Theory of Religion
Georges Bataille
Language: English
Pages: 128
ISBN: 0942299094
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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.Georges Bataille (1897-1962), founder of the French review Critique, wrote fiction and essays on a wide range of topics. His books in English translation include Story of the Eye, Blue of Noon, Literature and Evil, Manet and Erotism.Robert Hurley is the translator of The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault and cotranslator of Anti Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Distributed for Zone Books.
. ). It condemns, i n a general way, all 70 IJ lJ A L I S M A r,� 0 M (_) R ,..\ L I T Y usdess consumption. Kut it lwnmws possible only \\ hen sm-ereigntv, in the divim· \\ orl d , shifts from the dark " - deity to the white, from the malefic deity to the protector of the real order. In fact it presuppo.ses the sanction of the divine order. In granting the operative power of the divine over the real, man had in practice subordinated the divine to the real. I fe slowly reduced its
is cannot leave this world or connect h imself w i th that which goes beyond his own l imits, h e glimpses i n the sud den awakening that which cannot he grasped but which slips away precisely as a dc]il m for him this deja ru is utterl;· d i fferent from that which he sees, which is always separatecl from him - ancl for the same reason from itself. I t is that \Yhich is intelligible to him, which awakens the recollection i n him, but which is immediatPlv lost in the invasion of sensory
a plant; the plant is cultivated i n order t o b e eatE'n; i t is eaten i n order t o maintain the life of the one who cultivates it . . . . The absurdity of an end less defE'rral only justifies the equivalent absurdity o f a 28 HUM ANITY ANn THf" PGOF-ANE WORt 0 tnw end, which would sene no purpose. What a " true end" reintroduces is the continuous being, l ost in the world l ike water is lost in water: or else, if it were a being as d istinct as a tool, its meaning woul d have to he
lislws reality, which it is not, as its contrary. The reality of a profane \\orld, of a \\orld of things and bodies, established opposite a holy and mythical 37 \1 or! d. IS l THE BASIC DATA Within the limits of continuity, everything is spiritual; there is no opposition of the mind and the body. Kut the positing of a world of mythical spirits and the supreme value it receives an· naturallv linked to the definition of the mortal body as being oppmcd to the mind. The dif fcrmce between
the mind and the bodv is bv no means the same as that between continuity (immanence) and the object. In the first immanence, no dift�rcncc is possible before the positing of the manufactured tool. Likc \\ise, \\ith the positing of the subject on the plane of objects (of the subject-object), the mind is not _vet distinct from the body. Only starting from the mythical representation of autonomous spirits does the body find itself on the side of things, insofar as it is not present in SO\creign