To witness spectacles of pain: The hypermorality of Georges Bataille

But this is not so. There are moral values on which Bataille's dismissal of the useful and productive good stands. Of course our tradition has tied these values to the good, which in turn has been tied to the useful and productive. Hence for anyone even to speak of these other values automatically brings the useful to mind.

Still, if the dominant sense of the good has long been the useful and productive, there are also other senses of what we mean by the good. The good can also be thought of as what to pursue rather than what to avoid and what to praise rather than blame. For example, the two interlocutors of Plato's Euthyphro agree from the outset on the importance of the matter of the praiseworthy, although not necessarily on the importance of the usefulness of the praiseworthy which is addressed much later on. Similarly in Hippias Major, Hippias immediately assumes that since the fine itself is of the highest value, this means first and foremost that it is worthy of praise far greater than anything merely useful. Hence when Socrates asks whether the well-made pot and wooden spoon are fine, Hippias scornfully responds that be they fine or not, to praise such common items is boorish (Plato 1983, 61, 288d).

Finally, the issue of praise and blame is also a starting point for Aristotle, which is why he sustains an analysis to forge the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behaviors. Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics devoted to this topic begins as follows,

Since virtue is concerned with passions and actions, and on voluntary passions and actions praise and blame are bestowed, on those that are involuntary pardon, and sometimes also pity, to distinguish the voluntary and the involuntary is presumably necessary for those who are studying the nature of virtue, and useful also for legislators with a view to the assigning both of honours and of punishments. (Aristotle 1941, 964, 1109b)

Here the praiseworthy and blameworthy are values attached only to behaviors done voluntarily, to deeds rightly or wrongly pursued and avoided. Obviously, both Plato and Aristotle fully assume that these values are consistent with the value of utility-that we would never praise the useless or blame the useful, as such. Bataille, however, challenges this assumption. The praiseworthy may be useless; it may not be good in the sense of useful. Like Plato and Aristotle, he puts forth an ethics of praise and blame. Unlike them, however, he is largely concerned with separating the praiseworthy from every possible sense of utility.

Bataille rejects the notion of a unified good. When he criticizes the moral good, this is because by assuming such unity, morality has blinded us to the importance of disutility, to the praiseworthiness of nonproductive usages serving no end beyond themselves. We generally assume that there are no such praiseworthy usages, but Bataille insists that there are. Indeed, there is a whole realm of them, he contends, as well as the need for an ethics corresponding to them, one able to take their violence into account.