Georges Bataille - Ends Quotes

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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.

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

Georges Bataille
Human entirety can only be what it is when giving up the addiction to others' ends.

Georges Bataille
The preceding criticism … justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of unmotivated celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.

Georges Bataille
[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.

Georges Bataille
[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.

Georges Bataille
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.

Georges Bataille
Only literature could reveal the process of breaking the law - without which the law would have no end - independently of the necessity to create order.

Georges Bataille