Inner Experience

Inner Experience (French: L'expérience intérieure) is a 1943 book by the French intellectual Georges Bataille. His first lengthy philosophical treatise, it was followed by Guilty (1944) and On Nietzsche (1945). Together, the three works constitute Bataille's Summa Atheologica, in which he explores the experience of excess, expressed in forms such as laughter, tears, eroticism, death, sacrifice and poetry.[1]

Inner Experience
Cover of the first edition
AuthorGeorges Bataille
Original titleL'expérience intérieure
TranslatorLeslie Anne Boldt
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
PublisherÉditions Gallimard, State University of New York Press
Publication date
1943
Published in English
1988
Media typePrint
Pages209 (English edition)
ISBN0-88706-635-6

Summary

Bataille discusses "inner experience", which he defines as states usually considered forms of mystical experience, including ecstasy and rapture.[2]

Reception

Inner Experience received a negative reception from several authors due to having been published during the Second World War. Bataille was criticized for this privately by Jules Monnerot, and publicly by Patrick Waldberg. Boris Souvarine regarded its publication as a sign of Bataille's acceptance of the occupation of France. Bataille was attacked by surrealists in a pamphlet entitled Nom de Dieu. The surrealists considered Bataille an idealist.[3] The philosopher Gabriel Marcel criticized the work from a Christian perspective.[4]

References
  1. Lee 2017, p. 88.
  2. Bataille 1988, p. 3.
  3. Surya 2002, pp. 329–330.
  4. Marcel 2010, pp. 178–204.

Bibliography
  • Bataille, Georges (1988). Inner Experience. New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-88706-635-6.
  • Lee, Joo Heung (2017). "Bataille, Georges". In Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-64379-6.
  • Marcel, Gabriel (2010). Homo Viator. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press. ISBN 978-1-58731-361-5.
  • Surya, Michel (2002). Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography. New York: Verso Books. ISBN 1-85984-822-2.
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