Bataille and Wittgenstein: on mysticism, silence, and inner experience

Georges Bataille and Ludwig Wittgenstein, despite their different intellectual traditions, share parallels in how they understand language and mystical experience. Both thinkers argue that mystical experience pushes beyond conventional discourse, expressing antiphilosophical, spiritual visions. However, Wittgenstein's deeply private and agnostic Christianity contrasts sharply with Bataille's atheological experience of the death of God. Where Wittgenstein advocates clarity of expression or silence, Bataille uses transgressive, poetic syntax and erotic imagery to press against the impossibility of words. For Bataille, silence is active and imperative to communication, opening against the closure of reason. Paradoxically, Bataille's atheological writings approach a new summit of communication attainable only in the absence of God.

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Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite differences, Georges Bataille, theorist of non-knowledge and atheology, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian logician, share specific parallels regarding their understandings of language and mystical experience. For both, mystical experience pushes beyond conventional discourse. Using analogous elements of critical and mystical discourse, each express rather antiphilosophical, spiritual visions. Still, Wittgenstein’s deeply private and agnostic Christianity sharply contrasts Bataille’s own atheological experience of the death of God. Where Bataille’s mysticism challenges rationality, Wittgenstein’s instead expresses the numinous world as such, shedding light on the dark night of Bataille and the specific character of ‘inner experience’. Where Wittgenstein advocates either clarity of expression or silence, however, the transgressive and poetic syntax of Bataille, alongside his evocative and erotic usage of imagery and metaphor, instead presses precisely against the impossibility for words that Wittgenstein’s thinking forecloses. Silence, like evil and poetry for Bataille, is active and imperative to communication, opening itself against the closure of reason. Relative to Wittgenstein and Christianity’s ascent to knowledge and awareness then, Bataille instead dives down deep into the body and night of nonknowledge. In this way, paradoxically, Bataille’s atheological writings approach a new summit of communication only attainable in the absence of God.