Roman Catholicism from the very start was positive towards slavery. The Roman 'aristocrats' (slave-owners following 'animist' Aristotle) of The senate feared original Christianity, because Gnostic Christianity considered ALL humans as 'equal'. That's why The Senate made its own pro-slavery version of Christianity: Catholicism. Catholicism makes a split between superior 'spirit' (virtual) and sinful body (physical). Now any viewpoint can be defended, like in abstract art. From fear, greed, slavery to genocide and the supremacy of males. 'Fear' for instance is an IDEA, that stimulates 'fearful' behavior like 'law and order'.

BDSM as a more rare appearance of eroticism in society is commonly hided far away in a corner of society. But the mainstream in this group is only playing a highly addictive, indeed sexual, game. Nietzsche already said: hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - [...] - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered. Daybreak, s.468, translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Off course like everything the game has extremes and became commercial. In this article I show that BDSM is nothing new, and even mid 20th century a member of this subculture wrote highly philosophical works about sex and death based on his sexual adventures.

Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was a librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. He also was CONSIDERED a Surrealist, an intellectual, and writer of work ranging from philosophy to 'pornography'. Bataille's original BEHAVIOR obviously was based on bodily learning from rituals, and not on abstract 'judgement' and prejudices. Bataille is accused of being a Nietzsche adept. That's amazingly correct, only Bataille , as advised by Nietzsche, in almost paradigm shift way 'wickedly' experienced 'strange' kinds of happiness, and that way his senses learned more from Nietzsche's paradigm shift thoughts than his word-spitting virtuous referees.

BDSM can be seen as a variant of the freak-shows. The word 'freak' only pointing at different ethics and thus other behavior. Freakshows are a very useful way of showing that completely deviant behavior (other paradigm) can be highly complex and at least something to wonder about.
BDSM shows that sexual games can be a lot of fun. And that there's nothing wrong with dependent relations, as long as there is mutual respect. And some rare but very interesting forms of BDSM show that pain only is a physical warning made fearful in the 'mind'. When you imagine DECAPITATION to be painful, then it arouses social fear (In fact a well executed decapitation is messy, but happens too fast to notice).

The famous but difficult to read French philosopher Michel Foucault predicted that the philosophical work of his brilliant contemporary and fellow countryman Bataille (1897-1962) would not be understood during his lifetime. That prediction proved to be correct, but postmortem in the meantime this Bataille got his place among the great minds of his century. During that life his opinions death, dying and sex were severely attacked by amongst others the surrealists and Sartre.

He got his present status through being mentioned by many postmodern philosophers.

In Western Society under influence of Christianity death and dying became denied, and something to be afraid of. But off course it is just an essential part of nature. The Frenchman Bataille already wrote so.

Nature can show (semi-)continuity because creation in evolution consists of sex and death (birth and dying, what must come, must go). Two  different and obvious discontinuous actions in this case clearly make discontinuous unity.

Bataille demonstrates that there is no creatitivity without these two actions. it makes no sense to split the All (reality) into two separate pieces (All-1 and All-2 or good and evil), only because your local catholic ethics does so. Explained in words: nature is everything between birth and dying, the word 'religion' is a BASIC catholic idea pointing at belief in immaterial 'spirits'. Catholicism has a lot of rituals, but sex rituals only aim to highten the common sense mood 'sex', and rain dancing only aims at the natural force 'raining. Sex rituals don't include believing in 'spirits, neither do 'rain dances. Without bodily death the world would be overcrowded, and without birth creativity stops.

Searching for the border between nature and death like Bataille is indeed a thrilling exercise, but it easily results in a huge headache. His quest showed this point, but it is nevertheless essential. It's somewhat similar to the Naturalist question what was first, nature or intelligence. The last is a purposeless way to get a headache, but Bataille's question is slightly easier. His trying to grasp the relation between religion and rituals though is extremely important.
The question posed by Naturalists anyway resembles the one of Bataille. Only they wonder about the relation between 'spirit' and nature, whereas Bataille questioned what connected the clearly limited biological body and endless nature. Both questions try to split a unity and therefore have no answer. Nature IS intelligence, and living IS dying (as well as having sex to produce variation).

