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The Erotic Sacrament: Max Weber and Georges Bataille

Article in Max Weber Studies · January 2007

DOI: 10.15543/MWS/2007/1/3

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[MWS 7.1 (2007) 13-36]
ISSN 1470-8078

The Erotic Sacrament: Max Weber and Georges Bataille

Raphael Falco

Abstract
The aim of this essay is to compare the theories of Max Weber and Georges Bataille
on the construction of the erotic sphere in the cultural imagination. Weber and
Bataille share several basic premises, especially in their recognition of the connection
between religious ecstasy and erotic union. They differ, however, in a crucial factor.
Although Bataille acknowledges symbol-making as a basis of erotic expression, he
resists the systematic rationalization of mystical states of ecstasy and relies on a kind
of naïve naturalism in his theory of eroticism. Weber, on the other hand, argues that
all forms of so-called inner experience derive from the same irrational source and
must be transformed intellectually, through a creative power, to appear natural and
pure. This transformation produces what Weber calls the ‘erotic sacrament’, which,
paradoxically, allows lovers to believe in an erotic union ‘eternally inaccessible to
rational endeavor’.

Keywords: charisma, eroticism, erotic union, l’expérience intérieure, rationalized sexual-

ity, sacrifice, salvationistic religion, symbol.

The construction of the erotic sphere in the cultural imagination

continues to inspire debate. The aim of this essay is to compare the
theories of Max Weber and Georges Bataille on this subject. Bataille’s
L’Érotisme and his writing on inner experience continue to exert a
powerful influence on current theories of eroticism, while Weber’s
work on the subject is all but absent from contemporary scholarly
discussion. Yet Weber’s theory is ultimately both more complex
and more convincing. Even if we grant that Bataille had different
theoretical aims from Weber, his neglect of historical and sociologi-
cal impingements on the development of the erotic sphere raises
concerns about his conclusions. At one level, like Weber, Bataille
acknowledges symbol-making as a basis of erotic expression. At
another level, however, he resists the systematic rationalization of
mystical states of ecstasy. Falling back onto a kind of naïve natural-
ism, which seems to derive from a genuine belief in the purity of
inner experience, he places his theory of eroticism in the untenable

© Max Weber Studies 2007, Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan
University, Old Castle Street, London E1 7NT, UK.
14 Max Weber Studies

position of preserving one area of cultural expression for special

treatment, exempt, somehow, from social forces.
Weber provides a valuable corrective to Bataille’s naïve naturalism.
While they share several basic premises, especially their recognition
of the connection between religious ecstasy and erotic union, they
differ in a crucial respect. In Weber’s model, which predates Bataille’s,
all forms of so-called inner experience derive from the same irratio-
nal source and must be transformed intellectually, through a creative
power, to appear natural and pure. In the erotic sphere this intellectual
component is manifest most often in the transformations of charisma.
Bataille’s theory lacks a clear understanding of charismatic function,
despite its reliance on mystical states and their translation into every-
day experience. This naïve approach to the manifestation and routi-
nization of charisma is emblematic of theories of eroticism generally.
The present essay demonstrates the importance of understanding the
charismatic element of the erotic sphere and, I hope, raises the stakes
of the debate by identifying a current neglect.
Throughout his work, Weber explores the connections among
inner experience, sensuality, and the transformations of religious
necessities, as when discussing Calvinism in the Protestant Ethic:
Combined with the harsh doctrines of the absolute transcendentality
of God and the corruption of everything pertaining to the flesh, [the]
inner isolation of the individual contains, on the one hand, the reason
for the entirely negative attitude of Puritanism to all sensuous and
emotional elements in culture and religion, because they are of no use
toward salvation and promote sentimental illusions and idolatrous
superstitions. Thus it provides a basis for a fundamental antagonism
to sensuous culture of all kinds (PE: 105).1

Weber goes on to observe that, on the other hand, the ‘inner isolation
of the individual’, in this case of Calvinist origin, ‘forms one of the
roots of that disillusioned and pessimistically inclined individual-
ism which can even today be identified in the national characters
and the institutions of the peoples with a Puritan past, in such a
striking contrast to the quite different spectacles through which the

1. ‘Verbunden mit der schroffen Lehre von der unbedingten Gottferne und
Wertlosigkeit alles rein Kreatürlichen enthält [die] innere Isolierung des Menschen
einerseits den Grund für die absolut negative Stellung des Puritanismus zu allen
sinnlich-gefühlsmäßigen Elementen in der Kultur und subjektiven Religiostät—weil
sie für das Heil unnütz und Förderer sentimentaler Illusionen und des kreaturvergöt-
ternden Aberglaubens sind—und damit zur grundsätzlichen Abwendung von aller
Sinnenkultur überhaupt’ (Die protestantische Ethik: 88).

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 15

Enlightenment later looked upon men’ (PE: 105-106).2 Weber was

well aware of the heterogeneous character of individualism, but he
continued to use the term, in the Protestant Ethic and elsewhere, as a
marker reflecting the secularization of social norms in the transition
from pre-modern or traditional culture to modernity.
Significantly, in The Sociology of Religion, for example, Weber dis-
cusses the evolution of sexuality into eroticism ‘as a result of the
rationalization of the conditions of life’ (ES: I, 606) [WG: II, 139: ‘durch
Rationalisierung der Lebensbedingungen’]. It might be argued that
Weber’s description of an evolutionary sequence from a primitive
‘peasant’ ethos to a modern one itself seems naïve, but he qualifies
his developmental thesis:
At the level of the peasant, the sexual act is an everyday occurrence;
primitive people do not regard this act as containing anything unusual,
and they may indeed enact it before the eyes of onlooking travelers
without the slightest feeling of shame. They do not regard this act as
having any significance beyond the routine of living. The decisive
development…is the sublimation of sexual expression into an eroticism
that becomes the basis of idiosyncratic sensations, hence generates its
own unique values and transcends everyday life. The impediments
to sexual intercourse that are increasingly produced by the economic
interests of clans and by status conventions are the most important
factors favoring this sublimation of sexuality into eroticism. To be sure,
sexual relations were never free of religious or economic regulations
at any known point in the evolutionary sequence, but originally they
were far less surrounded by bonds of convention, which gradually
attach themselves to the original economic restrictions until they subse-
quently become major restrictions on sexuality (ES: I, 606-607).3

2. ‘Andrerseits aber bildet sie eine der Wurzeln jenes illusionslosen und pes-
simistisch gefärbten Individualismus, wie er in dem “Volkscharakter” und den
Institutionen der Völker mit puritanischer Vergangenheit sich noch heute auswirkt,
in so auffälligem Gegensatz zu der ganz andersartigen Brille, durch welche später
die “Aufklärung” die Menschen ansah’ (Die protestantische Ethik: 88).
3. ‘Auf der Stufe des Bauern ist der Geschlechtsakt ein Alltagsvorgang, der
bei vielen Naturvölkern weder die geringsten Schamgefühle zuschauenden Rei-
senden gegenüber noch irgendwelchen als überalltäglich empfundenen Gehalt in
sich schließt. Die…entscheidende Entwicklung ist nun, daß die Geschlechtssphäre
zur Grundlage spezifischer Sensationen, zur “Erotik” sublimiert, damit eigen-
wertgesättigt und außeralltäglich wird. Die beiden erheblichsten Momente, welche
dahin wirken, sind einerseits die durch ökonomische Sippeninteressen und weiterhin
durch ständische Konventionen zunehmend eingeschalteten Hemmungen für den
Geschlechtsverkehr, der zwar auf gar keiner bekannten Stufe der Entwicklung von
sakraler und ökonomischer Reglementierung frei ist, aber ursprünglich meist weniger
mit den, an die ökonomischen sich allmählich angliedernden, konventionellen Schran-
ken umgeben wird, die ihm später spezifisch sind’ (WG: II, 139; emphasis in original).

