[Caillois, in the previously mentioned interview with Gilles Lapouge, recalled the times during which the College was fomenting: "Our meetings had begun . The first took place in that dusty cafe at Palais-Royal that the Grand V¢four was then . Specifically, Bataille spoke of the sorcerer 's apprentice . " " 1
This "specifically " refers to Kojeve 's strong reservations, just recalled by Caillois: In effect, he reproached the conspirators of the College, especially Bataille, for wanting to play at being sorcerer 's apprentices . Bataille, as Cail
lois recalls elsewhere, "little hid his intention of recreating a Sacred, virulent and destructive, that, in its epidemic contagion , would end by reaching and in
flaming the one who first planted its seed. During one of our private meetings, he disclosed this to Alexandre Kojevnikov (who later shortened his name to
' This text does not exactly constitute a sociological study but rather the definition of a point of view that enables us to see the results of sociology as responses to those concerns that are the most virile , and not to a special ized scientific preoccupation. In fact , it is hard for sociology itself to avoid being critical of pure science as a phenomenon of dissociation . If it is the social phenomenon alone that represents the totality of existence, science being no more than a fragmentmy activity , the science that contemplates the social phenomenon cannot achieve its objective if, insofar as it achieves it, it becomes the negation of its principles . Sociological science therefore doubtless requires other con ditions than those discipl ines that are concerned with aspects dissociated from nature . It seems to have developed - particularly in France to the extent that those who have taken it up have been aware of the coincidence of soci al and religious phenomena. However, the results of French sociol ogy risk remaining as good as nonexistent, unless the question of lola/if)• is formulated as fully as possible beforehand .
1 2
THE SORCERER' S APPRENTICE D 1 3
Kojeve) . Kojevnikov replied that such a miracleworker, for his part, could no more be carried away by a sacred knowingly activated by himself, than could a conjurer be persuaded of the existence of magic while marveling at his own sleight of hand " ( Approches de I 'imagi naire, p . 58) . For Kojeve, when all was said and done, none of that was magic; nor was there any chance it could be so . You cannot regress from science to magic . Under no circumstances could the
Esquisse d'une theorie generale de Ia magie to use here the title of Mauss 's and Hubert 's famous work, constitute a viaticum for a return trip to wonderland.
This debate-which revived at the time of the public session on December 4, 1937 (when Kojeve spoke; see "Hegelian Concepts ") and of which "The Sorcerer 's Apprentice " bears many traces- recalls the paradox of the magician that provides the nervure for Esquisse d ' une theorie des emotions published by SartJ·e in 1938. That which was impossible in Kojeve 's eyes constituted for Sartre the vet)' essence of emotion and magic, the consciousness simultaneously magician and bewitched, "victim of its own trap " : All that is required is to be
lieve in it. It was, consequently, a matter of faith, which Sartre would soon call bad faith . But Bataille would call that Luck. We shall come back to this split in terminology .
Bataille, it seems, had an astonishing ability to get carried away ( "getting angt)' at a chosen moment, ' ' reported Caillois) . Is that a quick description of a combined practice of magic and the emotions? Be that as it may, the myth of the sorcerer 's apprentice represents the contribution to the College of Sociology that is most peculiarly Bataille 's: this impatience to make oneself be carried away by the desired storms, and be reaped by tempests sown by the winter wind. ]
I. The Absence of Need More Wretched Than the Absence of Satisfaction A man has a great many needs he must satisfy to avoid distress . But calamity can strike even though he feels no pai n . Ill fate can deprive him of the means to pro
vide for his needs; but he is no less stricken when he lacks some such elementary need . The absence of virility most often entails neither suffering nor distress . What i s missing for the one who i s less a man is not satisfaction ; nevertheles s , h i s lack i s dreaded as a calamity .
Hence , this is ill of the first order , yet not felt by the one stricken: Only the one who must contemplate the threat of future mutilation sees it as harm .
Consumption , which destroys the lungs without causing suffering , i s un
doubtedly one of the most pernicious d iseases . And the same can be said for ev
erything that causes decomposition without being obtrusive , with no possibility of one ' s becoming aware of i t . Perhaps the worst of all the ills afflicting human beings is the reduction of their existence to the condition of slavish instrument.
But no one realizes that it is appalling to become a politician , a writer or a scholar. Hence it is impossible to remedy the inadequacy diminishing anyone
1 4 D THE SORCERER ' S APPRENTICE
who renounces becoming a whole person2 in order to be no more than one of the functions of human society .
II. The Man Deprived of the Need to Be Man
It would be less harmful if it affected only a certain number of hapless men . The one who takes the fame of his literary works to be the fulfillment of his destiny could be mistaken without human life ' s being dragged into a universal decline.
But nothing exists beyond science , politics , and art- all of which are obliged to exist in isolation , each for itself, like servants of dead masters .
