Marquis de Sade — "My only regret is that I was born into a world of cowards, who tremble at the si…"
My only regret is that I was born into a world of cowards, who tremble at the sight of truth.
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More from Marquis de Sade
"We monsters are necessary to nature also."
"Nature has granted me a right to satisfy all my desires."
"I am an atheist, and I am proud of it."
"The only true religion is the religion of pleasure."
"The only way to be truly virtuous is to be vicious."
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.