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

16 Max Weber Studies

Notwithstanding the oversimplification here, Weber’s point is

simply that as conventions increase, sexuality is repressed and eroti-
cism develops as the sublimation of sexual expression. Freud shared
this thesis, as does Bataille up to a certain point. But Bataille holds
out hope for the recovery of a purely natural expression of the inner
experience of ecstasy, one that manages to circumvent (or transgress
against) conventions and religious restrictions and still survive.
Weber is not so sanguine. He contends that the erotic sphere can
only be sustained in conjunction with the intellectual transformation
and ongoing rationalization of ecstatic states, especially those associ-
ated with religion and charismatic experience.
It is here that Weber and Bataille differ most profoundly. For
Bataille, religious ecstasy and the inner experience of eroticism
are parallel, attainable by similar means. In Weber’s model, on the
other hand, eroticism remains confined to the individual sphere
while religious ecstasy is only manifest charismatically as a collec-
tive experience; however, eroticism and religious ecstasy share the
process of rationalization generated by ‘impediments’ to their pure,
original expression. Mystical religious experience draws on a char-
ismatic connection to divinity to assert its bona fides and to prove
that it is a natural manifestation of the deity in everyday life. Cha-
risma, meaning literally ‘divine gift’, unites the mystic with an other-
worldly source, which in turn confirms the authority of the mystical
experience. But salvationistic religions, such as Christianity, must
transform this pure charisma into a group experience to survive—all
members of the group must have access to the charismatic experi-
ence, whether, for example, through prayer, communal sacrifice, or
religious ecstasy. In transforming pure charisma into a shared char-
ismatic experience it is necessary for the charismatic leaders to add
a rational element, through conscious symbol-making, to the irratio-
nal charismatic connection. Without this rational element, manufac-
tured and manipulated along doctrinal or ecclesiological lines, there
could be no ongoing experience of the original charisma.
The erotic experience, like the mystical union, is supposedly a
pure, unfettered expression of inner being. It manifests itself in ecsta-
sies often compared to religious frenzies; moreover—and paradoxi-
cally—erotic expression invokes an otherworldly charismatic source
to justify itself as natural. When charismatic authority is transferred
to the erotic sphere, however, a fundamental conflict appears: charis-
matic experience is a group phenomenon, as I noted above, whereas
erotic experience is defiantly individual. This conflict haunts, and

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 17

indeed undermines, Bataille’s theory of eroticism (though Bataille

never speaks of charisma by name) because the rationalization of
charismatic authority, by which groups sustain themselves, is con-
spicuously absent from Bataille’s trust in the purity of the inner
experience that produces erotic interaction.

1. Sex and the Symbolic Order

Bataille remarks (in a fragment) that while sexual life is common to
both animals and humans, animals do not have an erotic life.4 This
statement seems valid if we take the vie érotique to be a conscious
symbolization of sexuality.5 The erotic object signifies. It is para-
doxical, according to Bataille, because it is an object that signifies
the negation of the limits of all objects: ‘eroticism, which is a fusion,
which shifts interest away from and beyond personhood and limits,
is nevertheless expressed by an object. We are faced with the paradox

4. ‘La vie sexuelle est commune aux animaux et aux hommes. Mais les
animaux n’ont pas de vie érotique’ (VIII: 533) [‘the sexual life is common to animals
and humans. But animals do not have an erotic life’]. This fragment appears in the
notes to L’Histoire de l’érotisme (Oeuvres Complètes VIII: 7-165; nn. 523-55), the earlier
version of the book Bataille eventually published as L’Érotisme (1957). In his intro-
duction to the later work Bataille puts the same idea this way: ‘L’activité sexuelle de
reproduction est commune aux animaux sexués et aux hommes, mais apparemment
les hommes seuls ont fait de leur activité sexuelle une activité érotique’ (L’Érotisme:
17) [‘Sexual reproductive activity is common to sexual animals and men, but only
men appear to have turned their sexual activity into erotic activity’, (trans. Dalwood:
11)]. Translations are mine except where otherwise noted. For Bataille’s L’Érotisme
I have used Erotism: Death and Sensuality, translated by Mary Dalwood, to make
reference easier; in consultation with Professor Labio, I have silently revised several
passages.
5. See Suzanne Guerlac: ‘Bataille defines eroticism as the conscious activity of
the sexual animal, thereby placing an emphasis on lucidity which is absent, or less
insistent, in accounts of other modes of sovereignty such as poetry or laughter’
(1990: 91). Cf. L’Érotisme: ‘L’érotisme de l’homme diffère de la sexualité animale
en ceci justement qu’il met la vie intérieure en question. L’érotisme est dans la con-
science de l’homme ce qui met en lui l’être en question. La sexualité animale introduit
elle-même un déséquilibre et ce déséquilibre menace la vie, mais l’animal ne le sait
pas. Rien n’est ouvert en lui qui ressemble à une question’ (35). [‘Human eroti-
cism differs from animal sexuality precisely in this, that it brings inner life into
question. In human consciousness eroticism is that within man which calls being
in question. Animal sexuality introduces disequilibrium and this disequilibrium is
a threat to life, but the animal does not know that. Nothing resembling a question
takes shape within it’ (trans. Dalwood: 29)]. Cf. L’Histoire de L’Érotisme (Oeuvres
Complètes: VIII, 533).

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

18 Max Weber Studies

of an object which implies the abolition of the limits of all objects, of

an erotic object’ (trans. Dalwood: 130).6 Even if the erotic object were
in fact able to signify the negation of the limits of all objects—which is
doubtful, of course, since it doesn’t signify the negation of the limits
of its own signifier (if it did, it would no longer be an erotic object)—
but even if it could, the important point is that the erotic object has a
signifying function. Eroticism is manifest in the symbolic order. For
Bataille, it is both a rationalization (not to say glorification) of sexual
life and doorway to the interior life. Simultaneously, eroticism distin-
guishes human sexuality from its animal counterpart and connects
humans to the irrational, charismatic force of naïve naturalism.7
This double—indeed, contradictory—value of eroticism leads to
several interesting comparisons. To begin, however, it is necessary
to recognize that eroticism and sexuality are categorically differ-
ent social phenomena and that, moreover, their difference tends to
complicate their apparent metonymical contiguity, if not actually to
sever it. ‘Human sexual activity’, as Bataille says, ‘is not necessar-
ily erotic but erotic it is whenever it is not rudimentary and purely
animal’ (trans. Dalwood: 29).8 The consequence of this categorical
difference, or of the severing of sexuality and eroticism, is the freeing
of eroticism as a mode of representation from an absolute identity
with animal sexuality. This is a kind of epistemological freeing, a
separation of falsely labeled identities. We do not want to deny the
obvious, of course, and it might seem counter-intuitive to tear apart
eroticism and sexuality insofar as both concern sex. But the point of
the separation is to realign eroticism with comparable modes of rep-
resentation, to remove it to a level of classification based on function
rather than supposed natural content or essence. When eroticism is