Most activity is slave to the production of useful goods , with no apparent pos
sibility for decisive change , and man is only too inclined to make work ' s slavery a limit he must no longer overstep . However, the absurdity of such an empty ex
istence also commits the slave to complete his production through a response faithful to what art , politics , or science asks him to be and to believe: There he finds everything in human destiny for which he can be responsible . " Great men " practicing in these realms thus constitute a limit for everyone else . And there is no alarming pain connected with this half-dead state- scarcely the awareness of depression (pleasant if it coexists with the memory of disappointing efforts) .
Man is at liberty to love nothing . For the causeless , aimless universe that gave birth to him has not necessatily accorded him an acceptable fate . But the man who is flightened by human destiny , who cannot bear the concatenation of greed , crimes , and miseties , also is unable to be virile . If he turns away from himself, he has no excuse whatever to wear himself out moaning and groaning . Only on the condition that he forget what it really is, can he tolerate the existence that is his lot . Artists , politicians , and scientists are charged with lying to him;
those , therefore , who lord over existence are almost always the ones best able to lie to themselves , and consequently the ones who lie best to others . Under these conditions virility declines , as does love for human destiny . We welcome any dodge to keep the heroic and fascinating image of our lot at a distance: Only the useful man can show his unappealing face .
But although this absence of need is the worst thing that can happen , it is felt to be a blessing . Its evil i s apparent only when the persistence of " amor fati "
makes a man a stranger to this present world .
III. The Man of Science
The ' ' man deprived by fear of the need to be a man ' ' has put his greatest hope in science . He has renounced the wholeness that characterized his actions so long as he wanted to live out his destiny . For the scientific act must be autonomous , and the scientist excludes any human interest outside of the desire for knowledge . A
THE SORCERER ' S APPRENTICE D 1 5
man who takes upon himself the burden of science has exchanged his concern for living out human destiny for a concern to discover truth . He moves from the whole to the part , and serving this part requires that the others no longer count . Science is a function that developed only after it took over the position of the destiny that it should serve . As long as it was a servant science was powerless . It i s paradoxical that a function could not b e carried out except o n condition that it present itself as an independent goal .
The body of knowledge that we have at our disposal is due to this sort of fab
rication . But while it is true that the human realm is enhanced by it , the existence that benefits*3 is a crippled one .
IV. The Man of Fiction
The function claimed by art is more equivocal . The writer or artist does not al
ways seem to have agreed to renounce existence, and it is harder to discern their abdication than the scientist' s . Art and literature express something that does not seem to run around with its head cut off like erudite Jaws . The troubling figures they compose , in opposition to a methodically represented reality , do not appear on the scene unless anayed in shocking seduction . But what do these painted , written ghosts mean , these phantoms created to make the world in which we come alive slightly less unworthy to be haunted by our idle existences? In images of the imagination all is false . And false with a falsehood that no longer knows either hesitation or shame . Thus the two essential elements of life fin d them
selves rigorously split. The truth stliven for by science is true only if it is devoid of meaning , and nothing has any meaning unless it is fiction .
Those who serve science have excluded human destiny from the realm of truth , and those who serve art have renounced making what an uneasy destiny has compelled them to bring to light into a true world . But for all that , it is not easy to escape the necessity of attaining a real , not fictitious , life . Those who serve art can accept for those whom they create a shadowy and fugitive exist
ence; nonetheless , they themselves are obliged to enter as living beings into the real world of money , fame , and social position . It is impossible , therefore , for them to have a life that is not lame . Often they think they are possessed by what they imagine , but what has no true existence possesses nothing: They are really possessed only by their careers . For the gods , who possess man from the outside , romanticism substitutes the miserable fate of the poet , but it i s far from escaping lameness in that manner: It could only make misery into a new sort of career, and it made the falsehoods of those whom it did not kill more annoying .
'It does not follow that science must be rejected . Its moral devastations alone are criticized, but it is not impossible to contravene . As far as sociology is concerned, it is even necessary to contravene in the name of the principle of u nderstanding.
16 0 THE SORCERER' S APPRENTICE
V. Fiction Made to Serve Action
The hypocrisy bound up with the career and , in a more general manner, with the
ego of the artist or w1iter, makes it urgent to place fiction in the service of some more solid reality . While it is true that art and literature do not fmm a world suf
ficient unto itself, they can be made subject to the real world, contiibuting to the glory of Church or State or , if this world is divided , contributing to either reli
gious or political action and propaganda . But, in this case , they are no more than the adornment or service of others . If the institutions served were themselves troubled by destiny ' s conflicting movement , art would be able to serve and ex
press a profound existence . But when it is a question of organizations whose in
terests are linked with circumstances , with particular communities, art intro
duces a confusion between profound existence and partisan action that sometimes shocks even the partisan s .
