Into the abyssmarquis de sade and the enlightenment

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Marquis de Sade and the Enlightenment

We are no guiltier in following the primitive impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her flood or the sea for her waves" - La Mettrie

The eighteenth century embraced a secularized France in which the idea of utility, and not of salvation, were the principles by which one lived. Nature and reason in many ways replaced God. What this change left however, was a vacuum for the motive of morality in society. What would compel men to behave if not an omnipresent and all-powering God? The utilitarian idea that the greatest pleasure for the greatest good was able to reconcile the concept of a society questioning her religion but still looking to affirm her old values and moral codes. Many enlightened thinkers like Montesquieu argued for an emphasis on social, over individual welfare, and presented it as a solution left open by this vacuum.

This concept eventually evolved to a redefinition of morality in general. Prior, morality and social laws were frigid and prone to the dictums of the Church. Now, they were accountable to general society, and not the individual's demands. Voltaire writes, " Virtue and vice, moral good and evil, is then in

Sade's rule, like other enlightenment thinkers, is to pursue pleasure. Crocker explains, however, how he differs from his peers, "To say that happiness depends on reciprocal consideration, or to say that it comes from denying and sacrificing the claims of the ego is, according to Sade, to talk utter nonsense." Sade insists that we give into what Freud would later label, our ego, to give into our instinctual desires. We should not hide from our true selves; rather we should face and embrace it.

"We may recall that the ethical system fall into two main groups, according to their choice of the ultimate ends of life: those which embrace pleasure or happiness, and those which hold up virtue or character. If the selected end is virtue, than happiness is often thought to accompany it. If the happiness is the end, then virtue is sometimes recommended as the means to achieve it."

The concept of enlightened self-interest, of selfless selfishness, was bound, however, to be attacked. Rousseau articulates his disagreement, "What is useful to the public is scarcely ever introduced except by force, since private interests are always almost opposed to it." Rousseau argued, quite convincingly, that the individual desires of man usually conflicted with that of society, yet, one was still obliged to subordinate oneself to society and live a moral life. In Emile Rousseau explains, "The wicked man fears himself and runs from himself; his joy comes in throwing himself out of himself." He later continues, "On the contrary, the serenity of the just man is inner; his laughter has no maliciousness, but joy; he carries its source within himself; he is as gay alone as in the midst of a group." Lester Crocker summarizes the efforts enlightened self-interest:

The concept that virtue and the pursuit of happiness were natural was negated. "Only optimists and providentialists continued to assert that nature is good. At best, it is indifferent and devoid of value, except biological survival." Hobbes, as Simone de Beauvoir points out, explains that "man is a wolf to man and that Nature is in a state of war." If man wanted to look to nature to find reassurance of a moral order he would have been quickly disappointed for injustice and amorality was rampant in it. What the utilitarian had done was create a fallible, arbitrary moral code insisting that the will of the individual be sacrificed for the common good because it was natural for the virtuous to be rewarded and the wicked punished. Many were simply not convinced.

Sade does not try to find a median or balance between the pursuit of happiness and morality. He agrees in the depravity of mankind, but unlike his contemporaries he does not seek to transcend it, rather he seeks to embrace it. He does not ask us to delude ourselves, but rather accept the meaninglessness and insignificance of nature and the world by confronting it on its own terms.

La Mettrie observes nature, "Nature...approves of crimes rather than of virtue, since she inclines us more to them, and since they are more useful to out happiness." La Mettrie eventually argues that there is no such thing as good or evil, and that one should subside to their natural instinct, whatever it may be.

Sade has been accused of being insane; a paranoid, deluded man consumed by his demented rantings and ravings in his texts. For years his work has been buried. Whatever the individual may think of him, his work is nonetheless both significant and relevant. Aspects of Social Darwinism, concepts that would influence Freud, Camus, Nietzche and others decades after him would all cite Sade. Sade is disturbing not because he is demented, but because his arrival of his conclusions is logical. Crocker argues that Sade directly dealt with the failure of nature and reason as models to establish an ethical society. He recognizes and foresees the failure of rationalism. There are many loopholes and contradictions in his philosoph

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