6. ‘L’érotisme, qui est fusion, qui déplace l’intérêt dans le sens d’un dépasse-
ment de l’être personnel et de toute limite, est pourtant exprimé par un objet. Nous
sommes devant ce paradoxe: devant un objet significatif de la negation des limites
de tout objet, devant un objet érotique’ (L’Érotisme: 144 ; emphasis in original). Guerlac
(1990: 92) quotes part of this passage, giving the reference as p. 143. My edition has
the passage on p. 144.
7. To recognize the force of naïve naturalism in theories of eroticism, one needs
only recall Bataille’s notorious primal scene, in which labor and prohibition come
simultaneously into the world, and desire displaces intimacy. See Jürgen Habermas’s
remarks on what he calls Bataille’s version of the expulsion from paradise (1984:
91-92).
8. ‘L’activité sexuelle des hommes,’ as Bataille says, ‘n’est pas nécessaire-
ment érotique. Elle l’est chaque fois qu’elle n’est pas rudimentaire, qu’elle n’est pas
simplement animale’ (L’Érotisme: 35).

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 19

compared to other modes of representing irrational material—for

example, magical, charismatic, ecstatic, religious—we find more
similarity than that found between eroticism and sexuality.
As Bataille came to emphasize in his later work, and as anthropol-
ogists, sociologists, and psychologists have long observed, religion
is one of the most productive modes of representation with which
to compare eroticism.9 The rationalized symbolic representation of
sexuality bears a family resemblance to religious symbolization, and
indeed often is absorbed into it. According to Max Weber, ‘originally
the relation of sex and religion was very intimate’ (‘Religious Rejec-
tions’: 343), and even orgiastic rites and certain forms of prostitution
or harlotry had sacred significance.10 This is a subject that evidently
fascinated Bataille. In L’Érotisme, he offers a provocative, if finally
unconvincing, theory of the connection among orgies, war, and sac-
rifice, contending that all three ‘spring from the existence of taboos to
counter liberty in murder or sexual violence’ (trans. Dalwood: 116).11
The passage appears in a section on the orgy as an agrarian ritual in
which Bataille, perhaps with basic Marxist principles in mind, sug-
gests that the division of culture into sacred and profane occurs with
the advent of work in civilized life (L’Érotisme: 127). Although the
thesis is too amateurish be taken as serious social anthropology—
researchers have shown that the concepts of sacred and profane exist

9. See L’Érotisme, esp. chs. 8 and 11; Théorie de la religion (Oeuvres Complètes,
VII); and Irwin (1993).
10. The relevant passage is longer. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie: ‘so
steht die religiöse Brüderlichkeitsethik der Erlösungsreligionen auch zu der größten
irrationalen Lebensmacht: der geschlechtlichen Liebe, in einem tiefen Spannungs-
verhältnis. Und zwar auch hier um so schroffer, je sublimierter die Geschlechtlich-
keit einerseits, je rücksichtsloser konsequent die Erlösungsethik der Brüderlichkeit
andererseits entwickelt wird. Das ursprüngliche Verhältnis war auch hier sehr
intim’ (GAR: I, 556-57). [ ‘The brotherly ethic of salvation religion is in profound
tension with the greatest irrational force of life: sexual love. The more sublimated
sexuality is, and the more principled and relentlessly consistent the salvation ethic
of brotherhood is, the sharper is the tension between sex and religion. Originally the
relation of sex and religion was very close’ (‘Religious Rejections’: 343)].
11. ‘L’origine de l’orgie, de la guerre et du sacrifice est la même: elle tient à
l’existence d’interdits qui s’opposaient à la liberté de la violence meurtrière ou de la
violence sexuelle’ (L’Érotisme: 128). Weber discusses the erotic orgy in The Sociology of
Religion, concluding that, while orgies sometimes occur in systematized religions, ‘more
frequently…the erotic orgy appears in religion as an undesired consequence of ecstasy
produced by other orgiastic means, particularly the dance’ (ES: I, 602; Cf. I, 602-604).
[‘Teils und häufiger…ist die erotische Orgie wesentlich ungewollte Folgeerscheinung
der durch andere orgiastische Mittel, namentlich Tanz, erzeugten Ekstase’ (WG: 136)]

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

20 Max Weber Studies

in non-agrarian, hunter-gatherer societies, and that taboos are not as

stable across cultures as Bataille would have us believe—it leads to
a discussion of the orgy as ‘the sacred aspect of eroticism in which
the continuity of beings beyond solitude is most plainly expressed’
(trans. Dalwood: 129).12 This discussion in turn furnishes Bataille
with his transition to the notion of eroticism as a fusion, the suppres-
sion of all limits (‘la fusion, la suppression de la limite’; L’Érotisme:
143), and lays the foundation for the subsequent section on religious
prostitution. Before moving on, however, Bataille makes the state-
ment I quoted above, describing the paradox of an object of desire
whose limits are meant to suggest a fusion of individual experiences
beyond the limits of an object.
The representative nature of the object of desire in Bataille’s
description reminds us that we are dealing with a category based
on function rather than on essence or ‘nature’. Thus the conscious
component of erotic objectification reveals itself. Weber character-
izes this component with more acuity, and with more consistency,
than Bataille. Like Bataille, he describes a progression, or at least a
sequence, from variations of sacred harlotry to legally constituted
marriage. But more than Bataille, he emphasizes the parallel devel-
opment of sexual regulation (of sexual intercourse especially) and
the advent of rationalization and intellectualism in society. It might
be that Bataille’s notion of ‘work’ as the defining moment in civi-
lization constitutes a rationalization of so-called natural impulses,
but Bataille never says as much. His writing seems to vacillate
between a kind of faith in his own personal access to a pure inner
experience and a more detached analysis of the symbolic fiction
that produces eroticism. In contrast, Weber trains a more skeptical
eye on the symbol-making process. For him, institution-building
occurs in tandem with the sublimation of animal sexuality and the
intellectualized rationalisms of sexual conventions, such as courtly
love, priestly asceticism, or chastity. He sees eroticism as the only
outlet, or vessel, of ‘the natural fountain of all life’ (‘Religious
Rejections’: 346; GAR: I, 560 ‘[die] Naturquelle alles Lebens’). It
represents an escape from everyday routine and rationality, includ-
ing the rationalized conventions of love. But he recognizes that the
escape from rationality by means of embracing or worshipping the
symbols of natural sexuality can only be accomplished through a

12. ‘L’orgie est l’aspect sacrèaigu de l’érotisme, où la continuité des êtres, au

delà de la solitude, atteint son expression la plus sensible’ (L’Érotisme: 143).

