Georges BATAILLE, Theory of Religion, Zone Books, New York, 1989, (Paris 1973)
p. 18:
“There is no transcendence when an animal eats another; there is certainly a difference but this animal that eats the other animal cannot oppose itself to it through the affirmation of this difference.
Animal of a certain species do not eat one another … Perhaps, but this does not matter if the goshawk eating the hen does not distinguish it clearly from itself, in the same way that we distinguish an object from ourselves. The distinction requires a positing of the object as such. There does not exist any discernable difference if the object has not been posited. The animal that another animal eats is not yet given as an object. Between the animal that is eaten and the one that eats, there is no relation of subordination like that connecting an object, a thing, to man, who refuses to be viewed as a thing”.
p. 19:
“every animal is in the world like water in water”.
