Georges Bataille: Being

Georges Bataille was French intellectual and literary figure. Explore interesting quotes on being.
Georges Bataille: 136   quotes 5   likes

“We have in fact only two certainties in this world—that we are not everything and that we will die. To be conscious of not being everything, as one is of being mortal, is nothing. But if we are without a narcotic, an unbreathable void reveals itself. I wanted to be everything, so that falling into this void, I might summon my courage and say to myself: “I am ashamed of having wanted to be everything, for I see now that it was to sleep.” From that moment begins a singular experience. The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy coexist.”

Georges Bataille

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. xxxii

World , Courage , Sleep

“Extreme states of being, whether individual or collective, were once purposefully motivated. Some of those purposes no longer have meaning (expiation, salvation). The well-being of communities is no longer sought through means of doubtful effectiveness, but directly, through action. Under these conditions, extreme states of being fell into the domain of the arts, and not without a certain disadvantage. Literature (fiction) took the place of what had formerly been the spiritual life; poetry (the disorder of words) that of real states of trance. Art constituted a small free domain, outside action: to gain freedom it had to renounce the real world. This is a heavy price to pay, and most writers dream of recovering a lost reality. They must then pay in another sense, by renouncing freedom.”

Georges Bataille

The Bataille Reader (1997), p. 340

Life , World , Dreams , Art

“Experience is, in fever and anguish, the putting into question (to the test) of that which a man knows of being. Should he in this fever have any apprehension whatsoever, he cannot say: “I have seen God, the absolute, or the depths of the universe”; he can only say “that which I have seen eludes understanding”—and God, the absolute, the depths of the universe are nothing if they are not categories of the understanding.

If I said decisively, “I have seen God,” that which I see would change. Instead of the inconceivable unknown—wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it—there would be a dead object and the thing of the theologian, to which the unknown would be subjugated.”

Georges Bataille

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 4

God , Understanding , Question , Decision

“What causes [fragmentation] if not a need to act that specializes us and limits us to the horizon of a particular activity? Even if it turns out to be for the general interest (which generally isn’t true), the activity that subordinates each of our aspects to a specific result suppresses our being as an entirety. Whoever acts substitutes a particular end for what he or she is, as a total being.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxvi

“Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God’s person displaces the problem and does not abolish it.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xx

God , Problem , Thinking , Change

“Love expresses a need for sacrifice each unity must lose itself in some other which exceeds it. In erotic frenzy the being is led to tear itself apart and lose itself.”

Georges Bataille

Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939

Love , Tear

“An intention that rejects what has no meaning in fact is a rejection of the entirety of being.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxx

“I cannot exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise I’m a soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a “total human being.” The fragmentary state of humanity is basically the same as the choice of an object. When you limit your desires to possessing political power, for instance, you act and know what you have to do. … You insert your existence advantageously into time. Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal, and your time becomes a march toward that goal—what’s normally called living. … Every action makes you a fragmentary existence. I hold on to my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act—or at least by denying the superiority of time, which is reserved for action.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxvii

Nature , Learning , Time

“There is no communication more profound,” he claims. “[T]wo beings are lost in a convulsion that binds them together. But they only communicate when losing a part of themselves. Communication ties them together with wounds, where their unity and integrity dissipate in fever.”

Georges Bataille

Source: Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, p. 250

Communication , Parting