Georges Bataille: Entirety

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

“Humanity-attached-to-the-task-of-changing-the-world, which is only a single and fragmentary aspect of humanity, will itself be changed in humanity-as-entirety.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxviii

World , Change

“Entirety exists within me as exuberance … in empty longing … in … the desire to burn with desire.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxvii

“Anyone wanting slyly to avoid suffering identifies with the entirety of the universe, judges each thing as if he were it. In the same way, he imagines, at bottom, that he will never die. We receive these hazy illusions like a narcotic necessary to bear life. But what happens to us when, disintoxicated, we learn what we are? Lost among babblers in a night in which we can only hate the appearance of light which comes from babbling. The self-acknowledged suffering of the disintoxicated is the subject of this book.”

Georges Bataille

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

Life , Hate , Books , Way

“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

“Existence as entirety remains beyond any one meaning—and it is the conscious presence of humanness in the world inasmuch as this is nonmeaning, having nothing to do other than be what it is, no longer able to go beyond itself or give itself some kind of meaning through action.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxx

World

“Life is whole only when it isn’t subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it. In this way, the essence of entirety is freedom.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxvii

Life , Way , Freedom

“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

“Human entirety can only be what it is when giving up the addiction to others’ ends.”

Georges Bataille

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxxiv, note