- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > Philosophy
Full Description
An introduction for English-language readers to Georges Bataille's postwar philosophical and critical writings.
In the aftermath of World War II, French thinker and writer Georges Bataille forged a singular path through the moral and political impasses of his age. In 1946, animated by "a need to live events in an increasingly conscious way," and to reject any compartmentalization of intellectual life, Bataille founded the journal Critique. Continuing the publication of his postwar writings, this second book in a three-volume collection of Bataille's work collects his essays and reviews from the years 1949 to 1951.
In this period of intellectual isolation and intense reflection, Bataille developed and refined his genealogy of morality through a sustained reflection on the fate of the sacred in the modern world. He offered a critique of the limits of existing morality, especially in its denial of excess, while sketching the lineaments of a new hyper-morality. Bataille's wide-ranging reflections are true to the intellectual mission of Critique, which he founded as a space open to the broadest considerations of the present. As well as discussing significant figures like Samuel Beckett, André Gide, and René Char, Bataille also offers fascinating reflections on American politics, Nazism, existentialism, materialism, and play.
The connecting thread in these diverse essays remains Bataille's concern with the extremes of human experience and the possibilities of transcending the limits of societies founded on utility and restraint. His writings remain a provocative incitement to rethink the boundaries we impose on expression and existence.
Contents
Editors' Introduction
Translator's Note
The Bible, Esoterism and Midwestern Idealism.
World Government - André Breton - Malcolm de Chazal - Albert Camus.
Beautiful Ugliness or Ugly Beauty in Art and Literature
Nietzsche
The Paradox of The Gift
Happiness, Eroticism and Literature
Caprice and Machinery of State at Stalingrad
Art, An Exercise in Cruelty
A Monstrous Novel
Racine
Medieval French Literature, Chivalric Morality and Passion
The Sovereignty of Festivity and the American Novel
The Novel and Madness
The Theatrical Works of René Char
Military Victory and the Bankruptcy of Anathematizing Morality
The Works of Goya and the Class Struggle
Existentialism
Sociology.
Materialism and Fable
War and the Philosophy of the Sacred
The Journal Unto Death
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Civilization and War - Princess Bibesco - Paul Gegauff - Nietzsche
Molloy's Silence
Racism
Are We Here to Play or to be Serious?
René Char and the Power of Poetry
The Art and Tears of André Gide
Bibliography and Notes
