Will to evil instead of will to power: Georges Bataille's reading of Nietzsche

Bataille's book On Nietzsche is a critique of all goal-oriented activity, since for Bataille, useful activities transform the human being into a 'soldier' or 'savant', a part rather than a whole. In his rejection of goal-oriented morality, Bataille thus espouses what he calls 'evil' as a strategy to escape from the public good and its reduction of the human being to use-function. Such an escape involves the sacrifice of the will, and in particular of Nietzsche's Will to Power. Indeed, Bataille goes so far as to claim that Nietzsche's Will to Power is a tragic failure. After elucidating Bataille's reading of Nietzsche, this paper will consider the concept of goalless otium as perhaps the only immanent response to the crises of our contemporary world. Only by deserting the will and becoming 'evil' can we avoid both moralising reaction and the reduction of our potential to a fragmentary use-function.