Monday, March 28, 2011

sin

I'm reading through the discussion on sin from the Unfinished System. I probably won't be able to finish it because I'm working on other readings too. Damn, Rowan, you were right. Sartre and Hyppolite are totally ganging up on Bataille. They seem kind of dickish, but Bataille is very humble and honest. I wouldn't know how to back him up, but if I was there, I would defend Bataille. Sarte and Hyppolite seem intent on attacking Bataille for his use of the word sin. He makes his position pretty clear, but they continue to pester him on how he's using it. My favorite part so far is when Father Danielou steps in and says that Sarte is trying to impose his own style/positions on Bataille and that Bataille should stick to his own style because that's what makes him who he is. Way to back him up.

Most of the shit in this discussion is way over my head, and I'm probably reading through it too quickly to fully grasp it. But let me see....I like this: sin being the absence of boredom, as in the Nietzschean embracement of evil. And The world of christianity being the world of boredom, as in it's life-denying and not open to possibility or chance.

I understand pushing the limits of morals by embracing what is considered evil. This is in the spirit of contestation. I think that you need to take the morals or the notions of sin that have been handed down to you and question them through contestation and negation. You aren't accepting them as values, but using them as a templates to go beyond them, to reach non-knowledge and nothingness.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Stupid thoughts

Rowan, you asked the other day about time's relation to immanence and transcendence. I was going to post about it before, but it slipped my mind. Here are my belated thoughts.

Is time a presence? That is, is there ever such a state as the present or is what we consider the present just difference between past and future? Lately, I've thought of time as difference not presence. We seem to only ever think of time in terms of difference; that is how we measure or observe it. If we ever try to think about or capture the present, we have always just missed it. We never experience it as a presence. But perhaps we only perceive time as difference through discursive thought. If this is the case, then could a non-discursive experience (inner experience) be a relation to time that is a presence?

I think time could only be a presence with inner experience. With inner experience (non-discursive thought), there are no objects taken. That is, there is no subject to take an object. So with inner experience, time cannot be taken as an object. It would merely be there, unable to be thought of. It could be a presence then; a presence with everything else or a "totality" (to use a word of Bataille's). In this case (through inner experience), time would be related to immanence and chance. They would be together (present) in inner experience, but they could not be experienced or thought of as presence or as even being together.

Maybe time is related to transcendence through discursive thought. Perhaps through thinking of time in terms of its differences (projects are conducted this way), we are trying to transcend experience (and immanence and chance). That could be how they all relate.

I don't know. I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, so feel free to disagree. I just was thinking of this the other day and thought I'd share it.

Also Rowan, which reading of Bataille's did you want us to select from? I know it was from the Unfinished System, but was there a specific part from that to choose from?