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 21

rationalization of the notionally pure origins of sexual life. Weber

terms this an eroticism of intellectualism. He explains the concept
this way:
As the knowing love of the mature man stands to the passionate enthu-
siasm of the youth, so stands the deadly earnestness of this eroticism
of intellectualism to chivalrous love. In contrast to chivalrous love,
this mature love of intellectualism reaffirms the natural quality of
the sexual sphere, but it does so consciously, as an embodied creative
power (‘Religious Rejections’: 347).13

The connection to religious mystification occurs here, at the level of

conscious or intellectualized creative power, and once again we detect
an inherent contradiction. Erotic representation, like religious mysti-
cism, promises an implicit link to charismatic divinity while at the
same time opposing the rationalized salvationistic religion so funda-
mental to western epistemology.
Weber explains the conflict in a long passage, which is worth
quoting in full. He begins by placing the ‘principled ethic of religious
brotherhood’ in what he calls a radical and antagonistic opposition
to the mature love of intellectualism:
From the point of view of such an ethic [of religious brotherhood],
this inner, earthly sensation of salvation by mature love competes in
the sharpest possible way with the devotion of a supra-mundane God,
with the devotion of an ethically rational order of God, or with the
devotion of a mystical bursting of individuation, which alone appear
‘genuine’ in the ethic of brotherhood. Certain psychological interrela-
tions of both spheres sharpen the tension between religion and sex.
The highest eroticism stands psychologically and physiologically in a
mutually substitutive relation with certain sublimated forms of heroic
piety. In opposition to the rational, active asceticism which rejects the
sexual as irrational, and which is felt by eroticism to be a powerful
and deadly enemy, this substitutive relationship is oriented especially
to the mystic’s union with God. From this relation there follows the
constant threat of a deadly sophisticated revenge of animality, or of
an unmediated slipping from the mystic realm of God into the realm
of the All-Too-Human. This psychological affinity naturally increases
the antagonism of inner meanings between eroticism and religion
(‘Religious Rejections’: 347-48).14

13. ‘Wie die wissende Liebe des reifen Mannes zu der leidenschaftlichen Schwär-
merei des jugendlichen Menschen verhält sich der Todesernst dieser Erotik des
Intellektualismus zur ritterlichen Minne, der gegenüber sie gerade das Naturhafte
der Geschlechtssphäre wieder, aber: bewußt, als leibgewordene Schöpfermacht,
bejaht’ (GAR: I, 561).
14. ‘Eine konsequente religiöse Brüderlichkeitsethik steht dem allem radikal

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

22 Max Weber Studies

This is a complicated but crucial passage. The ‘rational, active

asceticism’ to which Weber refers would be that, for example, of the
priesthood or of monks who deliberately reject worldly indulgences
in pursuit of a higher devotion to their god. In contrast, the substitu-
tive relationship (‘Vertretbarkeitsverhältnis’) occurs at the level of
the irrational, as an alternation between eroticism and the mystical
union with God (‘mystischen Gottinnigkeit’), the latter of which
Weber terms a sublimated form of heroic piety. Rational asceticism
stands apart from the substitutive relationship, which alternates
between two forms of irrationality rather than between either asceti-
cism and eroticism or between the rational and the irrational. The
alternation between the mystic realm and the animal realm draws
its fuel and fire from the same irrational source. The two realms are
linked, moreover, by their need to produce symbols of their salva-
tionistic value. Like the mystic’s conscious sublimation of heroic
piety, the mature love of intellectualism ‘reaffirms the natural qual-
ity of the sexual sphere…consciously, as an embodied creative power’
(‘Religious Rejections’: 347; my emphasis). Both components of the
substitutive alternation therefore rely on conscious sublimation, and,
by extension, both result from symbol-making processes.
It would be unfair to Bataille to suggest that he entirely neglects the
presence of a ‘substitutive relation’. His primary objective, however,
is to circumvent the rationalization of pure origins. Both in connec-
tion with eroticism and elsewhere in his philosophy, he argues for
a possibility of inner experience that evades or surpasses the typical
religious nomenclature and its attendant rationalized practices. For
instance, he begins L’expérience intérieure with the explanation, ‘I mean

feindlich gegenüber. Nicht nur macht diese—von ihr aus gesehen—innerirdische

Erlösungssensation rein als solche der Hingabe an den überweltlichen Gott oder an
eine ethisch rationale göttliche Ordnung oder an die—für sie allein “echte”—mys-
tische Sprengung der Individuation die schärfste überhaupt mögliche Konkurrenz.
Sondern gerade gewisse psychologische Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen beider
Sphären verschärfen die Spannung. Die höchste Erotik steht mit gewissen sublim-
ierten Formen heroischer Frömmigkeit im Verhältnis gegenseitiger psychologischer
und physiologischer Vertretbarkeit. Im Gegensatz zur rationalen aktiven Askese,
welche das Geschlechtliche schon um seiner Irrationalität willen ablehnt und von
der Erotik als todfeindliche Macht empfunden wird, besteht jenes Vertretbarkeits-
verhältnis speziell zur mystischen Gottinnigkeit. Mit der Konsequenz einer jederzeit
drohenden tödlich raffinierten Rache des Animalischen oder eines unvermittelten
Hinübergleitens aus dem mystischen Gottesreich in das Reich des Allzumensch-
lichen. Gerade diese psychologische Nähe steigert natürlich die innerliche Sin-
nfeindschaft’ (GAR: I, 561).

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 23

by expérience intérieure that which customarily we call mystical expe-

rience: states of ecstasy, of ravishment, mediated by emotion. But I
dream less of a confessional experience…than of a new experience, free
from attachments, even from origins… This is why I do not like the
word mystical’ (L’expérience intérieure: 15).15 He then quotes Dionysius
the Areopagite: ‘Those who enter into an intimate union with the inef-
fable light by the intimate cessation of all intellectual function…speak
only of God by negation’ (L’expérience intérieure: 16).16 This ‘cessation’
of intellectual interference describes well a trancelike religious state,
ecstasy, and even certain forms of charismatic possession. But, despite
Bataille’s assertions, it cannot foster eroticism per se.
Yet in the later L’Érotisme, Battaille announces his intention ‘to
see in eroticism an aspect of man’s inner life, of his religious life,
if you like’ (trans. Dalwood: 31), and, as I infer from a particularly
dense passage, acknowledges the inevitable presence of a signifying
step in both eroticism and religion.17 He speaks of the deliberate loss
of the self in eroticism, and of the impossibility of understanding
either eroticism or religion without recourse to inner experience. But
he recognizes that attainment of true inner experience results from
some form of transgression against taboos or prohibitions:
Knowledge of eroticism or of religion demands an equal and contradic-
tory personal experience of prohibitions and transgressions. This dual
experience is rare. Erotic or religious images draw forth behaviour
associated with prohibitions in some people, the reverse in others. The
first type is traditional. The second is common at least in the guise of a
so-called back-to-nature attitude, the prohibition being seen as unnatu-
ral. But transgression is not the same as a back-to-nature movement; it
suspends a taboo without suppressing it. Here lies the mainspring of
eroticism and religion too (trans. Dalwood: 35-36).18

15. ‘J’entends par expérience intérieure ce que d’habitude on nomme expérience

mystique: les états d’extase, de ravissement, au moins d’émotion méditée. Mais je songe
moins à l’expérience confessionnelle…qu’à une expérience nue, libre d’attaches, même
d’origine… C’est pourquoi je n’aime pas le mot mystique’ (emphasis in original).
16. ‘Ceux qui par la cessation intime de toute opération intellectuelle entrent en
union intime avec l’ineffable lumière…ne parlent de Dieu que par négation’ (ellipsis
in original). The quotation comes from Dionysius’s Divine Names 1.5.
17. ‘Mon intention est…d’envisager dans l’érotisme un aspect de la vie intérieure, si
l’on veut, de la vie religieuse de l’homme’ (L’Érotisme: 37).
18. ‘La connaissance de l’érotisme, ou de la religion, demande une expérience
personnelle, égale et contradictoire, de l’interdit et de la transgression. Cette double
expérience est rare. Les images érotiques, ou religieuses, introduisent essentiellement,
chez les uns les conduites de l’interdit, chez d’autres, des conduites contraires. Les
premières sont traditionelles. Les secondes elles-mêmes sont communes, du moins

