I. Criticism of a deficient theory of economics

Bourgeois and Marxist economic theories are always based on scarcity, complains the French writer, sociologist, philosopher and Nietzschean Georges Bataille (1897—1962). The starting point is always a shortcoming, an insufficient amount that must be compensated for in order to ensure the survival of the individual, the species, and society. The Homo economicus Is a through and through reactive Being who knows nothing but adaptations to a hostile environment, nothing but hardship; he is always in need, always neglected. As a result, he is prone to resentment—to competitive envy, self-centered cleverness, and chauvinistic avarice. It is precisely this poor human being, only interested in benefits and personal comfort, whose abolition Zarathustra with the image of Supermen Seek to conjure. For Bataille, Nietzsche himself is in fact not an appropriator, accumulating, but a giver Thinkers.

At the beginning of his story, Nietzsche's Zarathustra stands before the sun and says:

You big star! [...] [W] we waited for you every morning, took away your abundance and blessed you for it. See! I'm tired of my wisdom, [...] I need hands to stretch out. I want to give away and heal [...]. To do this, I have to go into the depths: as you did in the evening, [...] you abundant star! ”¹

The outcome of Nietzsche's Zarathustra story is thus not poverty and scarcity, but wealth and abundance. The desire for lavish expenditure, as essential to the radiantly selflessly consuming sun, drives Zarathustra down from his mountain, into his journey full of missteps and detours, full of exuberance, full of tragedy. Meanwhile, the draft of a “general economy,” which Bataille wrote in his work published in 1949 The ostracized part presents, as well as So Zarathustra spoke, from the sun, provided that he makes its excessively wasteful character the systematic starting point for his theory of economics. Because it is solar energy that creates a “pressure of life” all over the world² which results in the “production of ever more expensive forms of life”³ expresses. There is always too much energy, a surplus that cannot be absorbed by growth. What cannot be completely reinvested must be spent senselessly in the end. This is reflected in the luxury of nature, whose most prominent form is death. Nature's violent excesses recur on a sociological level: According to Bataille, even a society always has more resources than are necessary to simply preserve them: existence is always more than subsistence. Bataille insists that it is precisely the specific forms of waste of surpluses that make a specific society a particular society. Because the surpluses must definitely be spent — the only question is whether this is disastrous suffered, or in a way that is even enjoyable voted will. What goes beyond the mere subsistence of a society is, in Nietzsche's word, its culture.

“Idleness, pyramid building and drinking alcohol have the advantage over productive activity, the workshop or bread that the resources they consume are consumed without return, without profit,” writes Bataille in Ostracized part, “they liked Just us, they correspond to voting without distressthat we meet here. ”⁴ The radical reversal of value in Nietzsche's sense, which Bataille carries out from an economic theory point of view, lies in the fundamental primacy that he gives to the problem of spending over the need to increase the productive forces, which, according to him, also entails a complete reversal of morality. Because in this perspective, the concepts of what is considered “good” and “useful” are changing: The useless suddenly has a positive value. In this theory of economics, the emphasis is not on efficiency, but on waste. It is only when we exert ourselves senselessly that life begins, which is not just reactive, just adaptation, just servitude, but which unfolds excessively and creatively, where all singularities are allowed to roll out and are no longer subject to the compulsion to serve as economical a form of survival as possible. Bataille's “general economy” demonstrates her Nietzschean inspiration: formally as a reversal of value and on a content level as an affirmative emphasis on excessive waste processes.

II. Nietzsche's contempt for avarice, emphasis of generosity

From his earliest to his latest writings, Nietzsche's work is thus permeated by contemptuous ridicule of neediness and pettiness, at the same time by a glorifying emphasis on overflowing generosity and lavish creativity. Here are a few examples:

In An attempt at self-criticism, which Nietzsche wrote his first work in 1886, the Birth of Tragedy, prefaces, the author asks bitingly:

[T] as what the tragedy died of, the Socratism of morality, the dialectic, frugality and joy of theoretical man — how? Couldn't this very Socratism be a sign of decline [...]?⁵

In the early edition that was unpublished during his lifetime About truth and lies in an extra-moral sense Nietzsche juxtaposes a rational scientific human type acting out of necessity with an artistic and lavish intuitive type:

Where the intuitive person, such as in ancient Greece, wields his weapons more powerfully and victoriously than his counterpart, a cultural figure and the rule of art over life can be established [...]. Neither the house, nor the crotch, nor the clothing, nor the thönerne jug reveal that the need invented them [...]. While the person guided by abstractions only repels misfortune through them without forcing himself happiness from the abstractions, while striving for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive person, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuitions, in addition to the defense of evil, a continuous influx of enlightenment, exhilaration, redemption.⁶

Nietzsche grumbles against the appreciation of work and the devaluation of exuberant pleasures in the Happy science: “Oh for this frugality of 'joy' among our educated and uneducated! Oh about the increasing suspicion of all joy! Die work More and more people are getting all their good conscience on their side: the desire for joy is already called the 'need to relax, 'and is beginning to feel ashamed of itself. ”⁷

Zarathustra makes it as clear as day: “Not your sin — your frugality cries out to heaven, your Geiz Even in your sin, cry out to heaven! ”⁸ “I love him whose soul is wasted, who does not want to be thankful and does not give back: because he always gives and does not want to preserve himself. ”⁹ “And in degeneration, we always guess where the giving soul is missing. Our path goes upwards, from species to superspecies. But we are terrified by the degenerating sense that says: “Everything for me. '”¹⁰

Nietzsche's relentless analysis of the life-hostile “ascetic ideal” in On the genealogy of morality, which is the basis of modern nihilism, is widely known.¹¹ Even the moral-critical terms of “genteel” or “aristocratic” present in late work, which seem to ostensibly bring Nietzsche close to a reactionary, chauvinist position, prove above all to an affirmation of generous self-wasting: The nobles assert themselves precisely because they are not concerned with their own advantage. Paradoxically, this also justifies their historical subjection to what Nietzsche describes as “slave morality.”

