την τύχη είναι το amor fati.
Η τύχη μέσα μας είναι η μορφή του χρόνου (του μίσους για το παρελθόν). Ο χρόνος είναι ελευθερία. Σε πείσμα των καταναγκασμών που του αντιτάσσει ο φόβος. Να είσαι γεφύρι μα ποτέ σκοπός: τούτο απαιτεί μια ζωή ξεριζωμένη από τους κανόνες με μια δύναμη επιτακτική, σφριγηλή, εθελούσια, μια ζωή που δεν αποδέχεται πια να την εκτρέψουν τελικά από ένα όνειρο.
Το άτομο είναι ο τρόπος που λαχαίνει ο χρόνος.
Αυτό που συνιστά την τύχη για το άτομο είναι «επικοινωνία», απώλεια του ενός ατόμου μέσα στο άλλο. Η «επικοινωνία» είναι «διάρκεια της απώλειας».
Η επικοινωνία, όσο ισχνή κι αν είναι, θέλει τη διακύβευση. Δεν λαμβάνει χώρα παρά στο μέτρο που τα όντα, κρεμασμένα έξω από τον εαυτό τους, διακυβεύονται, υπό την απειλή της έκπτωσης."

[Karl Hallbjörnsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected this book to be a (relatively banal although hopefully a smidge interesting) philosophical commentary on Nietzsche as I've become accustomed to reading in the course of my philosophical education. It turns out that this book is not at all such a commentary. Instead it painstakingly lays out Bataille's own lived experience of taking Nietzsche extremely seriously. Bataille is fascinated with violence and ritual sacrifice, God and the concept of chance, gambling and lovemaking and anguish — and he lives through these fascinations with Nietzsche by his side. All in all this is a great book. It moved me often to serious reconsideration of my philosophical convictions and even managed at times to prompt personal and deeply existential reflections within me. In my opinion that is what philosophy should ultimately strive to accomplish.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Werkelijk Nietzscheaans. De passages uit zijn dagboek zijn niet altijd even boeiend, maar Bataille is een echte voorloper van Frans postmodern gedachtegoed.

"If history is over, is there a leap outside of time as I keep on shouting "Time is out of joint."

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

So Bataille wrote this book as a sort of private conversation between himself and "Mr Nietzsche", to reflect on concepts in a way that makes sense, at least, between the two of them. He begins with a series of rephrasings from Nietzsche, systematizing the various spiels in his own way into cyclical structures (the psychological quips become a difficulty with structure and communication, the moral analyses become a historical cycle of rise and decline, the disputes against dogma become an insolvency of all metaphysics), which suggests that Bataille had read Nietzsche carefully and accurately, not least because he ends all these systemic efforts with a self-undermining via critiquing his own critiques by his own critique, if you will. This culminates in a Sartrean angst monologue, oscillating between desire for meaning and the inevitability of anarchy, which settles on the side of meaning via embrace of the Eternal Recurrence (rephrased into the zen 'satori') -- except it was only a prank, as it turns out even this is subject to the same flux of frameworks. He concludes by re-contextualizing this whole monodrama back to his present day, watching as the Nazis are driven out of France, and feels a faint serenity at the triumph of his more-authentic reading of Nietzsche than Hitler's. Ultimately, what he set out to do was to present himself as a character, a Fool to Nietzsche's Prophet, and despite its tendency towards intricate and slippery arguments it really is what it presents itself as, the private diary of a big Nietzche fan.

I didn't care for Story of the Eye, which felt more like a dubious philosophical argument disguised as a novel; this one, conversely, is a novel disguised as a dubious philosophical argument. Bataille knows the nuances of the works well and appears (to my amateur eyes) to make no real blunders, although his constant reneging towards Sartrean phenomenology and a rather shallow 'meaning vs nihilism' gets annoying, even if he justifies it by throwing it out after contemplating it briefly. Something of the French to come is here as he proudly declares himself to be 'at play' with concepts, as Derrida will do (and with the same eroticism); yet he neither seems to me to expand on Nietzsche or to really analyze him. But a fun adventure for fans of Nietz, or more probably for those of Bataille.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this if you don't want to think. Bataille takes chance to be a 'key theme' inhabiting Nietzsche's work. By chance Bataille means non-goal oriented activity. Anything done for the sake of a goal is a project. Anything done without any reason at all is chance. The will to power is not the will to consume or the will to expand one's influence. The will to power, Bataille claims, is the will to live and live for no external goals at all. But this is problematic for as soon as our goal is to 'live without goals' we have subsumed chance within project.

