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Georges Bataille George Bataille is a French librarian and writer whose essays, novels, and poetry expressed his fascination with eroticism, mysticism, and the irrational. He viewed excess as a way to gain personal sovereignty. After training as an archivist at the school of paleography known as the Ecole des Chartes (School of Charters) in Paris, he worked as a librarian and medieval specialist at the Bibliotheque National in Paris until 1942. In 1951 he became keeper of the Orleans library. He also edited scholarly journals and in 1946 founded an influential literary review, Critique, which he edited until his death. George Bataille’s “Theory of Religion” is an attempt to sum up religion in as succinct a manner as possible. To be all things to all religions, the book is very vague and difficult to understand. Bataille created a chart or table to explain what he was doing and to give body to the work. ALAS! The chart is not in the book, lost to time. Thus, as it exists, Bataille’s book is a glimpse into the inner workings of a genius mind. It is a colorful attempt to understand “religion,” whatever that is. Further, it is an off-the beaten path romp through the daisies of the study of religion, sweet flowers that often remain unromped. Theory of Religion brings to philosophy what Bataille’s earlier book, The Accursed Share, brought to anthropology and history; namely, an analysis based on notions of excess and expenditure. Bataille brilliantly defines religion as so many different attempts to respond to the universe’s relentless generosity. Framed within his original theory of generalized economics and based on his masterly reading of archaic religious activity, Theory of Religion constitutes, along with The Accursed Share, the most important articulation of Bataille’s work. Theory of Religion brings to philosophy what Bataille’s earlier book, The Accursed Share, brought to anthropology and history; namely, an analysis based on notions of excess and expenditure. Bataille brilliantly defines religion as so many different attempts to respond to the universe’s relentless generosity. Framed within his original theory of generalized economics and based on his masterly reading of archaic religious activity, Theory of Religion constitutes, along with The Accursed Share, the most important articulation of Bataille’s work. According to Bataille, religion is the search for a lost intimacy.’ Bataille’s discussion of this claim moves from the complete immanence of animality to the shattered world of objects and then to the partial recovery of intimacy and immanence through sacrifice. More ominous, Bataille argues that not only was the archaic festival an affirmation of life through destructive consumption, but it also sowed the seeds of war. The book concludes with a discussion of the rise of the modern military order and the origins of modern capitalism. The argument here is wide-ranging and significant. Bataille’s book on religion is what is basically a Nietzschean approach to theology thus much of it illustrates the importance of the darker side of faith, such as the necessity of suffering, sacrifice, and even evil itself. However, there is a lot more going on here than a simple commentary on religion. There is discussion of man’s relation to animality, the lost intimacy we seek, and Bataille challenges our perception of objects. This is much broader in the scope of subjects it covers than I thought it would be, and it certainly will be confusing to some who are unfamiliar with philosophy, especially those who have no introduction to Nietzsche’s works. As Bataille put in the theory of religion, “The military order put an end to the malaises that corresponded to an orgy of consumption” (George Bataille, 1989; p.65). It organized violence in a from which can be controlled and directed, and so it left the spontaneous, personal violence of Rais as an historical aberration. Bataille’s analysis of religion rests upon his fundamental distinction between the sacred and the profane, which effectively echoes Durkheim’s Sacred/profane, as well as Frued’s conscious/unconscious contrast and Nietzshe’s Dionysus/ Apollo binary or polarity. The Profane Bataille contends designates the real order which is characterized by discontinuity. The real world, as Bataille conceives it, is not original but emerges from an obscure primal world that he describes as sacred. Always har-boring a faint recollection for the archaic world that has been left behind yet dwells within, so called modern man longs to return to the ground from which he originally arose. The function of religion (re-ligare) I is to bind believes back to the sacred origin. Man is the being that has lost, and even rejected, that which he obscurely is a vague intimacy. Consciousness could not have become clear in the course of time if it had not turned away from its awkward contents, but clear consciousness is itself looking for what it has itself lost, and what it must lose again as it draws near to it. Of course what is lost is not outside it consciousness turns away from the obscure intimacy of consciousness itself religion. Georges Bataille has been considered one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Having lived through both WWI and WWII, he has been ‘located’ historically as pre-post-modern, and then post-modern. This inbetween intellectual locale is evident in his theoretical reflections, as he is traditionally associated with not only the very beginnings of post-structuralism and post-modernism, but as well with the more mature forms of these movements. Given the characterization of post-modern thought I have offered above, to what extent may Bataille be considered a ‘representative’ post-modern theorist? To what extent may be his thought a valuable resource for a neuroscientific study of religious experience? Although considered before his time, Bataille’s reflections are taken to be consistent with post-modern concerns for moving beyond modernity, challenging the rigid categories thereof, and promoting a radically critical self consciousness.
