Author: Georges Bataille Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
Theory of Religion brings to philosophy what Bataille's earlier book, The Accursed Share, brought to anthropology and history; namely, an analysis based on notions of excess and expenditure. Bataille brilliantly defines religion as so many different attempts to respond to the universe's relentless generosity. Framed within his original theory of generalized economics and based on his masterly reading of archaic religious activity, Theory of Religion constitutes, along with The Accursed Share, the most important articulation of Bataille's work.Georges Bataille (1897-1962), founder of the French review Critique, wrote fiction and essays on a wide range of topics. His books in English translation include Story of the Eye, Blue of Noon, Literature and Evil, Manet and Erotism.Robert Hurley is the translator of The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault and cotranslator of Anti Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Distributed for Zone Books.
Author: Georges Bataille Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0241215390 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 123
Book Description
Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, Blue of Noon is a blackly compelling account of depravity and violence. As its narrator lurches despairingly from city to city in a surreal sexual and mental nightmare of squalor, sadism and drunken encounters, his internal collapse mirrors the fighting and marching on the streets outside. Exploring the dark forces beneath the surface of civilization, this is a novel torn between identifying with history's victims and being seduced by the monstrous glamour of its terrible victors, and is one of the twentieth century's great nihilist works.
Author: Georges Bataille Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 9780816612833 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. This collection of prewar writings remains the volume in which Batailles’s positions are most clearly, forcefully, and obsessively put forward.This book challenges the notion of a “closed economy” predicated on utility, production, and rational consumption, and develops an alternative theory that takes into account the human tendency to lose, destroy, and waste. This collection is indispensible for an understanding of the future as well as the past of current critical theory.Georges Bataille (1897-1962), a librarian by profession, was founder of the French review Critique. He is the author of several books, including Story of the Eye, The Accused Share, Erotism, and The Absence of Myth.
Author: Georges Bataille Publisher: Random House ISBN: 0141913673 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 149
Book Description
Bataille’s first novel, published under the pseudonym ‘Lord Auch’, is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacreligious, Story of the Eye is the fullest expression of Bataille’s obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.
Author: Georges Bataille Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics ISBN: 9780141184104 Category : Death Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
A librarian, pornographer and fervent Catholic who came to regard the brothels of Paris as his true 'churches', George Bataille ranks among the boldest and most disturbing of twentieth-century thinkers. Although published at the start of the 'sexual revolution', Eroticism (1857) totally rejects the gospel of 'liberation'. Everywhere, it argues, sex is surrounded by taboos, and everywhere we transgress against them in our desperation to overcome an agonizing sense of separation from other people. In developing this central theme, Bataille offers a dazzling array of insights into incest, prostitution, marriage, murder, sadism, sacrifice and the violence at the heart of religious ritual. The result is one of the strangest and most compelling books ever written about sex.
Author: Steven Nadler Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691233950 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
"The seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza has long been known - and vilified - for his heretical view of God and for the radical determinism he sees governing the cosmos and human freedom. Only recently, however, has he begun to be considered seriously as a moral philosopher. In his philosophical masterpiece, the Ethics, after establishing some metaphysical and epistemological foundations, he turns to the "big questions" that so often move one to reflect on, and even change, the values that inform their life: What is truly good? What is happiness? What is the relationship between being a good or virtuous person and enjoying happiness and human flourishing? The guiding thread of the book, and the source of its title, is a claim that comes late in the Ethics: "The free person thinks least of all of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life." The life of the free person, according to Spinoza, is one of joy, not sadness. He does what is "most important" in life and is not troubled by such harmful passions as hate, greed and envy. He treats others with benevolence, justice and charity. And, with his attention focused on the rewards of goodness, he enjoys the pleasures of this world, but in moderation. Nadler makes clear that these ethical precepts are not unrelated to Spinoza's metaphysical views. Rather, as Nadler shows, Spinoza's views on how to live are intimately connected to and require an understanding of his conception of human nature and its place in the cosmos, his account of values, and his conception of human happiness and flourishing. Written in an engaging style this book makes Spinoza's often forbiddingly technical philosophy accessible to contemporary readers interested in knowing more about Spinoza's views on morality, and who may even be looking to this famous "atheist", who so scandalized his early modern contemporaries, as a guide to the right way of living today"--
Author: Michel Surya Publisher: Verso Books ISBN: 1789601711 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 772
Book Description
Georges Bataille was a philosopher, writer, librarian, pornographer and a founder of the influential journals Critique and Acphale. He has had an enormous impact on contemporary thought, influencing such writers as Barthes, Baudrillard, Derrida, Foucault and Sontag. Many of his books, including the notorious Story of the Eye and the fascinating The Accursed Share, are modern classics. In this acclaimed intellectual biography, Michel Surya gives a detailed and insightful account of Bataille's work against the backdrop of his life - his troubled childhood, his difficult relationship with Andr Breton and the surrealists and his curious position as a thinker of excess, 'potlatch', sexual extremes and religious sacrifice, one who nonetheless remains at the heart of twentieth century French thought-all of it drawn here in rich and allusive prose. While exploring the source of the violent eroticism that laces Bataille's novels, the book is also an acute guide to the development of Bataille's philosophical thought. Enriched by testimonies from Bataille's closest acquaintances and revealing the context in which he worked, Surya sheds light on a figure Foucault described as 'one of the most important writers of the century'.
Author: Zena Hitz Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691229198 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
An invitation to readers from every walk of life to rediscover the impractical splendors of a life of learning In an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others? While many forms of leisure meet these needs, Zena Hitz writes, few experiences are so fulfilling as the inner life, whether that of a bookworm, an amateur astronomer, a birdwatcher, or someone who takes a deep interest in one of countless other subjects. Drawing on inspiring examples, from Socrates and Augustine to Malcolm X and Elena Ferrante, and from films to Hitz's own experiences as someone who walked away from elite university life in search of greater fulfillment, Lost in Thought is a passionate and timely reminder that a rich life is a life rich in thought. Today, when even the humanities are often defended only for their economic or political usefulness, Hitz says our intellectual lives are valuable not despite but because of their practical uselessness. And while anyone can have an intellectual life, she encourages academics in particular to get back in touch with the desire to learn for its own sake, and calls on universities to return to the person-to-person transmission of the habits of mind and heart that bring out the best in us. Reminding us of who we once were and who we might become, Lost in Thought is a moving account of why renewing our inner lives is fundamental to preserving our humanity.
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Author: Leslie Anne Boldt-Irons
Author: Georges Bataille
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Author: Georges Bataille
Author: Georges Bataille
Author: Georges Bataille
Author: Steven Nadler
Author: Michel Surya
Author: Georges Bataille
Author: Zena Hitz