Bataille Citations
• On Nietzsche

References for Theme: On Nietzsche

• Bataille, Georges
• On Nietzsche (1992)

  (p.130) For the "individual as entirety" or the individual who has experienced impalement: the fatality of not being    fully possessed of his or her intellectual resources. The fatality of work  done in a slipshod. or messy way. We live under a threat, since the function we employ tends to supplant us! This function can't be  employed in excess, We escape the danger only by overlooking it.  Work  done in a  slipshod or  messy way--often-is the sole means  of not becoming a function. The opposite danger is as great, though (vagueness. imprecision. mysticism). The notion  of ebb and flow. There's a...

• On Nietzsche (1992)

  (p.143) To act is to speculate on subsequent results-to sow in hopes  of future harvests. In this sense action is  "'risk," and the "'risk'" is both the working and the things worked on-such as ploughing. a field, grain, or a single part of the possibilities of some individual. 

• On Nietzsche (1992)

  (p.145) II I refuse to  limit my ends, I act without relating my acts to  the good-­and without preserving or enriching given beings. To aim at  the  beyond, and not at  a givenness of  beings, signifies not closing up but leaving open all possibility. "It's in our nature to create supermen. To  create what surpasses us! This is the reproductive instinct, the instinct for action and work. Because a will always supposes some end, humanity assumes an existence that is not yet in existence but one that's the end of  our existence. That's the real meaning of free will!  In this end...

• On Nietzsche (1992)

  (p.149) If one day I broke apart.  dividing if not my whole life  from the masses. at least the important part of  it-if the masses are dissolved in endless immanence-it would only happen at the cost of depleted strength! In the period in which I write, transcending the masses is like spitting in the air: what you spit out  falls back on  you  ... Transcendence (noble existence. moral disdain an attitude of sublimity) has declined, becoming hypocrisy. It's  still  possible  to transcend states of apathy, but  only on condition of losing ourselves in immanence-and given that we fight for  others too....

• On Nietzsche (1992)

  (p.162) Between the ideas of Fascist reactionaries and Nietzsche's notions there is more than simple difference-there's radical incompatibility. While declining to  limit the future, which  has  all rights according to  him, Nietzsche all  the same suggested  it  through vague and contradictory suggestions. Which led to  confusions and misunderstandings. It's wrongheaded to attribute definite intentions to him regarding electoral politics,  arguing that he  talked of  "masters of  the world." What he intended was a  risked evocation of  possibility. As for  the  sovereign humanity whose brilliance he  wanted to  shine forth: in  contradictory ways he  saw the new humankind sometimes as  wealthy, sometimes ...

• On Nietzsche (1992)

  (p.35) [quoting Ecce Homo I can '/ ",all efforts, there's no trace o[struggle in my life, and I'm the opposite of heroic natures. My experience knows nothing at all about what it means to "will" a thing or work at it ambitiously or relate to  some goal or realization of  desire. -Ecce Homo]So that ordinarily, mystical statts are conditioned by a search for salvation. It appears that the  summits link  between a mystical  state and impover­ished existence. with fear and greed expressed as values of decline.  is in a sense superficial and very likely to be   deeply fallacious. This doesn't make it  any less what is...

• On Nietzsche (1992)

  (p.39) I can't deny the inevitability of decline. The summit itself indicates it. U the summit isn't death, the  necessity of descent follows thereafter. Essentially, the summit is where life is  pushed to  an impossible limit. I reach it,  in  the faint way that I do, only by recklessly expending my  strength. I won't again possess a strength to waste unless, through work, I can gain back the strength lost. What am I moreover? Inscribed in  a human context, I can't dispossess myself of my will to  act. The  possibility of  giving up work  forever and in some way pushing myself...

• On Nietzsche (1992)