Georges Bataille

A poetic, philosophical, and political account of Nietzsche’s importance to Bataille, and of Bataille’s experience in Nazi-occupied France. Georges Bataille wrote On Nietzsche in the final months of the Nazi occupation of France in order to cleanse the German philosopher of the “stain of Nazism.” More than merely a treatise on Nietzsche, the book is as much a work of ethics in which thought is put to the test of experience and experience pushed to its limits. At once personal and political, it was written as an act of war, its publication contingent upon the German retreat. The result is a poetic and philosophical—and occasionally harrowing—record of life during wartime. Following Inner Experience and Guilty, On Nietzsche is the third volume of Bataille’s Summa Atheologica. Haunted by the recognition that “existence cannot be at once autonomous and viable,” herein the author yearns for community from the depths of personal isolation and transforms Nietzsche’s will to power into his own will to chance. This new translation includes Memorandum, a selection of 280 passages from Nietzsche’s works edited and introduced by Bataille. Originally published separately, Bataille planned to include the text in future editions of On Nietzsche. This edition also features the full notes and annotations from the French edition of Bataille’s Oeuvres Complètes, as well as an incisive introductory essay by Stuart Kendall that situates the work historically, biographically, and philosophically.

On Nietzsche

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[C]learly the “communication” of human beings is guaranteed by evil. Without evil, human existence would turn in upon itself, would be enclosed as a zone of independence: And indeed an absence of “communication” — empty loneliness — would certainly be the greater evil. 

“Communication” cannot proceed from one full and intact individual to another. It requires individuals whose seperate existence in themselves is risked, placed at the limit of death and nothingness.

With temptation … we’re crushed by twin pincers of nothingness. By not communicating, we’re annihilated into the emptiness of an isolated life. By communicating we likewise risk being destroyed. 

The ongoing whirling that composes you collides with similar whirlings, which form a vast figure driven by rhythmic restlessness. 

On Nietzsche quotes

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