His discourse has been characterized as one primarily of transgression. He forces the reader to consider the extent to which an analysis may serve to reduce and domesticate the wildness of thought, and refused any idea of absolute truth.35 But while he problematized the notion of knowledge, Bataille still believed that there was a general truth to the Universe, one that must be sought, even if we could never grasp it. Bataille, in other words, has been cast as a post-modern thinker. How this presumed discursive identity is more specifically reflected in his thought regarding ‘individual’ and collective experience, reality, knowledge, and the religious?
It is especially with respect to a spirit of transgression that Bataille offers his thoughts on individual human ‘experience’. That is, the nature of individual experience at once gives rise to one’s character and, paradoxically, reduces one to nothing. Individual experience oversteps, transgresses its own bounds of realization, it gives us over to the surprise of impossibility. Does this mean that individual experience isn’t real? If not, is reality located in the collective? But, if individual experience is real, what does Bataille take as reality? And how does that reality relate to collective experience? In as much as a prospective scientific investigation of religious experience relies upon the presumed reality of data from the individual subject, the answer to this question will have important implications regarding the theoretical resourcefulness of Bataille’s thought for such investigations. Although post-modernism may be sometimes associated with an intellectual move to destroy the subject, rendering the individual unreal, this is not always the case. And Bataille provides an example of a post-modernist regard for the reality of individual experience. For Bataille, individual human experience, is every bit as real as is collective experience39 (a view easily contrasted with that of Durkheim, who believed that the only real reality was collective/social). That said, experience of the collective is qualitatively different from that of the individual, says Bataille, such that the collective is more than the sum of its very real, individual parts (Georges Bataille, 1989; p.75-78). An individual being can never be dissociated from social circumstances. It is precisely these realizations, warns Bataille that should lead us not to be content with the unique importance of the individual consciousness, regardless of its reality. But, as well, neither the reality of the individual experience, nor that of the collective experience, considered on its own, offers a comprehensive grasp of the (ultimately unknowable) really real. In other words, Bataille urges us to move beyond, to gain greater insight into the optimal way in which we can be as experiencing human’s reality. For Bataille, reality, the fullest of human experience is to be found in the interplay between the social ‘composite being’ and the individual person. And this relational dynamic is exactly the locus of a complete and real human experience. But this space is one of impossibility; the impossible is the mark of reality. And, for Bataille, it is the mark of the religious as well (George Bataille, 110-111). For the dynamic interrelation between society and the individual, is played out in a domain of impossible resolution between the sacred and the profane, between objectification and the absence of presence on the one hand, and pure consciousness and the presence of absence on the other. This impossible a temporal moment is the moment of confusion effected by the sacred upon the profane, a moment or sense of blurring the lines of opposition and distinction. This space of impossibility is the moment religious, and the religious is the reality of the impossible. In this sense, truth, reality, religious is located in a borderland, between knowledge and non-knowledge. But what transpires in individual religious experience? How does the individual religious experience relate to that of the collective? And how does one recognize, know that mark of impossibility? After all, if no ‘trace’ of such an experience is available to an individual or to an observer, no matter how real that experience may be, it certainly cannot be accessed by science, even a postmodern self-conscious science. According to Bataille, although the essence of religious experience is characterized by the relational dynamics between the collective and individual, the sacrificial act renders the sacred, i.e., it catalyzes the transition from profane to sacred. This sacred is discerned in the communication it engenders and in the formation of new beings. Thus, although a relational process, there are transformed individual products of religious experience, which presumably harbor traces of the event. It would seem, then, that a scientific investigation thereof is promising. In short, it is an interesting associations made by the author. The initial chapters are somewhat opaque, but careful reading will allow for understanding. Overall, pretty good, although a bit pretentious. To paraphrase the concept, ‘if your deriving utility, you’ve lost the essence or true reality... that is, if you moved from object to subject, well you’ve embraced capitalism. One thing that can be disliked about this book (which seems to be a recurring theme in many philosophical writings), is the author’s tendency to repeat things over and over. I understand the value of restating ideas many times to impress something upon one’s memory, but this does get quite redundant in some arguments and concepts Bataille presents. As another reviewer mentioned, this is purposefully vague for the fact that it does try to be everything to all religions. If Nietzsche’s thoughts and assertions have captured your interest, Bataille is the next logical step. It is a sort of “re-evaluation” of the values the author sees in religion.

Works Cited
Theory of Religion by Georges Bataille, Robert Hurley; Publisher: Zone Books (Jan 20, 1989); ISBN-10: 0942299086.