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24 Max Weber Studies

Bataille footnotes the German word aufheben (to transcend with-

out suppressing), and all but admits that both eroticism and reli-
gion depend on a response to images which can be overcome but
never really negated. The conclusion seems foregone, therefore,
that as long as both eroticism and religion demand a signifying
step (images), then both are products of a pattern of intellectualism.
But for Bataille—and here his thinking becomes cryptic—‘if we do
not oppose [eroticism] we must no longer consider it objectively as
something outside ourselves. We must envisage it as the stirrings of
being within ourselves’ (trans. Dalwood: 37).19 In other words, only
in recognizing that eroticism is a rationalized category and rejecting
that rationalization as something outside ourselves can we imagine
it as ‘le mouvement de l’être’ in ourselves.
Bataille’s paradox is provocative, but ultimately depends too heav-
ily on a simplistic binarism of inner versus outer reality. Moreover,
his easy acceptance of ‘nature’ as a stable category, even when he
criticizes a ‘back-to-nature attitude’ (‘un prétendu retour à la nature’),
suggests a concept of nature that is accessible and real beyond the
bounds of rationalization—a concept that contradicts his own skep-
ticism regarding prohibitions as ‘unnatural’. To his credit, however,
he is quick to notice the function of images in producing erotic or reli-
gious emotion, an equivalence central to a value-free understanding
of the ‘substitutive relation’ Weber identifies. As Weber points out,
the link between eroticism and religion occurs most clearly at the
level of symbolization, in particular the symbolization of the natural,
the naïve, the innocent, and the naked. Michel Leiris some time ago
called attention to this relation in a discussion of a photograph of a
naked woman wearing a mask. Jürgen Habermas quotes a long pas-
sage from Leiris’s ‘The “caput mortuum” or the Alchemist's Wife’:
With full consciousness, love is reduced to a natural and bestial
process—since the brain is symbolically suppressed by the mask—the
fatality that forces us down is finally subdued. Thanks to the mask, in
our hands this woman is in the end nature itself, shaped by blind laws,

sous forme d’un prétendu retour à la nature, à laquelle s’opposait l’interdit. Mais la
transgression diffère du ‘retour à la nature’: elle lève l’interdit sans le supprimer. Là se
cache le ressort de l’érotisme, là se trouve en même temps le ressort des religions’
(L’Érotisme: 42; emphasis in original). Dalwood’s translation of ressort as ‘mainspring’
is probably accurate in the context. But it helps to remember that ressort can also mean
‘motive’.
19. ‘Ne nous opposant plus à lui, nous devons cesser d’en faire une chose, un
objet extérieur à nous. Nous devons l’envisager comme le mouvement de l’être en
nous-même’ (L’Érotisme: 44; emphasis in original).

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 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 25

without soul or personhood, a nature that this one time, at any rate, is
completely chained to us, just as this woman is also chained (quoted
in Habermas 1984: 98).

Leiris goes on to discuss the eradication of the gaze by the mask, and
also the near elimination of the mouth, and he concludes that eroti-
cism really is
a means of getting out of oneself, of tearing away the bonds which
morality, reason and custom impose on us; simultaneously, a way of
banishing the evil forces, of defying God and the terrestrial hounds of
hell representing him, by taking over their property…and subjecting
it to our control.

This is strangely emotional in its conclusions, and also a bit Mani-

chean in its idealized conflicts. But the notion that the mask makes
the woman somehow more bestial, more naked, should remind us of
Weber’s conception of eroticism as an intellectualized condition. Here
too we see that only through the symbolic activity of donning a mask
can the nakedness be eroticized. That this eroticization should at once
reflect symbol-making communal agreement and symbolize animal
sexuality—‘a natural and bestial process’, in Leiris’s terms—is an
irony irremovable from the symbolic economy of eroticism. We find
examples of this sort of irony in various literary representations, from
Cleopatra’s donning of the sword Phillipan in Shakespeare’s Antony
and Cleopatra to the masked meeting of Romeo and Juliet. It may even
originate in the numerous maskings by the gods of Homeric heroes,
as in Odysseus’s encounter with Nausikaa.
Leiris’s notion that eroticism tears away the bonds of morality,
reason, and custom, supposedly getting us out of ourselves, is an
oversimplification. The calculation of eroticism, like the intellectu-
alized or rationalized nakedness of the masked woman, only frees
the human being from reason (and morality and custom) through
reason. The tautology is pervasive in erotic experience. The so-
called bestial nakedness cannot exist in the erotic sphere without
the highly rationalized opposition to it, manifest in the erotic sym-
bols. The supposed ‘God’, which Leiris sees eroticism defying, is
in fact the very god of salvationistic religion described by Weber.
Once again we see the mutually substitutive relationship at work.
And once again Bataille is proved right in one of his conclusions:
la vie érotique is a human, not an animal, enterprise—one might say
all-too-human in its blindness to the rationalization that permits the
defiance of rationality and introduces the highly rationalized expe-
rience of transgression.

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26 Max Weber Studies

Transgression, however, is a double-edged sword: on one hand,

as Bataille would like to suggest, representing a stepping-stone to
the pure inner experience; on the other, tarring the human body and
eroticized sexuality with the same brush. Elisabeth Arnould-Bloom-
field, for example, accuses modernity of imposing the notion of trans-
gression on the nude body, thus making it obscene. Her main point is
to link the violent ‘dépouillement’ (stripping) of the nude body with
the analogous ‘dépouillement’ of the modern text: ‘the nude thought
is necessarily the experience of a figural, linguistic disrobing. It writes
itself too as one undresses: “as a young girl takes off her dress”. ’20
Nevertheless, despite the conceptual dangers Arnould-Bloomfield
identifies, linking the modern ‘pensée nue’ with a figural disrobing
underscores the symbolic, rationalized character of la vie érotique for
contemporary thinkers—not only for extremists like Bataille and
Leiris, but for all of us as prisoners of the unbreakable opposition
between an impossible animal purity and the nostalgia for such
purity manifest in formulations as diverse as asceticism, nuptial sex,
and obscenity. As Bataille explains, ‘A pretty girl stripped naked is
sometimes an erotic symbol. The object of desire is different from
eroticism itself; it is not eroticism in its completeness, but eroticism
working through it’ (trans. Dalwood: 130).21 The distinction between
an object of desire, as a sort of existential reality, and its erotic
manifestation requires the intervention of a rationalized symbol.
Somewhat cryptically, in L’expérience intérieure, Bataille considers
nudity in a discussion of the concept of the non-savoir: ‘THE NON-
KNOWLEDGE COMMUNICATES ECSTASY. The non-knowing is
first and foremost Angst. Within the Angst appears nudity, which
creates ecstasy. But the ecstasy itself (nudity, communication) disap-
pears if Angst disappears.’22 Not only does Bataille strive here for a

