My Take: Searching for God, settling for sex – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs
Regarding the above post:
I don't usually read the rants of fundamentalists, but I can draw out some interesting connections with regard to Georges Bataille's notions of eros and death. He was very interested in using sexuality as a means to combat, as it seems, philosophical idealism. I find this an interesting project, although it has its limits. Western dualisms divide the mind from the body in order to make the mind alone the means to ascend to heaven.
Actually, there's a logical problem right there, because there is no extension of life beyond death. So, to subdue the body in order to try to extend one's mind, known as "soul", indefinitely into the future, is a silly project from an atheistic perspective.
Nonetheless we are all creatures historically imbued with silliness. Metaphysics forms a key part of our mental processes, because we have been brought up to relate to the world in a way that separates "mind/spirit/God" from "body/emotion/sexuality". In Bataille's paradigm, sexuality becomes a means to engage within a dualistic antagonism of mental states engendered through the processes of civilization.
Bataille, therefore, advocated "sinning", in order to bring heaven to Earth and make what is sacred appear in the realm of immanence. We face the death of the idea of our eternal soul whenever we "sin". But at the same time, we put to death something that was never real to begin with. Perhaps instead of preserving the historically fabricated ideals within our beings, we would destroy these metaphysical constructs in our own minds, and could make room for our own natures to flourish.
**NB. Bataille wasn't entirely opposed to philosophical idealism, just to being unconscious of what one is doing with it. He referred to both animalism AND unconscious ethically idealist climbing (toward two opposite ends of the psyche's ladder of being) as nonknowledge.
Regarding the above post:
I don't usually read the rants of fundamentalists, but I can draw out some interesting connections with regard to Georges Bataille's notions of eros and death. He was very interested in using sexuality as a means to combat, as it seems, philosophical idealism. I find this an interesting project, although it has its limits. Western dualisms divide the mind from the body in order to make the mind alone the means to ascend to heaven.
Actually, there's a logical problem right there, because there is no extension of life beyond death. So, to subdue the body in order to try to extend one's mind, known as "soul", indefinitely into the future, is a silly project from an atheistic perspective.
Nonetheless we are all creatures historically imbued with silliness. Metaphysics forms a key part of our mental processes, because we have been brought up to relate to the world in a way that separates "mind/spirit/God" from "body/emotion/sexuality". In Bataille's paradigm, sexuality becomes a means to engage within a dualistic antagonism of mental states engendered through the processes of civilization.
Bataille, therefore, advocated "sinning", in order to bring heaven to Earth and make what is sacred appear in the realm of immanence. We face the death of the idea of our eternal soul whenever we "sin". But at the same time, we put to death something that was never real to begin with. Perhaps instead of preserving the historically fabricated ideals within our beings, we would destroy these metaphysical constructs in our own minds, and could make room for our own natures to flourish.
**NB. Bataille wasn't entirely opposed to philosophical idealism, just to being unconscious of what one is doing with it. He referred to both animalism AND unconscious ethically idealist climbing (toward two opposite ends of the psyche's ladder of being) as nonknowledge.
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