Georges Bataille in Nietzsche’s steps: ethics of sovereignty

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche has led to a profound reproblematization of modern morality. The autonomous and rational agent as a starting point, as well as the moral appeal to universality and the limited focus on the act have been criticized by Nietzsche. As a result, the question arises: what could still be said today regarding ethics? The French philosopher Georges Bataille has taken up the challenge of dealing with ethics after Nietzsche. He proposes a valid transposition of the Nietzschean problem of morality into the twentieth century, and with that offers an important contribution in the field of ethics after the critique of modern morality, as well as of the subject after the end of the modern subject as a rational and autonomous agent. At the same time, Bataille allows for a rethinking of ethics on the basis of a posthumanist anthropology and a postmoral ethics. In these, the individual and morality are both at the same time canceled and reaffirmed in movement of transgression and in relation with evil. With Bataille it is thus possible to take a position apart from contemporary trends in moral philosophy such as subjectivism and relativism, results of the crisis of morality since Nietzsche.