The article analyzes the meaningful meaning of the concept of transgression in the works of French thinkers of the XX century J. Bataille and M. Foucault. In the modern scientific discourse, the use of the term “transgression” has become quite widespread. It is used in various sciences to fix the phenomenon of crossing an impassable border and, as a rule, the border between the possible and the impossible. J. Bataille was one of the first to develop the philosophy of transgression in the framework of understanding the possibility of a person achieving the fullness of his being by going beyond the rules and prohibitions imposed by society. The idea of violating and overcoming the boundaries of what is permitted covers a wide range of topics: eroticism, death, celebration, sacrifice, sacred and profane, etc. Man is ambivalent in nature, therefore J. Bataille sought to remove “binary oppositions”, reducing human and natural to unity (animal), life and death. The border created by society separates man from prehuman, from the realm of pure totality. The act of transgression is associated with crossing the border, returning him back to this kingdom, allowing you to survive the «totality of the real.» For M. Foucault, transgression is a violation of a pure prohibition that is not related to specific social content. Under such an absolute ban M. Foucault understood sexuality. The great transgressor, according to M. Foucault, is insanity. In general, both J. Bataille and M. Foucault associated the existence of borders with a person’s rejection of the low - lying manifestations of the natural essence, dividing the worlds into a profane, sacred, transcendental. But all these worlds are open to each other in acts of transgression - a leap into a new state. Therefore, the philosophy of transgression does not contain dialectical contradictions. in the act of transgression, a person becomes everything in his totality, he comes into contact with infinity, experiences it in himself, dissolving in it. But the act of transgression also implies a return to the previous state.
