In chapter 11, part 2 of On Nietzsche Bataille acknowledges the inaccessibility of the summit as the excess of tragic intensity, but not the inevitability of decline (moments of exhaustion and fatique). He says:
"Essentially, the summit is where life is pushed to an impossible limit. I reach it, in the feint way that I do, only by recklessly expending my strength....But I cannot give up the summit. I protest....against everything that asks of us that we stifle desire. Though I can only contentedly resign myself to the fate compelling me to work: I'd never dream of doing away with moral rules, since they spring from inevitable decline. We are always declining, and ruinous desire returns again only as strength is restored."
It is sexual imagery of the sexual orgasm transposed into everyday life. Only Bataille lives in solitude so he does not have the communion of two bodies joined after sex. Instead of sex we have deep torment.
But it makes sense. If we lose the vigor and intensity of our youth, or from overwork, we become drained, exhausted, burned out, longing for the vigor of old.
My take on this kind of self-examination of our inner experience is that Bataille is working in the tradition of a therapeutic philosophy, which is concerned to help us deal with our demons; ie., to cure us of those desires and thoughts that make us sick.
Bataille's mode of self-governance is an acceptance the necesssity of summit and decline. He gives in to it, even as he denies it. He submits. It is the submission to necessity that humanizes him. Does ithis kind of control give him a form of self-suffciency, as with the classical Stoics?
This passivity is a long way from Nietzsche's commanders and legislators revaluing all values in the face of nihilism.
What we seem to be dealing with are serpents in the soul. I am reminded of Seneca, who says that there is no erotic passion that stops short of its own excess. Bataille's summit is all heat and fire. It is the madness of passion that threatens to make us go crazy.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at November 28, 2004 02:40 PM | TrackBack