Moreover, when we communicate, we risk ourselves. We risk ourselves because we never know how the other will respond; we do not even know who our interlocutor is . . . .

On Nietzsche is the third installment (of three) in Bataille's Summa Atheologica and it consists of journal entries Bataille made in 1944 while experimenting with chance and non-meaning.

[Mason Mathai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read "On Nietzsche" knowing little about Nietzsche's work or ideals; however, this book served as a surprisingly succinct introduction to them. Bataille sometimes lacks coherence (these are mostly journal entries, seemingly allowed to run free, unencumbered by trying to 'prove' anything at all), but his free-form thought gives way to radical ideas pertaining to existence and enlightenment; building off Nietzsche's work (from what I can tell)- criticizing and praising it, framing it in the context of 1940's Europe. The preface, introduction, and the portion on 'Summit and Decline' (a suggestion for a new sort of Nietzschean value system), were all staggeringly good. I found the journal entries harder to follow.

4/7/2021: Boosting this to five stars because six months have passed and I'm still thinking about it.

[Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bataille’s silliest book. Sartre’s criticism of the Inner Experience likewise holds for these silly writings that were written in a strange fever in an attempt to climb a (illusory) summit. Taking Nietzsche to such an extreme that you trick yourself into thinking that only way to be and what Nietzsche really meant is to do nothing. Poetic, but not much else. The essays in the appendix are the most interesting part. Fever writings. Get a prostitute.

[d · Rating 3 out of 5]

1944/1945
Bataille, enfermo y solo. En la campiña francesa se dedica a escribir sobre su compañero de vida intelectual, rescatándolo de la vergonzosa apropiación que los nazis hicieron de parte de su obra.
Mezcla de aforismo dionisíaco, fragmento delirante y diario de guerra in disguise. Texto de una vulnerabilidad increíble, este buen hombre siempre quemando naves.

[Peyman Gh · Rating 5 out of 5]

باتای اندیشه هاش مرتبط با دیدگاه نیچه ای و دوسادی هست. حتما این رو هم بخونید

[Kevin Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bataille's violent philosophical readings are perfect for a schematic understanding of Freddy.

[Volbet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have previously mentioned that Friedrich Nietzsche doesn't really take up a conventional space in the history of thought. Nietzsche has a philosopher and thinker is dead, and we have killed him. All we are left with is a mythological tale, an abstract concept that can be molded and used in whatever way an author or creator sees fit.
Be it the rationalization of Nietzsche in Walter Kaufmann, the psychological study of Nietzsche in Lou Andreas-Salomé or whatever the hell happened to Nietzsche when Gilles Deleuze decided to give him a go, the result is always that Nietzsche can be made to fit any idea.

But in Georges Bataille the framing of Nietzsche takes on a different angle. Where the the previously mentioned authors all dealt with Nietzsche in thought, Bataille tackles Nietzsche in practice, dancing with Dionysus and the Anti-Christ alike.
Bataille's main contributions to the larger analysis of Nietzsche is twofold:

1. That Nietzsche is to be understood in terms of a practical epistemology.
2. That Nietzsche's philosophy in general is to be understood as a fundamentally transgressive to moral standards.

What Bataille gets at, is an almost counter-rational approach to the analysis of Nietzsche, who is to be understood not through mediating and analyzing his works. Instead, Nietzsche is to be understood by living his philosophy. Centering his philosophy in the physical body and expressing it terms of concrete, material actions.
And the philosophy of Nietzsche is to be practiced as always transgressing the boundaries of whatever framework its practiced within.

