Sade - The philosophy of the Marquis de Sade

I gratefully acknowledge the following persons who have provided valuable help during the various stages of this project: Gerald Doherty, Pamela Doherty, Maija-Riitta Ollila, Ilkka Patoluoto (), George Berger, Juha Airola, Paul J. Johnson, Heta and Matti Hyry, Jarkko Savolainen, Manfred Holler, Aristides Baltas, and Timothy Stroup. Financial support was provided by the Humanities Council of the Academy of Finland. The Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, offered a congenial environment to develop the first ideas which led towards the book, although I do not know whether they knew what they were spawning. My thanks are due to Professors Jay Rosenberg and Geoffrey Sayre McCord. I have presented material borrowed from this book in Helsinki, Nottingham, Dominguez Hills, Athens, Jerusalem, and Atlanta. I have profited from all of these discussions, regardless of the degree of dismay the audiences might have felt and expressed.

Sade is not an easy topic. The subject matter is that which is evil, and perhaps one cannot quite want to know what evil is like. Sade is a revolutionary thinker who has much to offer any student of ethics, literary criticism, and cultural history. The characterization of virtue as a vice, the deliberate repetitiveness of his style, and the enlightened choice of what is worthless, are all paradoxical themes which Sade introduces and analyzes with great care and skill. My basic motive in writing this book has been the conviction that there is much in this world which is neither directly visible nor readily thinkable. One is a victim of shame, which makes one assume that something does not exist because it should not. Sade deals efficiently with this problem by forcing his reader to recognize what is dirty, disgusting, and forbidden. A liberating effect follows when the reader overcomes his shame.He is then able to take a look behind without becoming a pillar of salt, as happened once outside Sodom and Gomorrah.

The book is divided into nine chapters. The second, on the meaning of perversion, is perhaps more difficult and certainly more analytical than the rest. It presents a review of human action and weakness as a technical theory to be deconstructed in the chapters that follow. It cannot be skipped without losing much of the main thesis; however, the chapter can be read cursorily so that one will at least get an impression of the notions of perversity and moral harm to self. The final chapters deal with more general issues, like censorship and the primacy of values in human life. Sade himself is the real hero of the book.