20. ‘La pensée nue est nécessairement l’expérience d’une “dérobade” figurale,
linguistique. Elle s’écrit, elle aussi, comme on se déshabille: “comme une fille enlève
sa robe” ’ (Arnould-Bloomfield 2004: 52). This last phrase is quoted from Bataille’s
L’Impossible.
21. ‘Une jolie fille dénudée est parfois l’image de l’érotisme. L’objet du désir est
différent de l’érotisme, ce n’est pas l’érotisme entier, mais l’érotisme en passe par lui’
(L’Érotisme: 144; emphasis in original).
22. ‘LE NON-SAVOIR COMMUNIQUE L’EXTASE. Le non-savoir est tout
d’abord ANGOISSE. Dans l’angoisse apparaît la nudité, qui extasie. Mais l’extase elle-
même (la nudité, la communication) se dérobe si l’angoisse se dérobe’ (L’expérience
intérieure: 66; uppercase in original). The verb se derober, here translated as ‘to disap-
pear’ is a pun that includes connotations of disrobing, dressing, and also shirking. As
is apparent, Bataille’s writing in L’expérience intérieure, which includes a long section

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 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 27

transgressive tone, as one would expect, but he also attempts to free

from the binding psychology of the Romantic heritage a salvationistic
ecstasy, a version of pure pleasure, which, predictably, is accessible
only through that heritage. There is, notably, no mention of eroti-
cism in this passage. Rather, Bataille confines himself to the object of
desire without signifying accoutrements. Thus, he maintains, if the
Angst disrobes itself, nudity appears in the form of ecstasy. He goes
on in the same metaphorical vein: ‘But the Angst is the horror of the
outcome and the moment comes when, with audacity, the outcome
is beloved, when I give myself to the outcome: it is then the nudity
that enraptures’.23 As both these passages from L’expérience intérieure
show, Bataille places nudity in an idealized position, a position of
purity directly opposed to the notion of Angst. The naïveté of this
position may be easy to criticize, but it is invaluable as a foil for la
vie érotique. If nudity in its pure form produces ecstasy, then nudity
masked, nudity with rationalized conditions added, produces eroti-
cism. And eroticism is not a ‘pure’ condition or an ecstatic ‘expérience
intérieure’, but rather an experience governed by Weber’s ‘sublimated
forms’.

2. The Erotic Sacrament

Historically, the sublimated forms of the inner experience are most
prevalent in the religious sphere. Religion offers the most familiar
economy of symbolization in western epistemology, while, in con-
trast, the symbolic economy of the erotic life remains mysterious and
suppressed. It is ironic that the religious mysteries should be less
mysterious than their erotic counterparts, since eroticism no longer
holds divine significance in our civilization. As Michael Richardson
puts it,
If today the most intimate details of sexual activity are rendered com-
monplace and subject to television, if we live in a world in which sex
is just another product (to which the consumer has the easiest access

disputing Hegel, is particularly aphoristic and anti-dialectic. He seems to be trying,

subversively, to achieve a personal stylistic blend of Nietzsche and William Blake. It
can be difficult, therefore, to pin down his reasoning (if ‘reasoning’ is the right word
in the context of deliberate anti-Hegelianism) on the relationship of nudity to the
paradox of the non-savoir.
23. ‘Mais l’angoisse est l’horreur du dénouement et l’instant vient où, dans
l’audace, le dénouement est aimé, où, je me donne au dénouement: il est alors la
nudité qui extasie’ (L’expérience intérieure: 66).

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28 Max Weber Studies

through ‘good sex guides’), we also live in a world in which the deter-
minants of desire have become lost in a general obscurantism (1998:
381).

Despite an apparent intimacy regarding the details of sexual activ-

ity, the source and function of erotic symbols remain unexamined.
Moreover, the more apparent the intimacy seems to become, the
starker the opposition to and nostalgia for purity become. Thus the
sexual-religious divide widens, while the substitutive relationship
continues in obscurity. Christianity, for instance—to whose salva-
tionistic and charismatic aspects I will confine myself—associates
everything natural or naïve with purity, and purity with innocence
and divinity. The purer a believer can prove herself or himself to
be, the closer that figure is said to be to the deity, closer in both time
and space—the two dimensions merging in any case in providential
history. The charismatic figure—prophet, saint, or priest (holder of
office charisma)—preserves in his or her person or office a pristine
element of the original charisma. This original charisma is the proof
of a connection to divine auspices that lift the bearer of charisma
above his or her fellow humans. Therefore, there is a purity to the
original charismatic figure, and a concomitant legitimacy. In break-
ing the everyday constraints of rationalized society, the charismatic
religious figure promises a renewed morality, a new innocence, and
a perfected connection to nature.
Weber speaks of this perfected connection to nature as an erotic
sacrament, ‘the direct breaking through of the boundaries between
souls, from human being to human being’ (‘den direkten Durch-
bruch der Seelen von Mensch zu Mensch’).24 This breaking through
(‘Durchbruch’) is ‘as radical as possible in its opposition to all func-
tionality, rationality, and generality’:
[The breaking through] is displayed here as the unique meaning
which one creature in his irrationality has for another, and only for
this specific other. However, from the point of view of eroticism, this
meaning, and with it the value-content of the relation itself, rests upon
the possibility of a communion which is felt as a complete unification,
as a fading of the ‘thou’. It is so overpowering that it is interpreted
symbolically: as a sacrament (‘Religious Rejections’: 347).25

24. This translation is by Christoph Irmscher. Here, as elsewhere, I have relied

on Professor Irmscher’s translations, paraphrases, and guidance in understanding
Weber’s German.
25. ‘Weil die erotische Beziehung unter den angegebenen Bedingungen den
unüberbietbaren Gipfel der Erfüllung der Liebesforderung: den direkten Durchbruch

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 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 29

The erotic sacrament—notably interpreted in a symbolic register—

has the effect, according to Weber, of allowing the lover to believe he
or she ‘is rooted in the kernel of the truly living, which is eternally
inaccessible to rational endeavor’ (‘Religious Rejections’: 347; GAR: I,
561: ‘weiß sich der Liebende in den jedem rationalen Bemühen ewig
unzugänglichen Kern des wahrhaft Lebendigen eingepflanzt’). This
lover, participant in the erotic sacrament, knows himself or herself
‘to be freed from the cold skeleton hands of rational orders, just as
completely as from the banality of everyday routine’ (‘Religious
Rejections’: 347; GAR: I, 561: ‘den kalten Skeletthänden rationaler Ord-
nungen ebenso völlig entronnen wie der Stumpfheit des Alltages’).
The same might be said of the religious convert to salvationistic
religion. The cold skeleton hands, for the acolyte, would comprise
the bestial sexuality and unique communion with another that rep-
resent freedom in the erotic sacrament. In Pauline religious terms,
to be ‘rooted in the kernel of the truly living’ is to be a member of
the congregation of Christ, a member of the ‘one body’. This form of
religion sacralizes carnal existence by abstracting the body of Christ
as a shared charismatic experience. Carnal sexuality is limited to the
marriage sacrament, not in the name of carnal freedom, but rather in
the name of tradition and integration into a community of the ‘truly
living’ who are said to be in touch with the deity through adherence
to particular regulations. The secret bond between lovers is literally
domesticated, co-opted to the service of group authority. The char-
ismatic origins of the erotic sacrament are reduced to a compromise
with a religious myth through which eroticism is turned inside out:
the unique communion between lovers becomes a symbol, not of
natural animal sexuality, but of its opposite—the righteous and
divinely ordained regulation (control, repression) of animal sexual-
ity. Of course, eroticism might have expected just such a reversal
insofar as it too depends on increasingly hypostatized symbols of
animal sexuality and supposedly natural origins to effect its trans-

der Seelen von Mensch zu Mensch, zu gewähren scheint. Allem Sachlichen, Rationalen,
Allgemeinen so radikal wie möglich entgegengesetzt, gilt die Grenzenlosigkeit der
Hingabe hier dem einzigartigen Sinn, welchen dies Einzelwesen in seiner Irratio-
nalität für dieses und nur dieses andere Einzelwesen hat. Dieser Sinn und damit
der Wertgehalt der Beziehung selbst aber liegt, von der Erotik aus gesehen, in der
Möglichkeit einer Gemeinschaft, welche als volle Einswerdung, als ein Schwinden
des “Du” gefühlt wird und so überwältigend ist, daß sie “symbolisch”:—sakramen-
tal—gedeutet wird’ (GAR: I, 560; the first italics are mine; ‘Durchbruch’ literally
means a ‘breakthrough’ or religious awakening).

