He dreamed of an ideal society from which his special tastes would not exclude him. He really thought that such tastes would not constitute a serious danger to an enlightened society. Zamé assures us that he would not be disturbed by Sade’s disciples: “The people you speak of are few; they do not worry me at all.” And Sade, in a letter, maintains: “It is not the opinions or vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures.” The fact is that the libertine’s acts have no real influence; they are not much more than games. Sade takes refuge behind their insignificance and goes so far as to suggest that he would be ready to sacrifice them. Motivated as they are by defiance and resentment, these acts would lose their significance in a world without hatred. If the prohibitions which make crime attractive were abolished, lust itself would be eliminated. Perhaps Sade really longed for the personal conversion that would result from the conversion of other men. He probably expected, also, that his vices would be accepted as something exceptional by a community which respected singularity and which would, therefore, recognize him as an exception. He was sure, in any case, that a man who was content with whipping a prostitute every now and then was less harmful to society than a farmer-general.
The real plagues are established injustice, official abuses, and constitutional crimes; and these are the inevitable accompaniments of abstract laws which try to impose themselves uniformly upon a plurality of radically separate objects. A just economic order would render codes and courts useless, for crime is born of need and illegality and would vanish with the elimination of these grounds. The ideal regime, for Sade, was a kind of reasonable anarchy: “The rule of law is inferior to that of anarchy: the most obvious proof of what I assert is the fact that any government is obliged to plunge itself into anarchy whenever it aspires to remake its constitution. In order to abrogate its former laws, it is compelled to establish a revolutionary regime in which there is no law: this regime finally gives birth to new laws, but this second state is necessarily less pure than the first, since it derives from it.” This argument probably does not sound very convincing, but what Sade understood remarkably well was that the ideology of his time was merely the expression of an economic system and that a concrete transformation of this system would put an end to the humbug of bourgeois morality. Very few of his contemporaries developed such penetrating views in such an extreme way.
Nevertheless, Sade did not definitely take the path of social reform. His life and work were not guided by these utopian reveries. How could he have continued to believe in them very long in the depths of his dungeon cells or after the Terror? Events confirmed his private experience. Society’s failure was no mere accident. And besides, it was obvious that his interest in its possible success was of a purely speculative nature. He was obsessed by his own case. He cared little about changing himself and much more about being confirmed in his choices. His vices condemned him to solitude. He was to demonstrate the necessity of solitude and the supremacy of evil. It was easy for him to be honest because, maladjusted aristocrat that he was, he had never encountered men like himself. Though he mistrusted generalizations, he ascribed to his situation the value of a metaphysical inevitability: “Man is isolated in the world.” “All creatures are born isolated and have no need of one another.” If the diversity of human beings could be assimilated—as Sade himself frequently suggests—to that which differentiates plants or animals, a reasonable society would manage to surmount it. It would be enough merely to respect each one’s particularity.
But man does not merely endure his solitude; he demands it against everyone. It follows that there is a heterogeneity of values, not only from class to class, but from individual to individual. “All passions have two meanings, Juliette: one, which is very unjust as regards the victim; the other, which is singularly just to the person who exercises it. And this fundamental antagonism cannot be transcended because it is the truth itself.” If human projects tried to reconcile themselves in a common quest for the general interest, they would be necessarily unauthentic. For there is no reality other than that of the self-enclosed subject hostile to any other subject which disputes its sovereignty. The thing that prevents individual freedom from choosing Good is that the latter does not exist in the empty heaven or on the unjust earth, or even at some ideal horizon; it is nowhere to be found. Evil is an absolute resisted only by fanciful notions, and there is only one way of asserting oneself in the face of it: to assent to it.
