Jackson/Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice, 11. Philosophical Sacrifice

This final chapter closes the historical circuit by addressing the continuation of sacrificial themes in contemporary continental philosophy. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback’s point of departure is the relation between philosophy and sacrifice in Jean-Luc Nancy’s readings of the philosophy of sacrifice as proposed by Georges Bataille in the 1940s. In showing how Bataille’s philosophy of sacrifice accomplishes rather than overcomes the philosophical sacrifice of the singular for the sake of the universal, Nancy argues for a suspension of the philosophical concept of sacrifice and addresses the idea of an open offering of singular finite being. In question here is not the end of sacrifice, nor the sacrifice for ends, but the unsacrificeable finite offering of existence.