See the paper above.
Richard Wolin came up with the terms to criticize Georges Bataille, proclaiming he was influenced by the wrong sorts of geezers and that he was an imposter due to being a latecomer, in terms of real academic thinking.
I do not have access to his paper right now, but I recall thinking that he really missed the point in tracing local “influences” that may have affected Bataille, specifically (as I recall) some thinkers of the 1920s.
I read Bataille as an amalgam of Nietzsche, Marx, Hegel and Freud, and see that he attempted to rigorously apply their differing philosophies in a manner that would be very productive theoretically and practically.
I think the part of Bataille that may be most esoteric to Americans and other English speakers is Hegel. Bataille’s thinking, especially in terms of what he somewhat ironically or semi-facetiously (note: not “fascistically”) calls “mystical experience” has to do with, in a way, conquering one’s desire for “the heights” — that is to say, overcoming that tendency in humanity and in oneself to keep seeking for “something higher”, and to become concerned too much with issues of a semi-theological nature, or at any rate with that which does not have to do with what Nietzsche calls “the earth”. (Of course “the heights” are still important to us, and so they should be, but one can consolidate their meaning by next understanding another dimension of our humanity —that is, “the depths” of such things as our organic nature and material dimensions to life.)
I beg of you my brothers, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and those blasphemers died along with him. Now to blaspheme against the earth is the greatest sin, and to rank love for the Unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth! Thus Spoke Zarathustra (excerpts) —You see, in Bataille, there is a Hegelian upward motion, that takes one to a point of a certain kind of knowledge. It is very useful and very typical of human beings to ascend the mountain of philosophical and inner knowledge. But “mystical experience” involves realizing the limitations of this sort of knowledge that leads us in a sense toward “God” or the absolute, or the divine — because the tendency is one-sided and produces a one-sidedness to our sense of things as human beings
In fact, Bataille thought that exploring these LIMITS with regard to “the heights” could be much more productive, since — (dialectically) — the very meaning of having ascending higher in terms of knowledge and understanding can be enriched, and consolidated, by understanding clearly one’s own human limits. These are encaspulated in the reality of human mortality most primarily, but also in other features of physical necessity and those aspects of life typically devalued by Nietzsche’s “otherworld men” (the theologians).
Now, if you can, please take the above two paragraphs together and use them to understand that Bataille was arguing for a two-sided human being, that valued the “depths”, as well as the metaphoric “heights”. This was his goal — deepening of self-understanding through applying Nietzsche’s ideas even more consistency than perhaps Nietzsche did himself, since Nietzsche’s idea of the heights still took him away from humanity and into alienation with the world on the basis of his principle of self-transcendence.
But anyway, Wolin, who has not read Bataille as deeply as I have, does not understand Bataille’s project. Honestly, it would be easy enough to understand it if one only saw how much the contours of Nietzsche’s thinking, in particular, are replicated in Bataille. And then there is also a very rigorous and consistent combination with other contours of the thinking of Freud, Hegel and Marx. (Actually Bataille is boringly consistent in his application and reworking of other theory, and is not a flamboyant and interesting stylist, like Nietzsche is.)
But Wolin, somehow, because he does not perceive the project, perceives only an excursion into the realm of the irrational.
It’s weird, but that is how Wolin sees it. And his coining of what he thinks he sees is “left fascism”
Mark Dunn, not a doctor or scientist, just an amalgam of medical journals and experience.
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