I'm on the road in Canberra and it is difficult to find time to post. I've been continuing to read Blanchot on Nietzsche's idea of nihilism in The Infinite Conversation. When I have a quiet moment I will try to get some material posted. So far I think that there is more in Blanchot than Bataille.

I have a quiet moment.

In his essay, 'Crossing the Line' Blanchot says that Nietzsche's thought remains associated with nihilism, and then adds:

'Here, then, is a first approach to nihilism: it is not an individual experience, not a philosophical doctrine, nor is it a fatal light a cast over human nature, eternally destined to nothingness. Rather, nihilism is an event accomplished in history that is like a shedding of history--the movement when history turns and that is indicated by a negative trait: that values no longer have values in themselves. There is also a positive trait: for the first time the horizon is infinitely open to knowledge, "Everything is permitted." This new authorization given to man when the authority of values has collapsed means first of all: everything is permitted, there is no longer a limit to man's activities.'(p.145)

Blanchot then connects the historical movement of nihilism, the void of a world with no meaning and science. So he tacitly connects up with Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's understanding of nilihism as the loss of direction and meaning, the elimination of all meaningful difference and the levelling of what is importance and unimportant in the public world of liberal capitalism.

With this we have stepped outside or beyond the world of individual inner experience of Bataille, in which we plunge into the frenzy of intensity; or Klossowski's world of inner conflicts of the divided subject of unconscious processes in opposition to moral conscience derived from the signs of the public world.

Alas, I've run out of time.

Another quiet moment.

I read both of these response be seen as another stage in the proess of nihilism rather than an overcoming. We retreat into a privatised intensity and unconscious processes because the shared public world has lost its value, meaning and significance. We are adrift and without bearings. Blanchot reconnects us to this public world.

Kierkegaard's Christian response is to affirm individual commitment, dedication and concern as the way back to meaning and significance. Heidegger, in contrast, sees the lack of values and meaning in the public world as the reason for our retreat into privatised experience.