Marquis de Sade — "The wicked alone are happy, because they alone are free."
The wicked alone are happy, because they alone are free.
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More from Marquis de Sade
"What are all the pleasures of the senses compared to the infinite joys of the spirit?"
"Sex should be a perfect balance of pain and pleasure. Without that symmetry, sex becomes a routine rather than an indulgence."
"In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice."
"The greatest good is to do evil."
"The only true philosopher is the one who dares to think everything."
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.