III. Ethics and politics of waste?

These few examples may be enough to document Nietzsche's hatred of need, restraint, and pettiness and his emphasis on wasteful generosity. But Nietzsche, like Bataille, speaks of this idiosyncratic ethical Valuation also a political Meaning to? Nietzsche never presented an elaborate political theory and in an attempt to derive an implicit political position from his writings, the interpreters have been biting out both their left and right molars since the beginning of the history of Nietzsche's reception. And yet there are small inconspicuous passages in Nietzsche's work that suggest a socio-political interpretation of his ethics of abundance and carefree exuberance. This is how he applies his concept of aristocracy to On the genealogy of morality in fact also sociological and suggests the possibility of a society that had communist features just as' aristocratic ': “It would be a Sense of power Not unthinkable for society, in which she could treat herself to the most noble luxury that exists for her — her injuring person with impunity to leave. “What do my freeloaders actually concern me? She could talk then. May they live and prosper: I am still strong enough to do that! '”¹²

This idea of a strong and happy community contradicts not only the political spirit of Nietzsche's contemporaries, but also everything that is opportune in today's political and social debates on domestic and foreign policy issues: Above all, there is a general need for security. The state must use expensive means of control to protect itself from external and internal threats. The coffers seem to be notoriously empty, and there are frighteningly large holes in the budget. Before someone is able to amicable even the tiniest part of social wealth, they have to overcome a lengthy, complicated bureaucratic hurdles that often involve humiliation. Whether we are looking at (alleged) threats from outside or from within, whether it is about terror and extremism, at hostile states, at competition on the world market, at the ravages of the environment or about our health: All signs point to prevention, control, caution (it is supposedly better than sorry) — and absolutely: frugality. In any case, this applies at the level of society as a whole. The luxurious excesses of the rich and super-rich, however, continue to testify, just as the destruction of countless lives in armed conflicts all over the world, to the need for senseless spending of and that Bataille's economic-theory perspective hits upon us. They also raise the question of whether we should not find and consciously choose other forms of pointless spending that we could all like, rather than in a spiral of ever more fear of our own destruction and ever greater security measures in response to unconsciously producing ever more disastrous forms of spending.

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IV. How we want to live

But if you follow Bataille, our biggest problem is that we don't even know anymore “what the words useless, sovereign, saintly mean”¹³, in this way, we are engaged in a rational discourse that only serves our reactive side and is only due to our need. I am talking about a we — and now also of an I — as if it were clear who is speaking here and who should be addressed. But that is by no means clear. Uns Is “never anything other than given in a misleading way”¹⁴. This is how a is constituted Wir Perhaps only in this ambiguity and in the question of the useless waste that it always demands of us, however loudly and emphatically we cry out for something useful when we stand like the last person on Zarathustra and squint. Perhaps we actually no longer know the meaning of the useless and sacred, as Bataille claims. However, there may be reasons to consider it.

A theatre director who had too little time to rehearse until the premiere once said to his acting ensemble: “If you have far too little time, you have to take a particularly long time. That's why we're only starting rehearsals in a few days, even though we could and actually should get started today.” This paradoxical instruction is the sovereign refusal to submit to the objective conditions of tightness and scarcity. Particularly under conditions of pressure and coercion, a particularly wasteful use of scarce resources is required. The greater the poverty, the more generous the hospitality; on the other hand, the greater the wealth, the more embarrassing the measures to secure and further increase it. Being able to waste yourself does not mean having enough resources; rather, it means not attaching the greatest, not the only, value to one's own security and self-preservation. Perhaps hospitality is more important than the need to satisfy one's hunger. Perhaps the sovereign disposal of one's own time is more important than the successful implementation of a project. Perhaps one day, following Zarathustra, we will “gladly cross the bridge”¹⁵ by finally acknowledging our own downfall. And maybe that's where a We begins that is worth living.

Sources

Bataille, Georges: The ostracized part. In: Ders. : The abolition of the economy, edited by Gerd Bergfleth. Munich 1985.

Ders. : Hegel, death and sacrifice. In: Ders. : Hegel, man and history, edited by Rita Bischof. Berlin, 2018.

Ders. : Nietzsche in the light of Marxism. In: Werner Hamacher (ed.): Nietzsche from France. Berlin & Wien, 2003, pp. 19—26.

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Jenny Kellner (born 1984) studied acting, philosophy and sociology in Hamburg and was Anti-economic communism. Bataille's philosophical challenge received his doctorate at the Berlin University of Arts. Her dissertation focuses on the Nietzschelektüre batailles. She has published numerous articles on the question of the political implications of Nietzsche and Bataille's thinking, most recently the article What does anti-politics mean in Nietzsche? in the conference proceedings Nietzsche's Perspectives on Politics (2023).

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Footnotes

1 So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, 1.

2 battalions, The ostracized part, P. 55.

3 Ibid., p. 59.

4 Ibid., p. 153.

5 The birth of tragedy, An attempt at self-criticism, 1.

6 About truth and lies in an extra-moral sense, 2.

7 The happy science, 329.

8 So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, 3.

9 So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, 4.

10 So Zarathustra spoke, Of the gifting virtue, 1.

11 See the third treatise of The genealogy of morality.

12 On the genealogy of morality, II, 10.

13 battalions, Nietzsche/Marxism, P. 26.

14 battalions, Hegel, death, sacrifice, P. 67.

15 So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, 4.

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