Into the abyssmarquis de sade and the enlightenment
Marquis de Sade and the EnlightenmentWe 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 MettrieThe 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
The orgies and infamous behavior that Sade would be known for were commonplace in his time. The concept that virtue and the pursuit of happiness were natural was negated. Whatever the individual may think of him, his work is nonetheless both significant and relevant. Thus aspects of culture such as crime, and the gratitude of children to their parents are foolish. Yet, he argues that the only way to seek pleasure is through the more sinister aspects of ourselves; the vile, the cruel and the indifferent. He broke boundaries that other enlightened thinkers had created. Rousseau too believed that culture was artificial, that it was constructed by society and not natural. Hence, the idea that one should seek happiness in kin to society rather than for oneself was vital in ceasing the moral anarchy that would otherwise follow. Their existence is necessary to create prosperity. " Sade's philosophy was an inescapable and arguably necessary consequence of the eighteenth century. The culmination of our instinctual desires in crime and as Crocker relates, "the complete justification of nihilism. Physical passions are the only real pleasures. If the happiness is the end, then virtue is sometimes recommended as the means to achieve it. We may not like or agree with Sade's conclusions about our true selves, but we should respect how he arrived at his conclusions.
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