Bataille and the Horror of the Sacred
Carlon Robbins
PHIL 6050-001
Kent Brintnall
10 February 2012
Bataille and the Horror of the Sacred
The approach to Georges Bataille’s work on the sacred that follows begins with an
assumption, which, as assumptions go, may or may not be problematic from the outset. However,
in taking up the position of analysis of Bataille’s thought, this assumption seems, at least,
warranted. This assumption is that, whatever referent can be posited as that to which the signifier
“sacred” adheres, it is something from which contemporary human existence is inevitably far
removed. A close reading of Bataille generates the sense that the dimension(s) that can be called
the sacred, if present at all, has been marginalized, practically forgotten, and near extinction,
even, ironically enough, in those current spaces that hold the banner of religion. Yet, as it
remains for Bataille, and those who take his thought seriously, the sacred is both a necessary
dimension for valuable human existence, viz. in part, as a means of avoiding destructive physical
violence, and a fecundity that carries a propagation of destruction and violence—a dissemination
that is counterintuitive to the normative understanding of “violence.” Thus, how this “dualism”
of destruction and violence means, and its critical force should be taken as seriously, if not more
so, than what it means.
In the work, Theory of Religion, Bataille extrapolates on notions of immanence, intimacy,
the sacred, and the profane, the latter being the world of objects, tools, utility, and labor.
Juxtaposed to the condition of animality, human beings are in a world of alienation and
1
estrangement—a world in which objectification and differentiation of things is the rule. By being
rational, tool-making, laborious beings, humans find themselves in a precarious state of “lost
intimacy.” The very conditions that make humanity distinct from animality are the same
conditions that posit humans in the profane. The quest for rediscovering, or experiencing,
intimacy, or the sacred, is what one finds in the dimension of religion. But here, Bataille has a
specific conception of religion in mind, which is why it is important to note (as inferred above)
that what might ordinarily pass as religion or the religious remains demarcated in Bataille’s
thought.
Religion, for Bataille, is not a set of beliefs or doctrines. It is not an elaborate theology,
cosmogony, or metaphysics. It is not a set of routinized practices that engender either bored
automatons, or goal-driven proselytizers calculating won souls. Religion, or the religious
experience, in the sense that Bataille references and ultimately wants the world to get at and take
seriously, is the intimacy or immanence that he analogizes with the descriptive phrase of animals
being “in the world like water in water.”1 Such a state of undifferentiatedness is the space of the
sacred, which is diametrically opposed to the profane world of utility and the non-I. The profane
is, in other words, the distinct world of the human, the one which posits the “I” in that such a
world begins with temporality and tool-making, which by default of itself, necessarily posits a
field of separability, subordination (of nature to human activity), labor, and accumulative
production.
According to Bataille, not only do the conditions that distinguish humans from animals,
situate humanity itself, but the space or gap of these conditions also constitutes the sacred. That
is to say, the sacred remains a human category. Animals may indeed exist in a state like water in
1 Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion, (New York: Zone Books, 1989), 19.
2
water, but only humans, by default of the alienated state, can make the distinction between the
profane world and the sacred. Bataille spells this difference out while simultaneously asserting
that this space of the sacred, or the force by which the sacred comes to experience in the human
consciousness, contains a horrific “ineptitude.”
[T]he animal accepted the immanence that submerged it without apparent protest,
whereas man feels a kind of impotent horror in the sense of the sacred. This
horror is ambiguous. Undoubtedly, what is sacred attracts and possesses an
incomparable value, but at the same time it appears vertiginously dangerous for
that clear and profane world where mankind situates its privileged domain.2
This ambiguous horror equated with the sacred is what engenders the “dualistic” vertiginous
phenomenon of destructive violence. The sacred attracts because of its power to “transcend,” the
profane, which it does vis-à-vis the destruction of utility—through violence, waste, and/or
consumption. With the world of productivity and utility, human beings come to perceive
themselves as occupying a privileged position due to the outcomes of these distinguishing
characteristics. No other creature is “rational.” No other creature is productive—not in the sense,
for example, of the “productions” of beavers, or bees—but rather in the sense of the productivity
that really is only found in the human domain, of the sense circumscribed by the concepts of usevalue, and the subordination of nature as a means to goal-oriented ends of technological
rationality.
