Bataille v. Kant on Universality
This may or may not end up being a sort of preliminary comparative analysis of Bataille and Kant's respective takes on universality, as opposed to something more thorough. After all, it may seem as if Bataille doesn't say too much regarding universality--at least not explicitly. Of course, this is not really true insofar as Bataille develops normativity in terms of universality--namely, at the very beginnings of Erotism: Death and Sensuality Bataille precisely develops the case for the presence of the taboo as culturally universal despite what may be brought to hand as empirical violations of these very taboos.
Bataille and Kant on the Problem of Cultural Universality
The Investigation of Cultural Universals
After all, it would seem that no matter what norms are considered as "culturally universal"--key rites of passage for example--these norms can always turn up an exception. Easiest to observe is the fact that supposed norms against murder and incest nonetheless seem to be asserted as present irrespective of the aggregate level at which these very behaviors are partaken in, in a community. In other words, the sociologist and the anthropologist, when making claims about the presence of cultural universals, immediately confront the difficulty of scientifically bringing into account such universality. The measure of the presence of a norm seems to be impeded by the fact that norms themselves are internally comprised of the contradictories of an idealization of the social functioning of the given society, insofar as the society itself is seen as actually endorsing its own professed aspirations, and of the observed dynamics of behavior in that society in spite of such professions. To be able to measure, then, the presence of norms in a society is at the same time to necessarily presuppose precisely that more hidden relation between what is professed and what is not done, for otherwise there would seem to be an impossibility of the very idea of a cultural universal.
Nonetheless, with the presupposition acquired, the very objectivity of that cultural universality would seem to empty itself into a subjective generalization of the defense of the cohesion necessary to the given norms. Thus, the norms immediately turn into the empty rituals of institutional mechanisms of enforcement at the same time that the norms achieve only a subjective reality. For this very reason, the anthropologist and sociologist who see themselves as reasonable and empirical sacrifice the initial objective search for cultural universals, in order to initiate the objective search of institutional dynamics instead. The institution, in this case, is the universal, or the cultural universal. But this is merely a sly act of moving the goalpost, for the institution is precisely predicated on the lack of universality--that is to say, its internal structure and function leeches off cultural particularities so that it may persist. This temporal persistence evidences a kind of universality, but it's not a universality of culture--it's a universality of both the technical and the social. It is also only a contingent universality, as not all institutions survive the test of time, and not all of them arose in some perennial fashion. In this way, any generalizability of the institution itself already rests in the aforementioned presupposition immanent to the given culture itself.
Kant and Bataille's Respective Solutions
How, then, does one make an objective case for cultural universality? By abandoning this very project of empirical objectivity. Here is where Kant and Bataille seem to have some agreement. When expounding on universality, in this case of culture (or a sort of descriptive ethics), there must be a formalistic approach--it cannot be merely empirical. Where Kant and Bataille would nonetheless disagree is that the former thinks this involves an objective process of extraction from empirical content or a normative process of confirmation built into the relevant propositions about culture (which renders it a priori while nonetheless synthetic), while the latter thinks the investigation of the form of culture or the community involves precisely an investigation into the structures of objective, external facts and observations to see what they say about subjectivity. Kant, in other words, sees the problem in terms of the conditions of possibility for thinking culture and community which one cannot get behind and which transcend all experience of culture and community, while Bataille sees this problem in terms of the conditions of possibility for culture and community as such evident in the structure produced and enacted by cultural and communal participants. In other words, there is a methodical difference. Bataille, then, retreats precisely into the structure of the subjectivity which grounds the relations amongst the objective facts observed in culture, rather than to the objective features necessary to an epistemic access to culture and community (e.g., the properties of thoughts or propositions regarding some object--e.g., culture or community--which render them intelligible and truth-functional). The result of Kant's method would be close to mere definition (whether analytic or synthetic), while the result of Bataille's method would be an exposition of the dynamics inherent to the production of culture. Bataille, in this sense, is more in line with Hegelianism (and Heideggerianism) than Kantianism, although he still breaks from all of these thinkers in that both Hegel and Heidegger still posit their own version of a transcendent (respectively, the teleological terminus or the ontological difference/gap).
