Theory of ReligionTheory of Religion brings to philosophy what Georges Bataille's earlier book The Accursed Share brought to anthropology and history, namely, an analysis based on notions of excess and expenditure. No other work of Bataille's, and perhaps no other work anywhere since Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, has managed to draw so incisively the links between man's religious and economic activities. "Religion," according to Bataille, "is the search for a lost intimacy." In a brilliant and tightly reasoned argument, he proceeds to develop a "general economy" of man's relation to this intimacy: from the seamless immanence of animality to the shattered world of objects and the partial, ritual recovery of the intimate order through the violence of the sacrifice. Bataille then reflects on the archaic festival, in which he sees not only the glorious affirmation of life through destructive consumption but also the seeds of another, more ominous order -- war. Bataille then traces the rise of the modern military order, in which production ceases to be oriented toward the destruction of a surplus and violence is no longer deployed inwardly but is turned to the outside. In these twin developments one can see the origins of modern capitalism. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-3 de 16
There is no clear consciousness of what the festival actually is ( of what it is at the
moment of its letting loose ) and the festival is not situated distinctly in
consciousness except as it is integrated into the duration of the community . This
is what ...
It is clear that the majority of mankind is right : compared to the industrial rise , the
rest is insignificant . ... The Clear Consciousness of Things , or , Science The
condition for achieving clear self - consciousness is science , which is the ...
And it is itself nothing but the autonomy of the consciousness of things . Although
consciousness turned away from the intimate order , which , as far as knowledge
goes , is the order of mythology , it could not be a clear consciousness of ...