Research Paper on:
Metaphysical Perspectives of Georges Bataille

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
this suggests, Bataille was interested in sex-- highly interested in sex -- but in relations to "death degradation and the power and potentialities of the obscene" (Georges Bataille). He rejected  conventional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the "annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion"  (Georges Bataille). As this suggests, the metaphysics of Bataille are hardly traditional. For Bataille, "continuity" and "discontinuity" are central concept to his metaphysical construction (Continuity/Discontinuity). It is by these  concepts that Bataille defined his beliefs on "individuality, selfhood, eroticism, pleasure, religion (and) the sacred" (Continuity/Discontinuity). Religion, the sacred, Bataille defined as an escape from individuality -- that is, from  "discontinuity" into "continuity" (Continuity/Discontinuity). In his text, Eroticism: Death and Sensuality," Bataille wrote that "Continuity is reached through experience with the divine. The divine is the essence of continuity"  (118). In other words, divinity is experienced through the escape from the world of separateness, into the world of continuity, or sameness (Continuity/Discontinuity). Similar concepts are expressed in Hinduism,  where there is escape from the individual selfhood into the One, i.e. the "oneness" of being joined with the Brahma (Continuity/Discontinuity). Batailles concept of continuity parallels the Hindu  teachings concerning the Void, which is expressed in the Upandishads and the Gita (Continuity/Discontinuity). From this viewpoint, individuality and separateness become aberrations, as the goal is an "orgy" of religious  fulfillment, that brings, "frenzy in its wake and a vertiginous loss of consciousness. The total personality is involved, reeling blindly toward annihilation, and this is the decisive moment of religious  feeling" (Bataille 113). Batailles basic philosophy has been compared with that of Martin Heidegger, the famous German philosopher. Heideggers concept of "Dasein," which is German for "being in the