For there is one idea that Sade, throughout his pessimism, savagely rejects: the idea of submission. And that is why he detests the hypocritical resignation which is adorned with the name of virtue. It is a stupid submission to the rule of evil, as re-created by society. In submitting, man renounces both his authenticity and his freedom. It was easy for Sade to show that chastity and temperance are not even justified by their usefulness. The prejudices that condemn incest, sodomy, and all sexual “vagaries” have but one aim: to destroy the individual by imposing upon him a stupid conformism. But the great virtues extolled by the age had a deeper meaning; they tried to palliate the all too obvious inadequacies of the law. Sade raised no objection to tolerance, probably because, so far as he could observe, no one even tried to practice it; but he did attack fanatically what is called humaneness and benevolence. These were mystifications which aimed at reconciling the irreconcilable: the unsatisfied appetites of the poor and the selfish greed of the rich. Taking up the tradition of La Rochefoucauld, he shows that these are merely masks to disguise self-interest.
The weak, in order to check the arrogance of the strong, have invented the idea of fraternity, an idea which has no solid basis: “Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for these reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?” What hypocrisy on the part of privileged persons who make a great to-do about their philanthropy and at the same time acquiesce in the abject condition of the poor! This false sentimentality was so widespread at the time that even Valmont, in Les Liaisons dangereuses, was moved to tears when he performed an act of charity; and it was obviously the currency of this mode of feeling that made Sade unleash all his dishonesty and sincerity against benevolence. He is certainly joking when he claims that in maltreating prostitutes he is serving the cause of morality. If libertines were permitted to molest them with impunity, prostitution would become so dangerous a profession that no one would engage in it. But he is quite right in cutting through sophisms and exposing the inconsistencies of a society that protects the very things it condemns, and which, though permitting debauchery, often pillories the debauchee.
He reveals the dangers of almsgiving with the same somber irony. If the poor are not reduced to hopelessness, they may rebel; and the safest thing would be to exterminate all of them. In this scheme, which he attributes to Saint-Fond, Sade develops the idea in Swift’s famous pamphlet, and he certainly does not identify himself with his hero. Nevertheless, the cynicism of this aristocrat, who fully espoused the interests of his class, is more valid to him than the compromises of guilty-minded hedonists. His thinking is clear—either do away with the poor or do away with poverty, but do not use half-measures and thus perpetuate injustice and oppression,16 and above all do not pretend to be redeeming these extortions by handing out a trivial dole to those you exploit. If Sade’s heroes let some poor wretch die of hunger rather than defile themselves by an act of charity that would cost them nothing, it is because they passionately refuse any complicity with respectable people who appease their consciences so cheaply.
Virtue deserves no admiration and no gratitude since, far from reflecting the demands of a transcendent good, it serves the interests of those who make a show of it. It is only logical that Sade should come to this conclusion. But after all, if self-interest is the individual’s sole law, why despise it? In what respect is it inferior to vice? Sade answered this question often and vehemently. In cases where virtue is chosen, h
e says: “What lack of movement! What ice! Nothing stirs me, nothing excites me. . . . I ask you, is this pleasure? What a difference on the other side! What tickling of my senses! What excitement in my organs!” And again: “Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime.” In terms of the hedonism of his time, this argument carries weight. The only objection one might make is that Sade generalizes from his own individual case. May some people not also be excited by Good? He rejects this eclecticism. Virtue can procure only an imaginary happiness; “true felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.” This statement may seem surprising, since Sade had actually made the imagination the mainspring of vice; but vice teaches us a certain truth through the very fantasies on which it feeds, and the proof is that it ends in orgasm, that is, in a definite sensation; whereas the illusions on which virtue feeds are never concretely recouped by the individual. According to the philosophy that Sade borrowed from his age, sensation is the only measure of reality, and if virtue arouses no sensation, it is because it has no real basis.
