On Nietzsche

*On Nietzsche* really isn't a book explaining the philosophy of Nietzsche, but a personal meditation on Nietzsche's influence on Georges Bataille's own manner of thinking and living. For Bataille, it must be understood, thinking and living are inextricable; philosophy must be tested against life, and life--inner and outer--provides the raw material for philosophy. Bataille is no armchair theorist. So it is that a good portion of *On Nietzsche* consists of fragmentary entries from Bataille's own 1944 diaries which illustrated, more or less, his struggle to embody the thrust of Nietzsche's thought--the thrust of it, because Nietzsche, in Bataille's view, is a thinker who points the way beyond himself and into mankind's future. Bataille attempts to take up the torch and carry it further forward into the darkness of the not-yet-and-never-to-be-known. His method, if you want to call it that, is to leave himself open to "chance." Well, it's something like that. Bataille takes Nietzsche's work as a template rather than doctrine, a method for a never-ending and open-ended inquiry into what it is to be human, which in itself is a concept that is forever developing. Bataille is often difficult reading and *On Nietzsche* is no exception. His thinking tends to turn repeatedly in on itself until you feel as if your brain is tied up into some sort of neural Gordian knot. He is also prone to verbal flights of fancy that seem a vestige of his surrealist days--he's a philosopher always straining for the inexpressible. It's all part of the appeal of Bataille, if you find that appealing. Some, most notably Jean-Paul Sartre, did not. And called Bataille a mystic, not a philosopher at all. This, coming from Sartre, was not a compliment. It strikes me that Bataille, like Jung, considered subjective states of mind as objective facts inasmuch as they are every bit as influential over us as any other objective phenomenon. So the concept "God," for instance, has a "truth" regardless of whether an actual God exists or not. I found the first part of *On Nietzsche* to be the most coherent and most compelling part of the book. Here Bataille presents his radical theory that communication depends on an act of violence--the infliction of a sacrificial wound that breaks our own autonomy and the autonomy of another. The crucifixion of Christ being the highest example of this principle--facilitating the communication of God and Man. This transgression, which serves to make us human, thus illustrates the necessity--indeed the good--of evil. The rest of *On Nietzsche*--the diary entries--I found much less compelling, often incomprehensibly fragmented, and of interest primarily for the copious excerpts Bataille reproduces from Nietzsche's *Gay Science* and *The Will to Power.* Bataille makes some enlightening observations in this section regarding his take on Nietzsche and, as always, provokes with the occasional stunning and illuminating aphorism, but, on the whole, I didn't f

although i certainly appreciate the above reader's take on bataille's work, there really aren't that many parallels between georges bataille and friedrich nietzsche. they have a distinctly different writing style, very different ideas, and almost diametrically opposed visions of the future. (i would also say, although this would be nothing more than a personal opinion, that in terms of the quality of his prose work, bataille is nowhere near nietzsche's league, however much we may debate the legitimacy or merit of nietzsche's controversial ideas.) while bataille is more about apocalypse and exploring the possibilities of extreme decadence, nietzsche was about nothing of the sort. indeed, he would have in all likelihood abhorred bataille's work, and more than likely written him off as a "decadent" of the worst kind, although i would certainly not agree. the similarities are small, if any indeed exist at all. while nietzsche will certainly have a place in history as one of the greatest philosophers to ever live, it would not surprise me if bataille faded into obscurity, as shock value lessens as sensibilities become more hardened.

bataille's "on nietzsche" is at times incomprehensible and far too much like the author talking to himself than the reader, but it is nonetheless a must-read by any standards. like heidegger, at times we find ourselves lost and simply not knowing what the hell he is talking about, but every once in awhile we achieve a moment of understanding that made all the mental confusion and frustration worth it and then some. bataille takes the death of transcendence to the ultimate conclusion, absolute meaninglessness and hedonism, reaching far different conclusions than nietzsche did about how the individual should live in the absence of any underlying metaphysical meaning. indeed, bataille, while many see him as a kind of modern nietzsche, might be called an anti-nietzschean in that he not only rejected the idea of 'the superman' but, through his novels and philosophical works, created characters for whom the ideas of discipline and so called 'becoming' flew out the window along with any sense of morality or sanctity. bataille says, 'ah, to hell with some future! the future no longer exists, anyway', and the frightening thing is that for a moment we are tempted to say it with him. as with all of bataille's work the intensity of his aggressive amorality is chilling, but it is perhaps among the best literature ever written if we want to gain insight into the nature of the intelligent rebel and the sadean libertine. to make a long story short, read it.

No disrespect intended, but the above review's take on this text was just so radically different than how I read it that I felt compelled to make a few comments. Bataille is in some sense writing "on Nietzsche", but more/instead of that he is using Nietzsche's work to explore the dynamics of communication and the limits of language, to question at a very fundamental level whether communication is even possible and if so how it takes place. In this exploration, of course, pain, suffering, loss, lack, desire, etc. all come into play, as they must since this is a work of Bataille's. But to speak of this pain as "sadistic" might be misleading... for (to essentialize perhaps too much) Bataille's "argument" centers more on what the individual must do to itself, its own subjectivity, in order to even approach community. When one inflicts pain on onesself, is that sadism? Masichism? The intense introspectivity of this work, much in tune with Nietzsche's, opens the door for the destruction of these very types of subject/object relationships, perhaps even to the point of obliterating the categories altogether. So despite the biographical and stylistic quirks of the author, which some might find troubling, others amusing, others entirely inconsequential, and yet others absolutely essential to the questions at hand (a la F.N.), ON NIETZSCHE is quite a provoking work if any of the issues mentioned are of concern.