The ambiguity of the sacred lies in its relation with its double, not only is it attractive, it
is also “vertiginously dangerous” and horrific. The vertigo, the danger, and the horror hinge on
the very destructiveness of utility that constitutes the sacred itself. For the specific purpose of
articulating this point, Bataille turns to sacrifice, of which the principle is destruction, “but
though it sometimes goes so far as to destroy completely, the destruction that sacrifice is
2 Ibid., 36.
3
intended to bring about is not annihilation. The thing – only the thing – is what sacrifice means to
destroy in the victim.”3 Thus, the how of the signification of this violent destruction is not by
necessity a physical violence in the literal sense, all the while this destructiveness remains
horrific; it remains violent in a conceptual sense. It is the vertiginous horror that engenders an
ecstatic disruption that pitches the subject outside of her/him self, and outside of profanation.
The violence of the sacred tears one away from the world of utility and production—it destroys
that which ordinarily manifest or contains use-value and purpose. It returns consciousness to a
state of immanence, if only briefly.
The “mechanism” of the sacred, thus understood, is generative, not only for the
possibility, however infrequent, of “encountering” the sacred—a religious experience—but also,
if taken to the critical conceptual level, for troubling and disrupting any force that acts on the
imperative of objectification. If the sacred is that which sends shockwaves of horror throughout
any schematization of human conceptualization, signification, and activity, then it becomes more
than a mere “religious” category. If Bataille is correct in positing that all elements of human
existence not within this sacred dimension (which is rare and sparse) are those of the profane, of
utility, then the sacred, and more precisely the non-productive means of encountering it, (if not
reduced to the profane) disrupts the social, the political, the economic—any institution of power
and authority. Thus, the horror of the sacred is the danger that threatens the system, and a critical
reason demonstrating both the importance of it and that of Bataille’s corpus.
3 Ibid., 43.
4
PHIL 6050-001
Kent Brintnall
10 February 2012
Bataille and the Horror of the Sacred
The approach to Georges Bataille’s work on the sacred that follows begins with an
assumption, which, as assumptions go, may or may not be problematic from the outset. However,
in taking up the position of analysis of Bataille’s thought, this assumption seems, at least,
warranted. This assumption is that, whatever referent can be posited as that to which the signifier
“sacred” adheres, it is something from which contemporary human existence is inevitably far
removed. A close reading of Bataille generates the sense that the dimension(s) that can be called
the sacred, if present at all, has been marginalized, practically forgotten, and near extinction,
even, ironically enough, in those current spaces that hold the banner of religion. Yet, as it
remains for Bataille, and those who take his thought seriously, the sacred is both a necessary
dimension for valuable human existence, viz. in part, as a means of avoiding destructive physical
violence, and a fecundity that carries a propagation of destruction and violence—a dissemination
that is counterintuitive to the normative understanding of “violence.” Thus, how this “dualism”
of destruction and violence means, and its critical force should be taken as seriously, if not more
so, than what it means.
In the work, Theory of Religion, Bataille extrapolates on notions of immanence, intimacy,
the sacred, and the profane, the latter being the world of objects, tools, utility, and labor.
Juxtaposed to the condition of animality, human beings are in a world of alienation and
1
estrangement—a world in which objectification and differentiation of things is the rule. By being
rational, tool-making, laborious beings, humans find themselves in a precarious state of “lost
intimacy.” The very conditions that make humanity distinct from animality are the same
conditions that posit humans in the profane. The quest for rediscovering, or experiencing,
intimacy, or the sacred, is what one finds in the dimension of religion. But here, Bataille has a
specific conception of religion in mind, which is why it is important to note (as inferred above)
that what might ordinarily pass as religion or the religious remains demarcated in Bataille’s
thought.
