Philosophers From France

"For the mercantilization of knowledge is bound to affect the privilege the nation-states have enjoyed, and still enjoy, with respect to the production and distribution of learning. The notion that learning falls within the purview of the State, as the brain or mind of society, will become more and more outdated with increasing strength of the opposing principle."

"Already in the last few decades, economic powers have reached the point of imperiling the stability of the state through new forms of the circulation of capital that go by the generic name of multinational corporations."

"Legitimation is the process by which a legislator is authorized to promulgate such a law as a norm."

"Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major-perhaps the major- stake in the world wide. It is conceivable the nation state will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled over territory, and afterwards for control of access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor. A new field opened for industrial and commercial strategies on the one hand, and political and military strategies."

"Let us wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable, let us activate the different and save the honor of the name."

"Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter the postmodern age."

"The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will be increasingly tend to, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume--that is, the form of knowledge."

"What is new in all this is that the old poles of attraction represented by nation-states, parties, professions, institutions, and historical traditions are losing their attraction. And it does not look as though they will be replaced, at least not on their former scale."

"Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new product."

"The moment knowledge ceases to be an end in itself—its realization of The Idea or the emancipation of men—it’s transmission is no longer the exclusive responsibility of scholars and students."

"It is generally accepted that nature is an indifferent, not deceptive opponent, and it is upon this basis that the distinction is made between the natural and the human sciences."

"…Scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge, which I will call narratives in the interest of simplicity."

"The logic of maximum performance is no doubt inconsistent in many ways, particularly with respect to contradiction in the socio-economic field: it demands both less work (to lower production costs) and more (to lessen the social burden of the idle population). But our incredulity is now such that we no longer expect salvation to rise from these inconsistencies, as did Marx."

"The grand narrative has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unification is uses, regardless of whether it is a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation."

"Here is the question: is a legitimization of the social bond, a just society, feasible in terms of a paradox analogous to that of scientific activity? What would such a paradox be?"

"True knowledge, in this perspective, is always indirect knowledge; it is composed of reported statements, that are incorporated into metanarratives of a subject that source their legitimacy."

"Bataille is associated with the surrealists. Basically the idea is that democracy doesn't work. Communism doesn't work. All these fucking models aren't working. We've got to find some new models — a model of what society should look like. We don't know what humans are like. And the ground is not economics; it's not like people do everything they do for economic reasons. You've got to look at the imagination; you've got to look at sex. We have no way of describing these things using the language we have. So a group was formed around Bataille to try to figure out what it means to be human — what society should look like. Humans have to live in a society — they can't just survive as individuals. That's not a viable condition. You know, everyone's always talking about trauma and pain and how this society isn't working, that we shouldn't have racism and sexism, but we never talk in positive terms — like what would joy be, what it would be like to have a totally great existence. Bataille and his followers looked for models for people to have totally great existences. … Well, they looked at tribal models and how they dealt with sexual stuff and sacrifice and property — the joys that aren't based on economic accumulation and the workaday world, but based on giving it all up — not having that specific, controlling, imprisoning "I." He wasn't a Freudian. He was much more interested in the tribal model where everything is on the surface and you deal with sexual stuff the same way you deal with economic stuff and social stuff. He was a very proper person, a librarian. Bataille's main enemy was Jean Paul Sartre — Bataille wasn't an upper-class intellectual and he took a lot of pressure because of that. Sartre wrote this really horrible article about Bataille and sort of kept his work from getting recognized."

"The author of highly disturbing pornographic novels and equally disturbing theoretical work, Bataille was once called by André Breton the “excrement philosopher.” But this scathing sobriquet points to precisely what makes Bataille so useful in understanding human sexuality in all its polymorphous perversity. In fact, Bataille’s writings on ritual sacrifice and mystical experience help provide a fuller understanding of the bizarre rituals of the crush freaks. Both the writings and life of Bataille evidence an obsession with religion. In his teens, Bataille converted to Catholicism and contemplated entering the priesthood before renouncing his faith in order to fashion himself as an erotic mystic of decadence."

"Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production..."

"There is no better way to know death than to link it with some licentious image."

"We can’t rely on anything. Except ourselves. Ludicrous responsibility devolves on us, overwhelms us. In every regard, right up the present, people always have relied on each other—or God."

"All eroticism has a sacramental character."

"Science has always been in conflict with narratives. Judged by the yardstick of science, the majority of them prove to be fables. But to the extent that science does not restrict itself to stating useful regularities and seeks truth, it is obliged to legitimate the rules of its own game."

"Inevitably linked with the moment of climax, there is a minor rupture suggestive of death; and conversely the idea of death may play a part in setting sensuality in motion."