To be fair, of course, Heidegger and Hegel's respective "transcendents" are a lot more ambiguous than Kant's insofar as they precisely either violate the dichotomies Kant constructs, or otherwise posit a functional binary that, in being ontological rather than epistemic, obliterates the problem of realism and epistemic access (or at the least, their relevance). Of course, it also may be somewhat unfair to depict Kant as blind to the subjectively enacted structure necessary to community. After all, insofar as his social/political philosophy, Kant seems to have an awareness of the impossibility of perfectly following the categorical imperative--particularly in public life--and seems to understand rather implicitly, as in his philosophy of religion, that there is a sort of assent to the community as such (the commitment to the existence of the community as a prerequisite to its flourishing) which is requisite for being bound to morality. In Kant's case, this community is idealized as religion, and the metaphysical notions within a religion are precisely of a practical import to the creation and sustenance of the community. That is to say, individual caprice can be subject to the ideal of duty-for-its-own-sake most optimally only when a means of rational discourse and deliberation is present, and this is present only when the notion of existent community is assented to without need of proof (when the idea of the most perfect and rational being is assented to as a matter of faith). This is why Kant's concept of faith plays an important part in his epistemology--without it, there would be a disunity between his epistemology and normative ethics. It's also a way of solving the issue of being bound to Kant's notion of proper morality, while the fulfillment of that notion in the aggregate of the public arena is practically impossible.
But this merely brings us back to the original problem. Rather than synthesize it, Kant's approach sustains the contradiction: the community or culture (or God) exists by means of its lack of existence. This may of course not be surprising given Kant thinks there are limits to reason (exemplified in his exposition of the antinomies of pure reason). Nonetheless its worth noting the inadequate attempt at tying the knot back together. The subjective provision for the objective lack of community/culture/God (via faith in the lack of this lack of community/culture/God) is done as a matter of moral necessity. Is it not clear in that case that, in the context of trying to resolve the problem of (descriptive) cultural universals, Kant would merely lapse back into the methodically confused investigation of the sociologists and anthropologists as previously explained? With practical reason, the divisions of a priori, a posteriori, synthetic and analytic judgment break down. Given Kant's approach to morality, this is made invisible by the treatment of ethical claims as a priori synthetic claims insofar as they rely on a metaphysics--but the result of such a notion is precisely that ethical claims fail to fulfill their function, even by Kant's own standards, without faith deployed in metaphysics, which disregards the requirements of a priori synthetic claims.
This outcome, of course, does not so much prove Kant entirely wrong as it much more proves the limitations of his framing--namely, his understanding of universality. Of course, one can argue that Kant's notion of a priori synthetic truth precisely suggests some unity of normativity and evidentiality or justification that may be compatible with his notion of faith, as for such type of truth propositional meaning and method of confirmation are in unity. This is simply not the case, however, as his notion of faith is precisely not about a provision of evidence or justification--it is disconnected from this epistemic concern, precisely so a priori synthetic claims have full force. Notice the structure of what occurs here: practical reason, which relies on a grounding metaphysics, must take an exception to its own grounding so that its aspect of practicality remain intact. In other words, we've landed back to moving the goalpost from the issue of normativity (the existence of descriptive cultural universals) to that of institutional dynamics (the action/reaction patterns of social actors). Indeed, one is also immediately reminded of the structure of Bataille's notion of the taboo.
For Bataille, the universal is not so much found in its global applicability as precisely in its particularity--it has a precise and particular relationship to the possibilities of experience as a whole, and this whole is not exhausted in it but, rather, must always pass through it. Thus, the particular character of the exceptions to an otherwise universal is itself supremely important to whether the universal is indeed actually absent or obliterated. When one mentions the exceptions to a cultural universal it is necessary to look at the character of these exceptions to see if they precisely constitute that universality. In other words, how the purported exceptions are necessary to that universality. How is it possible to distinguish this? Bataille isn't clear, but throughout Erotism: Death & Sensuality there's a sentiment that any exception which finds its necessity in the universal or whose practice must be rationalized through the constraints of the universal is constitutive of that very universal. For example, when Bataille discusses the taboo on violence, this taboo is for him culturally universal, despite that violence nonetheless exists in various cultures. But this violence nonetheless occurs always from the standpoint of this prohibition--either the violence infects those who, in its enthrallment, are both threatened and aroused into their own explosion of violence for the sake of snuffing out the violence confronted and effectively stopping it in its tracks, even if at the danger of succumbing entirely to this very violence, or the violence is given a habitual and regulated procedure of enactment such that it must incorporate an antithetic movement towards the affirmation of the scandal that is that violence. Consequently, cultures are equally fascinated and disturbed by violence precisely because it is universally prohibited. In sum, for Bataille, the universal could be seen as merely a particularity privileged as the frame of reference through which its negated contra-possibility is structured. E.g., "non-violence" is privileged as the frame of reference through which the real and undeniable possibility of violence is engaged and made intelligible. Unexceptional exceptions are what Bataille terms "transgressions."
