De Sade

Steve Perry sperry at usinternet.com
Wed Mar 3 08:57:37 PST 1999


Well, you wouldn't be quoting from de Sade if Roger Shattuck had anything to say about it.

---------- From: Sam Pawlett Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 1999 12:38 AM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: De Sade

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> Barkley Rosser wrote:
> > But, another interpretation is that Satan is the radical egalitarian
> >attempting to overthrow the hierarchy of God above all else (including
> >genderneutral Man).
>
> How about a radical aristocrat who hates a bourgeois humanism and moralism
> and yet revels in a bourgeois revolution and individualism, like de Sade?
>
> "All universal moral principles are idle fancies." _The 120 Days of Sodom_
>
> "The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind."
> _Aline et Valcour_
>
> Yoshie

I read a book by De Sade called _Philosophy in the Bedroom_ . Here he goes further than Nietzsche and argues that morality _itself_ , and not just Christian morality, is used by the weak to dominate the strong. A friend of mine used to call this approach "Machiavellianism from below". De Sade was a prime expositor of the virgin/whore dichotomy embodied in his characters Justine and Juliette. But De Sade reverses it so good things happen to the whore and bad things happen to the virgin (she's always getting lost in the forest and going places she shouldn't etc. etc.).

Sam Pawlett

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