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30 Max Weber Studies

gressions.26 The symbols are too easily turned, too easily recognized
as Janus-figures facing toward Bataille’s primal scene of the co-cre-
ation of labor and prohibition, producing the causal link between
intimacy and transgression, and simultaneously facing toward the
proliferation of symbols of innocence cast as proof of originality and
divinity.

3. Sacrifice and Surrogates

As Richardson reminds us, Bataille maintained that ‘the closest we
come to an experience of sacrifice is in eroticism’ (1998: 375). His
observation, while true enough in regard to Bataille’s writing, points
to a subtly erroneous elision in Bataille’s thinking on the subject of
eroticism. Richardson says (in refuting René Girard on the function of
sacrifice) that it would ‘perhaps be…accurate to say that the sacrificial
victim is a surrogate, standing for the whole community, which is
symbolically offering itself up as a gift’ (1998: 389). This notion of a sur-
rogate connects sacrifice, eroticism, and salvationistic religion. We can
analyze them all as mutually substitutive relationships. For example,
Bataille links eroticism and religious sacrifice as comparable symbolic
forms.27 Both represent to him extreme cases of taboo-breaking and
instances or manifestations of individual human sovereignty, a noto-
riously problematic concept in his philosophy. This is not the place to
discuss the conceptual difficulties. But I think it is worth remarking
that sovereignty, no matter how we understand it, should be defined
in terms of authority, and indeed in terms of an authority beyond the
reach of convention, tradition, or legality. In Weberian terms, charis-
matic authority alone fits these qualifications. But, again, charismatic
authority is the consummate group experience. Sacrifice, as a religious

26. This reversal is to be distinguished from the transposition which, accord-

ing to Guerlac, occurs between writing and transgression. See Guerlac: ‘When “Le
toit” transposes Bataille’s notions of eroticism and transgression into the register of
language, writing, and text, the signifier replaces the woman as erotic object and
language provides a field of theory—or what Sollers will call, looking back on it, “the
dream of theory”—where linguistics, psychoanalysis, deconstructive philosophy
(Heidegger, Derrida), and a certain marxism interact’ (1996: 8).
27. See Bataille’s interesting comments on Christianity and sacrifice: ‘The sacrifice
of the mass is a reminder but only rarely makes a deep impression on our sensibility.
However obsessive we find the symbol of the Cross, the mass is not readily identified
with the bloody sacrifice’ (Erotism: 89-91, esp. 89). ‘Le sacrifice de la messe en est une
réminiscence, mais il ne peut rarement atteindre la sensibilité d’une manière assez
vive. Quelle que soit l’obsession de l’image du Crucifié, l’image d’un sacrifice sanglant
et la messe ne coïncident pas facilement’ (L’Érotisme: 99).

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 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 31

rite, confirms a communal experience of supernatural connection,

reaffirming the group link to purity and divinity. Religious sacrifice
is therefore less transgressive than appears, less a breaking of taboos
than a confirmedly social act. Weber observes that ‘the sacrifice, espe-
cially of animals, is intended as a communion, a ceremony of eating
together which serves to produce a fraternal community between the
sacrificers and the gods’ (ES: I, 423).28 Walter Burkert contends that
‘by establishing an inviolable order, the sacrificial ritual gave society
its form’ (1983: 35)—a strong statement. Girard, in the same book
Richardson finds unconvincing, argues that ‘the purpose of sacrifice
is to restore harmony to the community, to reinforce the social fabric’
(1972: 8). Eroticism has no such purpose. Although it may also confirm
a link to purity—specifically the purity of animal sexuality—it does so
in defiance of the communal experience, glorifying the unique private
experience of the erotic sacrament. So that while we might character-
ize eroticism and religious sacrifice as charismatically analogous, we
must also recognize that their distinction inheres in their contrasting
implementations of charismatic symbols.
Yet both sacrifice and the erotic sacrament depend on rationaliza-
tion to make sense as manifestations of the symbolic order. Indeed,
both emerge as representations of an idealized (or fantasized) prior
order. The sacrificial victim represents an always already threatened
communal purity, just as the erotic sacrament represents the always
already threatened (or lost) animal sexuality. We rationalize both sac-
rifice and eroticism in a similar symbolic register, so that, as Weber
puts it, ‘highest eroticism stands psychologically and physiologically
in a mutually substitutive relation with certain sublimated forms
of heroic piety’. Sacrifice certainly qualifies as a sublimated form of
heroic piety, perhaps the most heroic of all. In the case of salvationis-
tic religion, sacrifice—particularly the sacrifice of the Son—forms the
basis of all piety and heroism.
It takes little effort to recognize in the Great Sacrifice a psychologi-
cally and physiologically substitutive relationship with eroticism. To
sink oneself in worship for a savior is to reject the basic animal needs,
and there are not many—sexuality, hunger, family or kinship, all of
which Jesus called his disciples to forswear before joining him. Insti-
tutional Christianity altered the strictures later, but the basic idea of
salvationistic participation was the psychological and physiological

28. ‘Das Opfer, speziell das Tieropfer, soll eine “communio”, eine als Verbrüder-
ung wirkende Tischgemeinschaft zwischen den Opfernden und dem Gott herstellen’
(WG: II, 16).

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32 Max Weber Studies

substitution of animal needs with ascetic rejection. Asceticism trans-

forms the ascetic practitioner into a charismatic figure, inspiring a
group experience.
In the final analysis, it is the centrality or irrelevance of group
experience that divides erotic symbolization from religious symbol-
ization. Bataille struggles with this division in his discussions of orgi-
astic rites and ritual sacrifice. But he never comes to terms with the
charismatic element of communal religious experience and ascetic
rejection—that is, the transformation of a revolutionary authority,
with divine auspices, into an interdependent group of members
responding to a set of rationalized charismatic symbols. L’Érotisme
ultimately fails to recognize that rationalized sexuality, while paral-
lel in symbolic structure to rationalized charismatic religion, denies
the collective imperative of religious (especially salvationistic) ascet-
icism. Rationalized sexuality retains its transgressive force vis à vis
traditional community authority while, in contrast, even charismatic
religion, as exemplified at one extreme by Pauline theology and at
another by sacrificial ritual, manifests its authority in a confirmation
or restoration of traditional authority and group experience.
But the tension between the irrationality of eroticism and the sup-
posed rationality of ascetic religion is to some extent a mirage, or
is perhaps better understood as a dialectical relationship. Eroticism
is a rationalized representation of sexuality while, in comparison,
ascetic religion has an irrational charismatic basis. Erotic symbolic
values manifest a mutually substitutive relationship with religious
symbols. The erotic sacrament is exchanged for the divine sacra-
ment. This sort of exchange is evident, for example, in Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo’s first encounter with Juliet, we find a
playful, if ominous, exchangeability of the erotic and the religious.
Both Romeo and Juliet are masked at the Capulet ball, and the masks
serve as does the mask on the woman in Leiris’s example. Although
neither Romeo nor Juliet is naked, their masks nonetheless reify them
as human bodies, at once stripping away their social identities and
eroticizing their sexuality. Presumably, in productions of the play,
their dress is coded male and female, and perhaps further eroticizes
their animal sexuality. But the masks serve the double purpose of
expunging identity and transforming even the clothed body into an
anonymous object—this kind of objectification being a crucial con-
dition of eroticism. Most significantly, the masks, while ostensibly
reducing the masked figures to their elemental animality—to a naïve
natural sexuality—also serve to raise the production of the erotic

