Georges Bataille on Nietzsche
I write because I am afraid of going mad.
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The difficulties Nietzsche encountered—casting off God and the good while fired, nonetheless, with the ardor of those who have died for God and the good—those difficulities I have, in turn, encountered.
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I can exist totally only by transcending in some way the stage of action. Otherwise I become soldier, professional revolutionary, scholar—not “the whole man”. Man’s fragmentary state is, essentially, the same thing as the choice of an object. When a man limits his desires, for example, to the possesion of power within the state, he acts, he knows what has to be done. It matters little if he fails; he profits from the outset. He inserts himself advantageously within time. Each of his moments becomes useful. It becomes possible for him to advance, with each passing instant, towards his chosen goal. HIs time becomes progression towards this goal (this is what we usually call living). Similarly, if his object is his own salvation. Every action makes of man a fragmentary being. Only by refusing to act, or at least by denying the preeminence of the time reserved for action, can I maintain the quality of wholeness within myself.
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That definition of the whole man: “the man whose life is an umotivated feast”; it celebrates, in every sense of the word, a laughter, a dance, an orgy which knows no subordination, a sacrifice heedless of purpose, material or moral.
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Extreme states of being, whether individual or collective, were once purposefully motivated.
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[Nietzsche’s Zarathustra] never lost that Ariadne’s thread which means having no goal to serve, no cause; he knew that a cause clips one’s wings. But, on the other hand, lack of a cause casts one out into solitude; it means the sickness of the desert, a cry dying away in a vast silence.
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Morality always says: “let every instant of your life be motivated.” The [Eternal] Return de-motivates the instant, frees life from purpose and is thereby, first of all, its downfall. The Return is the whole man’s dramatic mode and his mask; it is the desert of a man whose every instant is henceforward unmotivated.
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How can we not draw the consequences of the purposelessness inherent in Nietzsche’s desire. Chance—and the quest of chance—represents inexorably the sole remaining recourse.
On Nietzsche (1945)
quote georges bataille nietzsche