Universality in the Categorical Imperative
Admittedly, Kant's discussion of universality of normative ethics is being treated as transferable to a discussion of descriptive ethics (or, cultural universals), while Bataille's discussion of descriptive ethics (or, cultural universals) is being treated as transferable to a discussion of normative ethics. But in fact, insofar as the implications of the thesis of universalism is extremely similar whether applied in normative or descriptive ethics, I believe I am justified in making this seemingly asymmetric comparison/contrast. There is nonetheless a difference between normative and descriptive ethics, but this is precisely where the implications of, say, Bataille's views become interesting as they cross-pollinate with concerns in normative ethics, especially in the context of Kant. Famously, Kant's categorical imperative legislates the moral law on the basis of internal conceptual coherence of some verbal phrase in an imperative, provided its own conditions of effective possibility. That is to say, in the example of whether one should lie when a murderer is asking about the location of his victim, the condition for the effective possibility of telling a lie is that there is some standard of honesty as a frame of reference by which the lie can be made. But if one suppose everybody lied all the time, lying would be inherently impossible. Hence, it fails the test, and lying is no longer a moral option.
Relation between the Categorical and Hypothetical Imperative
While Kant disassociates this categorical imperative from the hypothetical imperative, given that its supposed to be unconditional, it is possible to analyze the categorical imperative in terms of the hypothetical imperative. After all, despite Kant's banishment of the passions as arbitrary sources of moral decision-making, it is necessary that Kant extract his purely rational ethical formalism through abstracting from these desires and passions, thereby entering into the cognitive site of discourse by which rational deliberation is made upon the economy of desire, yet in spite of it. Which is to say, where pain or any other emotion may so be deliberately undertaken for the sake of the rationality of some decision, and no decision made for the sake of the passions and desires. But essentially what this means is simply to isolate reason from the material accidents which spur such passions and desires, and thereby to distill any empirical content (the observation of the fact that we "feel" like doing something or "enjoy" doing it [or otherwise]) as source of justification for our actions from rational deliberation. This is so even if the undertaking of action must, after this, still find itself under the forces of the experiential world and confront them.
Hence, in the context of the hypothetical imperative, what Kant is essentially doing is subtracting the accidental character of the antecedent: "If I want eggnog, then I must go and buy it at the liquor store." While there may be reason, material or otherwise, to mentally associate the given content of the consequent with the antecedent, the antecedent, despite its lack of dependence in this context as the clause that stands as independent variable in the conditional, is largely accidental. For the subject need not want eggnog. It could aim for any sort of thing. So, what Kant is trying to do is make this un-accidental by reducing the antecedent to its formal nature, susceptible to purely rational deliberation: "If I want X, then I must go and buy it at the liquor store." While "want" gives a sense of passion and desire, it could be seen as a trivial expression for "aim": "If I aim for X, then I must go and buy it at the liquor store." The subject here has a variable aim whose value is, if analyzed simply in terms of the possibility of what may be aimed for, rationally discernible in terms of the weighing of logical possibilities. The logical possibilities are already delimited by Kant's own valuation of the subject as, via rationality, a self-controlled and self-legislating, and thereby free, subject. They are also delimited precisely by the distillation given his exposition of the forms of knowledge: this aim must be both a priori and universal. Indeed, also synthetic insofar as this aim is not already thought in any of these particular aims, even in combination. They may or may not be contradictory at any given time, but this would not tell us much about their decidability as this contradiction does not conceptually derive from these aims. Nonetheless, contradiction is another thing to avoid, but what contradictions matter? Those that derive from application. Already, the unity of universality with applicability--the practical expression of universality--arises. The universal applicability of what, then? Of some maxim, as a maxim sums up an aim in its generality. That, in sum, is the categorical imperative.
