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Hegel and Bataille on Sacrifice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2018

W. Ezekiel Goggin
W. Ezekiel Goggin*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago and University of California, USAzeke.goggin@gmail.com; goggin@uchicago.edu
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Abstract

In Georges Bataille’s view, the Hegelian interpretation of kenotic sacrifice as passage from Spirit to the Speculative Idea effaces the necessarily representational character of sacrifice and the irreducible non-presence of death. But Hegel identifies these aspects of death in the fragments of the 1800 System. In sacrificial acts, subjectivity represents its disappearance via the sacrificed other, and hence is negated and conserved. Sacrifice thus provides the representational model of sublation pursued in the Phenomenology as a propaedeutic to Science. Bataille’s critique clarifies the fragments of the 1800 System, contextualizing Hegel’s rehabilitation of kenotic sacrifice in the Phenomenology. Bataille’s poetics parodies Hegelian kenosis via repetition of material difference, enacting an ecstatic temporality which Hegel perhaps suppresses as the condition of his system. Finally—if Bataille is correct in his assessment—the system would be subjected to a reversal, with radical implications for the philosophy of religion.

Type
Articles
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 39 , Special Issue 2: Hegel and Twentieth-Century French Philosophy , October 2018 , pp. 236 - 259
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2018 

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