Most often , human destiny can b e lived only through fiction . Although in fact, the man of fiction suffers for not himself fulfilling the destiny he describes , he suffers because only in his career does he escape fiction . So he attempts to bring the ghosts that haunt him into the real world. B ut the moment they belong to the world made real through action , the moment the author links them to some particular truth , they lose the privilege they had of completely fulfilling human existence . They are no longer anything more than tedious reflections of a frag
mentary world.
VI. The Man of Action
If the truth revealed by science is stiipped of human meaning , if only the fictions
of the mind conespond to the strange human wil l , these fictions must be made true in order for this will to be carried out . He who is possessed by a need to cre
ate is only feeling the need to be a man . But he renounces this need if he re
nounces the creation of anything more than fantasies and lies . He remains virile only in seeking to make reality conform to what he thinks; his every force de
mands that he subject the abortive world in which he happens to be to dream' s caprice .
However, this necessity appears most often only in an obscure form. It seems futile to be content with reflecting reality as science does , and futile to escape it like fiction . Action alone sets out to transform the world, that is to say , to make it like the dream . " Act" resounds in our ear like Jericho ' s blasting trumpets . No imperative possesses a harsher effectiveness, and the necessity to move to action is immediately and unconditionally imposed on the one who hears it. But he who demands that action realize the will that prompts it quickly meets with strange replies . The neophyte learns that the will whose action is effective is the will that is limited to dismal dreams . He accepts ; then gradually he understands that the
THE SORCERER ' S APPRENTICE D 1 7
only thing h e has gained from action is the benefit o f having acted. H e believed he could transfmm the world according to his dream , and he only transformed his dream in accordance with the most impoverished reality : All he can do is sti
fle his own will- in order to be able TO ACT.
VII. Powerless to Change the World, Action Is Changed by It The first abnegation action requires of the one who wishes to act is to reduce his dream to the proportions outlined by science . The concern with providing any other field than fiction for human destiny is scorned by political doctrinaires . This concern cannot be dismissed as the practice of extremists who demand that militants put their lives at stake . B ut man ' s destiny does not become real simply because he fights . It is also necessary for this destiny to merge with that of the forces within whose ranks he faces death . And the doctrinaires , who dispose of this destiny , reduce it to everyone' s equal welfare . The language of action ac
cepts only one fmmula in conformity with the rational principles that govern sci
ence and keep it uninvolved in human life . None of them think that a political act can be personified - defined and represented in the personal form of legendary heroes . For them the only answer to their compulsive avoidance of anything re
sembling the human face and its expressions of avid desire or joyful defiance in the face of death is the fair division of material and cultural wealth . They are convinced that it is despicable to address the struggling masses as a crowd of he
roes already in the throes of death . So they speak in terms of self-interest to those who are , as it were , already streaming with the blood of their own wounds . 4
Men of action follow or serve that which exists . If their action is a revolt , they are still following that which exists when they get killed in order to destroy it.
They are actually possessed by human destiny when they destroy. And it eludes them as soon as they have no other desire than to organize their faceless world . Scarcely is the destruction complete when, in its aftermath, they find themselves just like everyone else , at the mercy of what they have destroyed , beginning to reconstruct itself. Dreams that science and reason have reduced to empty formu
las , those amorphous dreams themselves cease to exist as anything more than dust stirred up in the wake of ACTION . Enslaved themselves , breaking anything that will not bend to a necessity to which they submit before others , men of ac
tion blindly abandon themselves to the cunent that bears them along and gathers speed from their helpless thrashing .
VIII. Dissociated Existence
Broken thus into three parts , existence has ceased to be existence: It is only art or science or politic s . There where a primitive simplicity had made men rule , there are only scientists , politicians, and artists . Renunciation of existence in exchange
1 8 D THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE
for a function is the condition to which each has subscribed . Some scientists have artistic and political concerns; politicians and artists are just as able to look out
side their realms . But they are adding up three infirmities and making only an in
valid man . Totality of existence has little to do with a collection of abilities and knowledge . It is no more able to be cut into parts than a living body . Life is the virile unity of the elements composing it. It has the simplicity of an ax stroke .
IX. Full Existence and the Image of the Beloved
Simple , intense existence, not yet destroyed by a slavishness to function, is pos
sible only to the extent that it has stopped being subordinate to some pat1icular project such as acting , depicting , or measuring : It is dependent on the image of destiny , feeling silently bound up with this seductive and dangerous myth . Hu
man beings are dissociated when they devote themselves to a work that is useful but meaningless by itself; only when they are seduced can they find the plenitude of a total existence . Virility is nothing less than the expression of this principle:
When a man no longer has the strength to respond to the image of a desirable nu
dity , he knows he has lost his virile integrity . And in the same way that virility is
dity , he knows he has lost his virile integrity . And in the same way that virility is