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Abstract

The work of Georges Bataille occupies an appropriately paradoxical place in the history of philosophy. Though he was decades ahead of his time, Bataille’s main focus was in a tradition that long been out of favor—mysticism. Though he claimed to be an atheist, he talked often of God. In this paper, I examine the ways in which Bataille’s system of though intertwines and diverges from Meister Eckhart, exploring the possibility of the Nietzschean mysticism Bataille constructed in his Summa Atheologica. With this more nuanced understanding of Bataille’s thought in place, his massive importance for post-structuralism and French philosophy more broadly becomes apparent.

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