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Continental Thoughts

Georges Bataille’s Experience

Michael Mocatta finds a practical aid for recovery from addiction in a philosophy of extreme experience.

Georges Bataille (1897-1962) had a difficult childhood. In this article I will seek to explain this French philosopher’s thinking, and in particular his conception of extreme exterior experiences and sacred inner ones. We’ll see how Bataille writes of his experience of being driven to act by compulsions beyond his control, and in his writings on such compulsions, including his autobiographical ones, we can identify both the symptoms and root causes of several of the most common forms of mental illness. We shall also see that Bataille’s concept of inner experience can be of immense value to those seeking recovery from mental illness or addiction. Core to my argument will be Bataille’s autobiographical essay ‘Coincidences’, published as Part 2 of his novella The Story of the Eye (originally published in 1928, although my page references will be from the Penguin edition of 2001).

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