The Author

The author, Georges Bataille, was a French philosopher and writer, living and working in the early-to-mid twentieth century. His work is perhaps not as well known as some of the other noted philosophers of the time (Nietzsche, Kant, Heidegger, Kierkegaard), but is nonetheless important in that he tends to ground his ideas in a broader understanding of what it means to be a human being. In other words, where his contemporaries (and, some would argue, his predecessors over the centuries) grounded their examinations in thought and intellectualism, there is the sense about his work that Bataille is striving for insight into the instinctual and emotional aspects of the human experience. That said, however, there is also the very clear sense that Bataille communicates his ideas and philosophies similarly to philosophers throughout history—through interpreting and re-interpreting words, through dissecting them to the finest and most specific...