This way of analysis also results in what most people would probably notice when reading On Nietzsche, namely that Nietzsche's actual works take up a very small part of the book. Nietzsche's work is primarily taken on in the beginning of the book, but the majority of the book is taken up by Bataille's own musings in the form of diary entries from the mid-1940's.

[nonegloga]

Formulerò ora le domande implicite nella mia esposizione. Esiste un fine morale ch’io possa raggiungere al di là degli esseri? Ho già risposto che non potevo né cercarlo né parlarne.
Ma io vivo e la vita (il linguaggio) è in me. Ora, il linguaggio in me non può prescindere dal fine morale... deve comunque affermare che, seguendo le vie del declino, non potrò incontrare questo fine. Detto questo, continuo a vivere. Aggiungerò (e parlo di me) che non posso cercare un bene da sostituire al fine che mi sfugge. Non conosco più motivi – esterni a me – di sacrificare me stesso o la poca forza che ho. Vivo in balìa di risa, che mi rallegrano, di eccitazioni sessuali, che mi angosciano. Dispongo, se ne ho voglia, degli stati mistici. Lontano da ogni fede, privo di ogni speranza, non ho alcun motivo per accedere a questi stati. Provo un senso di distacco all’idea di uno sforzo per arrivarvi. Progettare un’esperienza interiore non è forse allontanarmi dal culmine che questa esperienza avrebbe potuto essere? Di fronte a coloro che hanno un motivo, una ragione, non rimpiango nulla, non invidio nessuno. Li spingo invece a condividere la mia sorte. Considero felici il mio odio dei motivi e la mia fragilità. L’estrema difficoltà della mia situazione è la mia chance. Me ne inebrio. Ma porto in me stesso, mio malgrado, e come una carica esplosiva, una domanda: CHE COSA PUO’ FARE IN QUESTO MONDO UN UOMO LUCIDO... PORTANDO IN SÉ UN’ESIGENZA SENZA RIFERIMENTI?

[jt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great, though I enjoyed his journal entries describing life under German occupied France (ostensibly not what the book is about). To be fair, he's right about some things.

"To try, as I have, to push the possibilities of his teaching to the limit is to become, like Nietzsche, a field of infinite contradictions. Following his paradoxical doctrines, you are forced to see yourself as excluded from participating in current causes. You’ll eventually see that solitude is your only lot."

"I want to be very clear on this: not a word of Nietzsche’s work can be understood without experiencing that dazzling dissolution into totality, without living it out. Beyond that, this philosophy is just a maze of contradictions."

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The long and the short of it is, we all get horny for the same reasons."

This one was definitely a fun. Sometimes contradictory, sometimes corny, always exuberant and more nietzschean than Nietzsche Bataille seeks the rainbow like a child only to find out the pot of gold was inside him the whole time, a lacerating melting gold whose slow dripping movement causes feeling of great pleasure and pain.

[Hector López · Rating 1 out of 5]

Habrá que leer más de GB, peero abusa de Nietzche. Si bien promete con un atractivo enfoque, su desarrollo deja que desear. Es injusto con el drama del espíritu de Nietzche, el más extraordinario que se haya presentado en el siglo XX, tal y como lo describe S. Zweig. No abona, es una obra solo útil para GB, para los demás no lo sé. Quizá la traducción que leí de Bruce Boone. Me consuela encontrar que F. Savater en Mira por Donde, lo considere de un estilo desaseado.

[Filip Nakov · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surreal channeling of consciousness into what may seem as the "intention" toward a non-goal, non-meaningful oriented life. Ecstatic, blurry, often saturated with fuzzy imagery, Bataille once again proves what comes out of an anxious drivel, namely a fragmented consciousness pouring out its soul with fleeting hope to hook up any hidden essence that may alleviate or whiten one's dreaded existence.

[MykÆ G · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun but rambly exposure to Bataille's thought. At times inspirational at other times just pointlessly meandering. Still, been meaning to read some of his work for a while and this had all of the immoralism, lacerating, mystical 'nothingness' that I was promised.

Not an in depth Nietzsche study, more inspired by than critical of.