But not only for Naturalists the challenge remains to make robots with tremendpusly complicated common sense (it took evolution billions of years).  I.e. the creation of computers who like our brain can accept and appreciate until then unfitting information. Otherwise those machines can't independently create and thus 'grow' during evolution.

In other words Bataille was researching thet nature of death and dying or the frontier between nature and death. Not really surprising in this way he stumbled on the orgasm. To save this unique experience it is necessary to get rid of the link that most western religions created in creation between sex and offspring.

Robots have a nearly limitless life, and then sex for procreation gets redundant. An orgasm for robots is equal to an Aha-experience, the unexpected linking of two totally different pieces of information. Not unexpected this resembles humor.  In human existence fresh life results from linking two very different individuals.

Philosopher of Evil was one of the not really nice nicknames that gives an impression how contemporaries felt about Bataille. He was an early member of what would now be called the SM-culture, and experimented with what he mentioned violence, eroticism and death.

In the lifetime of Bataille sex was aimed mainly at having offspring. Most people at that time saw life as a lasting struggle between birth and death. And especially for members of many religions sex was not seen as creative play but only aimed at having children.

Bataille not only analysed, as was usual in science in his days, but participated. One of his more positive nicknames was Philosopher of Deeds. He was just a very good philosopher who was also practicing SM as a way of showing beincreative. And not at least shy about it, this colorful and adventurous person was really far ahead of his time.

Bataille approached sex and death by experimenting. It is known that Bataille showed great interest in old cultures and their rituals. It became my guess that tried he to grasp the relation between Roman Christian Religion and ancient sense experiences resulting in Rituals.

Bataille regarding the subject of sex was no philosopher in the normal sense. He kept diary, and his creative thoughts about those uncommon sexual adventures later were regarded as extreme philosophy.

This essay doesn't intend to say that you have to practice SM every day to be a philosopher, but it shows that you can both be quite philosophic and practice uncommon sexual practices.

What Bataille inherently taught is that the euthanasia debate should not be discussing IF embryo's are human (at some stage though they can 'actively' learn), but HOW to do the killing in respectful ways. Objecting to the evolutional process killing is Roman Catholic. For that reason the Romans distinguished 'minds' ('spiritual' leaders) and bodies (totally obedient gunfood). That is seen in their mind body split. Japanese 'Kamikaze' as practiced in WWII might not be totally respectful, but it is an honorable way of killing. Throwing atom bombs is neither respectful nor honorable.

Bataille teaches us a very important 'lesson of life': BDSM is ethical stretching or 'crime' scene investigation, making sense of life/death. You can dream some absolute truth (and live a 'theoretical' life as 'mental junkie' fighting windmills), or you can BEHAVE in reality. Absolute 'truth' (e.g. Alexander-the-Terrible/Roman Empire, Hitler-truth/Mugabe-truth; or US-truth/Israel truth) can only survive locally and temporarily at extremely high costs, reality is relative or culture dependent. Alexander annihilated Zoroastrian culture, The Roman Empire annihilated Judean Christianity, Hitler used his mental junkies to destroy Europe, Mugabe uses his mental junkies to destroy Zimbabwe, The US full of money junkies destroys environment and Israel full of 'law and order junkies' still tries to annihilate Judea (Palestine). Wars are waste of energy. Within each culture local truth is learned by trial and error in BEHAVIOR. Todays Pain is the Pleasure of Tomorrow. Good is Evil and vice versa. Devils in one paradigm are Angels in an adjacent paradigm or after a paradigm shift. Zombie cultures (fossilizing life)with war only destroy the terrorists needed for surviving (mixing through sex) Death and Life are a one way unity. Zarah2nd: The Roman Christian 'Fear of Death' in the end produces hallucinations like War on Terrorism. Fear is an awfully persistent mind addiction, resulting in spasm-like defense behaviour. Like reacting on flies as if being killerbees. Freedom fighters of all ages share at least one trait: daring to risk bodily death by attacking a rigid socially dominant force.

Zarah2nd, December 2001.