Marquis de Sade — "There is nothing more delicious to see or do. I refer to both: for it is just as…"
There is nothing more delicious to see or do. I refer to both: for it is just as pleasant to spy upon someone as to want to be observed.
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More from Marquis de Sade
"There is a sum of evil equal to the sum of good, the continuing equilibrium of the world requires that there be as many good people as wicked people..."
"Crimes are always committed for the sake of enjoyment."
"Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil."
"One would have to lose one's wits to believe in a God, and to become a complete imbecile to adore Him."
"Nothing that makes one hard is wicked and the only crime in the world is to refuse oneself that pleasure."
About Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)
French aristocrat-libertine whose name became 'sadism' and whose novels test the limits of Enlightenment liberalism's 'do as you will' axiom. Closely associated with Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons dangereuses author). For an intellectual contrast, see Immanuel Kant, German Enlightenment philosopher of the categorical imperative — Sade and Kant published in the same decades; Kant's 'treat others as ends, never means' is the systematic ethical opposite of Sade's libertine instrumentalism — the two roads philosophy took out of Enlightenment freedom.
The standard scholarly entry points to Marquis de Sade's work: Maurice Blanchot (French literary critic) — Lautréamont and Sade (1949); Jacques Lacan (École freudienne de Paris) — Kant with Sade (1963 essay); Camille Paglia (University of the Arts Philadelphia) — Sexual Personae (1990) — extensive Sade chapters. These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Marquis de Sade.