Subject: Re: Inner experience vs. Descartes
Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 17:21:33 +0200


J. Comas wrote:

< Let's not overlook the fact that Bataille has his own "thoughts about the
'inner' experience . . . and the "inner" mind to Descartes" in Part IV of _
L'experience interieur_ (though you may not find this pertinent to the
"strange dilemma" that interests you).>

I’m not exactly sure what you’re getting at but I re-read Descartes’
Meditations the other day.

Anyway… if we look at Descartes’ Second Meditations we read: ”So serious are
my doubts into which I have been thrown as a result of yesterday’s
meditations that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of
resolving them. It feels like as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep
whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom
nor swim up to the top.” – Descartes is in-between knowledge and
non-knowledge.

This sounds very much like Denis Hollier’s (Against Architecture; MIT, 1992)
description of Bataille’s The Labyrinth, we read: ”The labyrinth both is and
is not our Ariadne’s thread: rather, here we must think of Araidne’s thread
as itself weaving the labyrinth. What with all its crisscrossing back and
forth, it ends up becoming a veritable Gordain knot […]”, and then some
pages (p. 65) later ”Human beings have a labyrinthine structure […]”. It
stikes me as if Bataille wants to achieve the same mental state as Descartes
reached in the beginning of the Second Meditations, only he says we cannot
escape it with reason alone (if we try to hard the labyrinth will become a
prison; we should travel, blindfolded, around in this labyrinth and go where
ever it takes us). In stead we should follow our desire (the free will?)
which leads us to ”inner experience”, and then, for a moment, we escape the
labyrinth and into the domain of non-knowledge.

This leads me to Descartes theory of the free will.

Descartes says that error arises from the relation between the will and the
understanding. These are both general faculties of the mind. Although our
understanding is limited, this in itself does not cause error. Ideas
themselves are neither true nor false. The will, on the other hand, is
limitless and is not in it self the cause of error. Error originates,
according to Descartes, because ”my will extends more widely than my
understanding, and yet I do not restrain it within the same bounds, but
apply it to what I do not understand.”. In other words, error comes about
because the will is limitless while the understanding is limited.

I feel there is a similarity in thought between Bataille and Descartes
here – Descartes calls it ”error” and Bataille calls it ”inner experience” –
they just look at it from a different angle? I know they’re both French, but
Bataille surely is no rationalist, and as far as I know, Bataille constantly
argue against any activity with a pre-determined goal like Descartes’ Method
of Doubt. Then it’s a bit funny that they both shear the same view about the
limits of reason, they just disagree about the “nature” of transgression?

Take care
Einar Wahlstrøm