"[Zarathustra] never abandoned the watchword of not having any end, not serving a cause, because, as he knew, causes pluck off the wings we fly with."

"[Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return] is what makes moments caught up in the immanence of return suddenly appear as ends. In every other system, don’t forget, these moments are viewed as means: Every moral system proclaims that “each moment of life ought to be motivated.” Return unmotivates the moment and frees life of ends."

"Human entirety can only be what it is when giving up the addiction to others’ ends."

"The decline of narrative can be seen as an effect of the blossoming of techniques and technologies since the Second World War, Which has shifted emphasis from the ends of action to this means; it can also be seen as an effect of the redeployment of advanced liberal capitalism after its retreat under the protection of Keynesianism during the period of 1930-1960, a renewal that has eliminated the communist alternative and valorized the individual enjoyment of goods and services."

"To choose evil is to choose freedom—“freedom, emancipation from all restraint.”"

"I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives."

"What causes [fragmentation] if not a need to act that specializes us and limits us to the horizon of a particular activity? Even if it turns out to be for the general interest (which generally isn’t true), the activity that subordinates each of our aspects to a specific result suppresses our being as an entirety. Whoever acts substitutes a particular end for what he or she is, as a total being."

"I cannot exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise I’m a soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a “total human being.” The fragmentary state of humanity is basically the same as the choice of an object. When you limit your desires to possessing political power, for instance, you act and know what you have to do. … You insert your existence advantageously into time. Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal, and your time becomes a march toward that goal—what’s normally called living. … Every action makes you a fragmentary existence. I hold on to my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act—or at least by denying the superiority of time, which is reserved for action."

"Existence as entirety remains beyond any one meaning—and it is the conscious presence of humanness in the world inasmuch as this is nonmeaning, having nothing to do other than be what it is, no longer able to go beyond itself or give itself some kind of meaning through action."

"Humanity-attached-to-the-task-of-changing-the-world, which is only a single and fragmentary aspect of humanity, will itself be changed in humanity-as-entirety."

"An extreme, unconditional human yearning was expressed for the first time by Nietzsche independently of moral goals or of serving God. … Ardor that doesn’t address a dramatically articulated moral obligation is a paradox. … If we stop looking at states of ardor as simply preliminary to other and subsequent conditions grasped as beneficial, the state I propose seems a pure play of lightning, merely an empty consummation. Lacking any relation to material benefits such as power or the growth of the state (or of God or a Church or a party), this consuming can’t even be comprehended. … I’ll have to face the same difficulties as Nietzsche—putting God and the good behind him, though all ablaze with the ardor possessed by those who lay down their lives for God or the good. … I’ll admit that moral investigations that aim to surpass the good lead first of all to disorder."

"An intention that rejects what has no meaning in fact is a rejection of the entirety of being."

"In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn’t develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote “with his blood,” and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one’s lifeblood. … It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned."

"Life is whole only when it isn’t subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it. In this way, the essence of entirety is freedom."

"I remain in intolerable non-knowledge, which has no other way out than ecstasy itself."

"It is through an “intimate cessation of all intellectual operations” that the mind is laid bare. If nor, discourse maintains it in its little complacency. … The difference between inner experience and philosophy resides principally in this: that in experience, … what counts is no longer the statement of wind, but the wind."

"Concern for this or that limited good can sometimes lead to the summit... But this occurs in a roundabout way. Moral ends … are distinct from any excesses they occasion. States of glory and moments of sacredness surpass results intentionally sought."

"We reach ecstasy by a contestation of knowledge. Were I to stop at ecstasy and grasp it, in the end I would define it."

"Entirety exists within me as exuberance … in empty longing … in … the desire to burn with desire."

"The difficulty—that contestation must be done in the name of an authority—is resolved this: I contest in the name of contestation what experience itself is."

"Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God’s person displaces the problem and does not abolish it."

"If I give up the viewpoint of action, my perfect nakedness is revealed to me."

"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."

"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."

"The advance of intelligence diminished, as a secondary consequence, the “possible” in a realm which appeared foreign to intelligence: that of inner experience. To say “diminished” is even to say too little. The development of intelligence leads to a drying up of life which, in return, has narrowed intelligence. It is only if I state this principle: “inner experience itself is authority” that I emerge from this impotence."

"By inner experience I understand that which one usually calls mystical experience: the states of ecstasy, of rapture, at least of meditated emotion. But I am thinking less of confessional experience, to which one has had to adhere up to now, than of an experience laid bare, free of ties, even of an origin, of any confession whatever. This is why I don’t like the word mystical."