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 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 33

milieu to a symbolic level. In Romeo and Juliet the erotic-symbolic is

also, at least playfully, the religious symbolic:
Romeo. If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss (1.5.95-102).

They go on in this vein, referring to saints and prayers and finally

sin, all to amusing effect. It would not do to place too heavy a burden
of symbolic value on this playful eroticizing of religious language,
but we should not ignore the parallel structural value of the erotic
and the religious in the passage. Indeed, the passage might be read
as a demonstration of Weber’s observation regarding the mutually
substitutive relationship of the ‘highest eroticism’ and ‘rational,
active asceticism which rejects the sexual as irrational’.
The substitutive quality of the relationship between eroticism and
ascetic religious consciousness is derived from the charismatic basis
of both modes of symbolic expression. Both promise a path to the
‘truly living’, both promise ecstasy as an antidote to the constraints
of everyday routine, and both supposedly preserve a prelapsarian
connection to the source of life. Yet they are distinct from each other
in a critical way. Ascetic religion affirms the group imperative of
charisma, as demonstrated most clearly by Pauline ecclesiology (see
especially 1 Corinthians 12). In contrast, eroticism rejects the group
imperative and fosters a uniquely private experience. This is what
produces its transgressive force, at least in western societies in which
the erotic has been desacralized. The chief issue in this context is the
relation of eroticism to sexual taboos. Bataille recognizes the impor-
tance of this relation, but I think that he misconstrues the character of
erotic symbolization. For example: ‘Eroticism taken as a whole is an
infraction of the laws of taboos: it is a human activity. But although
it begins when purely animal nature ends, its foundation is animal
none the less’ (trans. Dalwood: 94).29 In fact, I would argue that, with-
out over-polarizing the ‘purely animal’ and the human, the founda-
tion of eroticism is nevertheless not animal but human—specifically

29. ‘L’érotisme en son ensemble est infraction à la Règle des interdits: c’est une
activité humaine. Mais encore qu’il commence où finit l’animal, l’animalité n’en est
pas moins fondement’ (L’Érotisme: 104).

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34 Max Weber Studies

the symbol-making or rationalizing capability of the social human

group. This is where Weber’s intellectualism comes in, and where I
would place the notion of rationalized sexuality. Eroticism denies the
collectivity of charismatic experience while at the same time autho-
rizing itself by means of a charismatic symbolic order comparable to
that of ascetic religion. Bataille maintains that ‘the final aim of eroti-
cism is fusion, all barriers gone’ (trans. Dalwood: 129; L’Érotisme:
143: ‘Le sens dernier de l’érotisme est la fusion, la suppression de la
limite’), but he recognizes that that fusion is generally unsuccessful
as a group experience (he cites the disappointments of orgies). The
group experience of salvationistic religion, to the contrary, promises
an ultimate fusion, both bodily and spiritual.
Debora Shuger has remarked that in both eroticism and sacrifice
‘the individual dissolves into the group, the desired object, or the
personae of the automachia’ (1994: 194). But in fact, as we have seen,
the dissolution of the individual into the group is in conflict with indi-
vidual dissolution into the desired object. The transgressive value of
eroticism derives from its resistance to charismatic group experience.
Both eroticism and religious sacrifice are rationalized symbolic struc-
tures with a charismatic basis. Sacrifice, however, constitutes a social
adhesive, giving form to society, while eroticism rejects the group
experience despite its dependence on charismatic symbols. We can
extend this signal difference to religion generally from the example of
sacrifice, noting that the comparable charismatic origins of eroticism
and religion diverge at the juncture of collective needs. Religion satis-
fies those needs charismatically, creating a group bond. Eroticism, in
contrast, denies the group need while maintaining for as long as pos-
sible the group basis of its charismatic authority. This contrast empha-
sizes the notion that a mutually substitutive relationship exists only
when religion is psychologically individualized, as in a mystic’s union
with a deity. The mutually substitutive quality breaks down when we
compare eroticism to charismatic group religions, such as that derived
from the Pauline idea of the ‘one body’ of Christ. But the ‘one body’
of the charismatic Christian church stands in direct opposition to the
one (fused) body of the erotic sacrament. Whereas the former may be
revolutionary, the latter is transgressive, even though both gain their
symbolic status from a comparable rationalization of charisma.

4. Conclusion
To conclude with a brief summary, let me underscore that Weber
and Bataille both link religious ecstasy to eroticism, but that only

© Max Weber Studies 2007.

 Falco The Erotic Sacrament 35

Weber explores the charismatic aspects of both phenomena. While

they concur on the basic premise that eroticism is produced by the
rationalized symbolic representation of animal sexuality, Bataille’s
various descriptions of eroticism ultimately resist a systematic
approach in regard to the rational and the irrational. He believes
that a ‘natural’ interior life is accessible through erotic transgression.
Weber, on the other hand, recognizes that any erotic experience
occurs as a secondary step following a rationalized representation of
sexuality. Consequently, he more accurately accounts for the ratio-
nalized component of erotic representation.
For Weber, the so-called natural source of erotic life only becomes
recognizable in an aestheticized sphere, as the result of a symbol-
making process. The connection to nature in salvationistic religious
doctrine violently opposes the erotic connection to nature, indeed,
suppresses or rejects the bestial and the animal in favor of the ethereal
and the spiritual. Yet, paradoxically, as Weber points out, both sides
of the opposition require a rationalized symbolic structure to create
the opposition and to foster the repression of or escape from the other.
Bataille does not share this view. As I have shown, Bataille’s theory
lacks sufficient skepticism regarding what he terms in many of his
writings the expérience intérieure, an experience he links to Christianity
without satisfactorily problematizing the relationship. Perhaps most
lacking from Bataille’s theory is an awareness of charismatic group
behavior and its antipathy to the erotic union. Despite the parallels of
religion and eroticism, there is a marked difference between Christian
group charisma and the erotic union. Eroticism in its claim to freedom-
bestowing natural sexuality and salvationistic religion in its claim to
freedom from the bonds of bestial irrationality may both require the
representation of an embodied creative power, just as both in their
own ways are irrational. Yet, even if the charismatic force of a mystical
union serves as the model for sexual love, the absolute deprivation
of a group component separates eroticism from salvationistic religion
and requires a separate set of rationalized ideals.

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36 Max Weber Studies

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© Max Weber Studies 2007.

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