Textual Commentary

As the title of this book suggests, its primary function is as an argument in favor of a shift away from the rational lens of classical and neoclassical economic theory, toward what Bataille calls “general economy,” in which the ideal of rationality is de-centered in favor of concerns like consumption, expenditure, and waste. Bataille argues that a form of economic theories concerned with the optimal use of resources for maximizing utility and profit cannot account for several major characteristics within the history of Western civilization. Firstly, an economic theory based on rationality and

This early Nietzsche essay illustrates the philosopher’s frustration with his ilk, always in search of truth that will ever elude them; if they were to declare its capture, it would be sure that what they held captive was not a transcendent truth but, rather, one of their own making. Slighting Plato, Nietzsche states that “[t]hey [philosophers] are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eyes glide only over the surface of things and see ‘forms’; their sensations nowhere lead to truth but content themselves with registering stimuli and playing a touching-feeling game, as it were, on the back of things” (21). However, the very distinction between truth and lie is itself a human creation because it depends upon language. As he describes, “what is henceforth to count as ‘truth’ is now fixed, that is, a uniformly valid and binding designation of things is invented, and the legislation of language likewise yields the first laws of truth. For here a distinction is drawn for the first time between truth and lie: the liar uses valid designations—words—to make the unreal appear real; he says, for instance, ‘I am rich,’ precisely when the proper designation for his condition would be ‘poor’” (23).

It is here that Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of metaphor, as language is the only way in which we can make sense of the world and all language is essentially metaphorical. The only real (i.e., non-metaphorical) thing we know is nerve stimuli, but that stimuli encounters its first translation into metaphor when it must be converted into an image, and is then translated once again when expressed as a word. Taking a shot now at Kant, Nietzsche proclaims that “[w]e think we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers, yet we possess only metaphors of the things, which in no way correspond to the original essences” (26–7). Ultimately, Nietzsche suggests that truth is nothing but a

mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations that have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, translated, and embellished, and that after long use strike a people as fixed, canonical, and binding: truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors that have become worn-out and deprived of their sensuous force, coins that have lost their imprint and are now no longer seen as coins but as metal (29–30).

The idea that truths amount to “illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions” is of major importance when one considers the nature of power and “disillusion”: through ideology and propaganda, by which lies and subjective ideas are presented as objective truths, authorities of various sorts—politicians, academics, elites, etc.—are able to abuse power in order to engage in world-building that best sustains that power.