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. |
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The Positing of the Object : The Tool The positing of the object , which is not
given in animality , is in the human use of tools ; that is , if the tools as middle
terms are adapted to the intended result – if their users perfect them . Insofar as
tools are ...
But the tool is subordinated to the man who uses it , who can modify it as he
pleases , in view of a particular result . The tool has no value in itself – like the
subject , or the world , or the elements that are of the same nature as the subject
or the ...
What a “ true end ” reintroduces is the continuous being , lost in the world like
water is lost in water : or else , if it were a being as distinct as a tool , its meaning
would have to be sought on the plane of utility , of the tool ; it would no longer be
a ...