SOURCE: Connor, Peter Tracey. “Mysticism and Morality.” Georges Bataille and the Mysticism of Sin, pp. 94-153. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Connor argues that Bataille's system of thought engendered an ethical structure despite its inherent paradoxes.

Consciousness of Others

On the face of things, the idea that the writings of Georges Bataille might harbor the groundwork for a rigorous rethinking of morality seems somewhat improbable. Given the paradoxical premise of his method—that there be no premise, no uninterrogated ground, but only contestation “without rest”—his entire endeavor appears to be at antipodes to the kind of systemic and regulatory thinking that ethics presupposes. And given his objective to assert a freedom known only in ecstasy and the “inward cessation of all intellectual operations” (IE [Inner Experience], 4, 13; V, 16, 25), it is difficult to imagine how morality could figure for Bataille as anything other than an...