Religion, for Bataille, is not a set of beliefs or doctrines. It is not an elaborate theology,
cosmogony, or metaphysics. It is not a set of routinized practices that engender either bored
automatons, or goal-driven proselytizers calculating won souls. Religion, or the religious
experience, in the sense that Bataille references and ultimately wants the world to get at and take
seriously, is the intimacy or immanence that he analogizes with the descriptive phrase of animals
being “in the world like water in water.”1 Such a state of undifferentiatedness is the space of the
sacred, which is diametrically opposed to the profane world of utility and the non-I. The profane
is, in other words, the distinct world of the human, the one which posits the “I” in that such a
world begins with temporality and tool-making, which by default of itself, necessarily posits a
field of separability, subordination (of nature to human activity), labor, and accumulative
production.
According to Bataille, not only do the conditions that distinguish humans from animals,
situate humanity itself, but the space or gap of these conditions also constitutes the sacred. That
is to say, the sacred remains a human category. Animals may indeed exist in a state like water in
1 Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion, (New York: Zone Books, 1989), 19.
2
water, but only humans, by default of the alienated state, can make the distinction between the
profane world and the sacred. Bataille spells this difference out while simultaneously asserting
that this space of the sacred, or the force by which the sacred comes to experience in the human
consciousness, contains a horrific “ineptitude.”
[T]he animal accepted the immanence that submerged it without apparent protest,
whereas man feels a kind of impotent horror in the sense of the sacred. This
horror is ambiguous. Undoubtedly, what is sacred attracts and possesses an
incomparable value, but at the same time it appears vertiginously dangerous for
that clear and profane world where mankind situates its privileged domain.2
This ambiguous horror equated with the sacred is what engenders the “dualistic” vertiginous
phenomenon of destructive violence. The sacred attracts because of its power to “transcend,” the
profane, which it does vis-à-vis the destruction of utility—through violence, waste, and/or
consumption. With the world of productivity and utility, human beings come to perceive
themselves as occupying a privileged position due to the outcomes of these distinguishing
characteristics. No other creature is “rational.” No other creature is productive—not in the sense,
for example, of the “productions” of beavers, or bees—but rather in the sense of the productivity
that really is only found in the human domain, of the sense circumscribed by the concepts of usevalue, and the subordination of nature as a means to goal-oriented ends of technological
rationality.
The ambiguity of the sacred lies in its relation with its double, not only is it attractive, it
is also “vertiginously dangerous” and horrific. The vertigo, the danger, and the horror hinge on
the very destructiveness of utility that constitutes the sacred itself. For the specific purpose of
articulating this point, Bataille turns to sacrifice, of which the principle is destruction, “but
though it sometimes goes so far as to destroy completely, the destruction that sacrifice is
2 Ibid., 36.
3
intended to bring about is not annihilation. The thing – only the thing – is what sacrifice means to
destroy in the victim.”3 Thus, the how of the signification of this violent destruction is not by
necessity a physical violence in the literal sense, all the while this destructiveness remains
horrific; it remains violent in a conceptual sense. It is the vertiginous horror that engenders an
ecstatic disruption that pitches the subject outside of her/him self, and outside of profanation.
The violence of the sacred tears one away from the world of utility and production—it destroys
that which ordinarily manifest or contains use-value and purpose. It returns consciousness to a
state of immanence, if only briefly.
The “mechanism” of the sacred, thus understood, is generative, not only for the
possibility, however infrequent, of “encountering” the sacred—a religious experience—but also,
if taken to the critical conceptual level, for troubling and disrupting any force that acts on the
imperative of objectification. If the sacred is that which sends shockwaves of horror throughout
any schematization of human conceptualization, signification, and activity, then it becomes more
than a mere “religious” category. If Bataille is correct in positing that all elements of human
existence not within this sacred dimension (which is rare and sparse) are those of the profane, of
utility, then the sacred, and more precisely the non-productive means of encountering it, (if not
reduced to the profane) disrupts the social, the political, the economic—any institution of power
and authority. Thus, the horror of the sacred is the danger that threatens the system, and a critical
reason demonstrating both the importance of it and that of Bataille’s corpus.
3 Ibid., 43.
4