Sade explains what he means more clearly in the following parallel between virtue and vice: “. . . the first is illusory, a fiction; the second is authentic, real; the first is founded upon vile prejudices, the second upon reason; the first, through the agency of pride, the most false of all our sensations, may provide the heart with a brief instant’s titillation; the other is a veritable mental pleasure-taking, and it inflames every other passion . . .” Virtue, chimerical and imaginary, encloses us in a world of appearances; whereas vice’s intimate link with the flesh guarantees its genuineness. Using the vocabulary of Stirner, whose name has rightly been linked with Sade’s, we might say that virtue alienates the individual from that empty entity, Man. It is only in crime that he justifies and fulfills himself as a concrete ego. If the poor man resigns himself or vainly tries to fight for his fellows, he is maneuvered and duped, an inert object, a plaything of Nature; he is nothing. He must, like la Dubois or Coeur-de-fer, try to pass over to the side of the strong. The rich person who accepts his privileges passively also exists like an object. If he abuses his power and becomes a tyrant, then he is someone. Instead of losing himself in philanthropic dreams, he will cynically take advantage of the injustice that favors him. “Where would be the victims of our villainy if all men were criminals? We must never cease to keep the people tied to the yoke of error and the lie,” says Esterval.
Are we back to the idea that man can only act in obedience to his evil nature? Is he not destroying his freedom with the pretext of safeguarding his authenticity? No, for though freedom may be unable to go counter to given reality, it is able to wrest itself away from it and assume it. This procedure is similar to Stoic conversion which, by deliberate decision, turns reality to its own account. There is no contradiction in Sade’s extolling crime and at the same time getting indignant about men’s injustice, selfishness, and cruelty.17 He has only contempt for the timid vice, for the rash crimes which merely reflect passively the heinousness of Nature. One must make oneself a criminal in order to avoid being evil, as is a volcano or a member of the police. It is not a matter of submitting to the universe, but of imitating it in open defiance.
This is the attitude that Almani, the chemist, assumes at the edge of Mount Etna. “Yes, my friend, yes, I abhor Nature. And the reason I loathe her is that I know her all too well. Knowing her dreadful secrets, I felt a kind of ineffable pleasure in copying her heinousness. I shall imitate her, though I hate her. . . . Her murderous nets are spread for us alone. Let us try to catch her in her own trap. . . . In presenting to me only her effects, she concealed all her causes. I am therefore limited to imitating the former. Unable to guess the motive that put the dagger into her hands, I have been able to take away her weapon and use it as she did.” This text has the same ambiguous ring as the words of Dolmancé: “’Twas men’s ingratitude dried out my heart.” It reminds us that it was in despair and resentment that Sade devoted himself to evil. And it is in this respect that his hero is distinguished from the ancient sage. He does not follow Nature lovingly and joyously. He copies her with abhorrence and without understanding her. And he wills himself to be something without approving himself. Evil is not at one with itself; self-laceration is its very essence.
This laceration must be experienced in a state of constant tension; otherwise, it congeals into remorse and, as such, constitutes a mortal danger. Maurice Blanchot has observed that whenever the Sadean hero, as a result of some scruple, restores to society its power over him, he is doomed to the worst kind of catastrophe.18 Repentance and hesitation mean that one recognizes that one has judges. It therefore means accepting guilt instead of assuming that one is the free author of one’s acts. The man who consents to his passivity deserves all the defeats that the hostile world will inflict upon him. On the other hand: “The genuine libertine likes even the charges that are leveled against him for his execrable crimes. Have we not known men who loved even the tortures appointed by human vengeance, who suffered them gladly, who looked upon the scaffold as a throne of glory? These are men who have attained the highest degree of deliberate corruption.”
