Abstrakt
This chapter is a parable. The characters are Georges Bataille and Michel Houellebecq. The plot revolves around the shift from a philosophy of transcendence to a philosophy of law. And the unifying motif is Eros. I will use this parable to argue that the shift from Bataille to Houellebecq, with respect to erotics, mirrors the shift that Gillian Rose affects in her move toward an immodest jurisprudence. Bataille, like the Dualists, Traditionalists, and Quietists discussed in earlier chapters, relies on an appeal to transcendence fueled by Eros. Houellebecq moves beyond this logic and, by finally re-reading Bataille in light of Houellebecq, I will again suggest that the language of transcendence be understood pragmatically, as a rhetoric, employed within the social world for worldly purposes, never allowing for ascent beyond the social world. Further, I will argue that the fiction of Michel Houellebecq begins to exhibit an understanding of love, as a virtue, similar to that suggested by Rose.