Bataille, Georges - Kenneth Itzkowitz (essay date winter 1999)
Kenneth Itzkowitz (essay date winter 1999)
SOURCE: Itzkowitz, Kenneth. “To Witness Spectacles of Pain: The Hypermorality of Georges Bataille.” College Literature 26, no. 1 (winter 1999): 19-33.
[In the following essay, Itzkowitz discusses Bataille's thoughts on the possibility that excessive energy necessarily results in social violence and legal transgression.]
The two opposing values “good and bad,” “good and evil” have been engaged in a fearful struggle on earth for thousands of years; and though the latter value has certainly been on top for a long time, there are still places where the struggle is as yet undecided. … [T]here is perhaps no more decisive mark of a “higher nature” … than that of being a … battleground of these opposed values.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
The more ideal ethics is the better. It must not permit itself to...
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