At this ultimate degree, man is delivered not only of prejudices and shame, but of fear as well. His serenity is that of the ancient sage who regarded as futile “things which do not depend on ourselves.” But the sage confined himself to a completely negative self-defense against possible suffering. The dark stoicism of Sade promises positive happiness. Thus, Coeur-de-fer lays down the following alternatives: “Either the crime which makes us happy, or the scaffold which prevents us from being unhappy.” Nothing can threaten the man who can transform his very defeats into triumphs. He fears nothing because for him everything is good. The brutal factitiousness of things does not crush the free man because it does not interest him. He is concerned only with their meaning, and the meaning depends only upon him. A person who is whipped or penetrated by another may be the other’s master as well as his slave. The ambivalence of pain and pleasure, of humiliation and pride, enables the libertine to dominate any situation. Thus, Juliette can transform into pleasure the same tortures that prostrate Justine. Fundamentally, the content of the experience is unimportant. The thing that counts is the subject’s intention.
Thus, hedonism ends in ataraxia, which confirms the paradoxical relation between sadism and stoicism. The individual’s promised happiness is reduced to indifference. “I have been happy, my dear, ever since I have been indulging cold-bloodedly in every sort of crime,” says Bressac. Cruelty appears in a new light, as an ascesis. “The man who can grow callous to the pains of others becomes insensitive to his own.” It is no longer excitement we must seek, but apathy. A budding libertine, no doubt, needs violent emotions in order to feel the truth of his individual existence. But once he has possessed it, the pure form of crime will be enough to insure it. Crime has “a character of grandeur and sublimity which prevails and always will prevail over the dull charms of virtue” and which renders vain all the contingent satisfactions one might be tempted to expect. With a severity similar to Kant’s, and which has its source in the same puritan tradition, Sade conceives the free act only as an act free of all feeling. If it were to obey emotional motives, it would make us Nature’s slaves again and not autonomous subjects.
This choice is open to any individual, regardless of his situation. One of the victims locked up in the monk’s harem where Justine is languishing away manages to escape her fate by proving her worth. She stabs one of her companions with a viciousness that arouses the admiration of her masters and makes her the queen of the harem. Those who remain among the oppressed do so because they are poor-spirited, and they must not be pitied. “What can there possibly be in common between the man who can do everything and the one who does not dare do anything?” The contrast of the two words is significant. For Sade, if one dares, one can. Blanchot has emphasized the austerity of this morality. Almost all of Sade’s criminals die violen
t deaths, and it is their merit that transforms their misfortunes into glory. But in fact, death is not the worst of failures, and whatever the fate Sade reserves for his heroes, he assures them a destiny which allows them to fulfill themselves. This optimism comes from an aristocratic vision of mankind, which involves, in its implacable severity, a doctrine of predestination.
For this quality of mind which enables a few elect spirits to rule over a herd of condemned souls appears as an arbitrary dispensation of grace. Juliette was saved and Justine lost from the beginning of time. Even more interesting is the view that merit cannot entail success unless it is recognized. The strength of mind of Valérie and Juliette would have been to no avail had it not deserved the admiration of their tyrants. Divided and separated though they be, it must be admitted that they do bow down together before certain values, and they choose reality in the different guises which for Sade are, without question, equivalent to one another: orgasm-Nature-reason. Or, to be more precise, reality imposes itself upon them. The hero triumphs through their mediation. But what saves him finally is the fact that he has staked everything on the truth. Sade believes in an absolute which is beyond all contingencies and which can never disappoint the one who invokes it as a last resort.
It is only out of pusillanimity that everyone does not embrace such a sure ethic, for there can be no valid objection to it. It cannot offend a God who is a mere figment of the imagination; and since Nature is essentially division and hostility, to attack her is to conform to her all the more. Yielding to his naturalistic prejudices, Sade writes: “The only real crime would be to outrage Nature,” and adds immediately afterward: “Is it conceivable that Nature would provide us with the possibility of a crime that would outrage her?” She takes unto herself everything that happens. She even receives murder with indifference, since “the life principle of all creatures is death; this death is merely a matter of imagination.” Only man attaches importance to his own existence, but he “could completely wipe out his species without the universe’s feeling the slightest change.” He claims to have a sacred character which makes him untouchable, but he is only one animal among others. “Only man’s pride has made a crime of murder.”