Inner experience, unable to have principles either in dogma (a moral attitude), or in science (knowledge can be neither its goal nor its origin), or … - Georges Bataille

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Inner experience, unable to have principles either in dogma (a moral attitude), or in science (knowledge can be neither its goal nor its origin), or in a search of enriching states (an experimental, aesthetic attitude), it cannot have any other concern nor other goal than itself. Opening myself to inner experience, I have placed in it all value and authority. Henceforth I can have no other value, no other authority (in the realm of mind). Value and authority imply the discipline of a method, the existence of a community.
I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may choose not to embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. By virtue of the fact that it is negation of other values, other authorities, experience, having a positive existence, becomes itself positively value and authority.
Inner experience has always had objectives other than itself in which one invested value and authority. … If God, knowledge, and suppression of pain were to cease to be in my eyes convincing objectives, … would inner experience from that moment seem empty to me, henceforth impossible without justification? ...
I received the answer [from Blanchot]: experience itself is authority.

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About Georges Bataille

Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art. Eroticism and transgression are at the core of his writings.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Pierre Angélique George Bataille Joruju Bataiyu G. Bataiyu Lord Auch Pierre Angelique Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille
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Experience is, in fever and anguish, the putting into question (to the test) of that which a man knows of being. Should he in this fever have any apprehension whatsoever, he cannot say: “I have seen God, the absolute, or the depths of the universe”; he can only say “that which I have seen eludes understanding”—and God, the absolute, the depths of the universe are nothing if they are not categories of the understanding. If I said decisively, “I have seen God,” that which I see would change. Instead of the inconceivable unknown—wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it—there would be a dead object and the thing of the theologian, to which the unknown would be subjugated.

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