Not just Free but Flesh Simone de Beauvoir’s Existentialist Approach to Sade’s Life and Work
The decades immediately following the Second World War saw extensive interest in the literary novels of Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade (1740-1814). Philosophers and critical theorists as diverse as Pierre Klossowski1, Georges Bataille2, Maurice Blanchot3, Roland Barthes4, Jacques Lacan5, Gilles Deleuze6, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno7 published on Sade in the post-war period. Existentialist thinkers were also interested in Sade and Sadean topics. For example, Albert Camus writes on Sade from a political standpoint in The Rebel8; and Jean-Paul Sartre deals with sadism from a phenomenological-ontological perspective in Being and Nothingness.9 Like her intellectual companions, Simone de Beauvoir was also interested in Sade. This interest resulted in the essay Must We Burn De Sade? which was originally published in two parts in the journal Les Temps Modernes.10 In comparison with the Sade studies of contemporaries like Blanchot, Deleuze, and Lacan, Must We Burn De Sade? – which will be discussed here – offers a unique perspective. Indeed, unlike her contemporaries who only discuss Sade’s literature11, Beauvoir focuses on Sade’s life and also the relation between his life and work. The latter is interpreted in two different ways. Thus, in Beauvoir’s study, three approaches can be distinguished. The first approach is biographical and focuses on Sade’s life and the mediating role of his crimes.12 The second relates to Sade’s literary oeuvre: his motivation to write and the content of his work in the context of his imprisonment. This analysis leads to the perspective that Sade would not have written anything had he not been imprisoned. However, one can also find a third perspective in Beauvoir’s essay: that Sade’s imprisonment does not fully explain his literary output. These three different approaches to Sade are not clearly distinguished in the commentaries on
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Beauvoir’s work. Although Beauvoir’s essay has generated interest from a wide range of thinkers and continues to generate controversy to this day,13 it is not always clear whether it is her interpretation of Sade’s life or her conception of the relationship between his life and work that is discussed by her commentators. Since a clear distinction between these three approaches is necessary to understand Beauvoir’s reading of Sade, the first objective of this essay is to distinguish them clearly. A further problem with the critical reception of Beauvoir’s essay is that sadistic enjoyment is rarely discussed, despite references to the enjoyment of the sadist throughout her essay. Specifically, this enjoyment is explored in three different ways: in the experience of pleasurable sensations, the transgression of the moral law, and in the sadist’s apathy or insensitivity. The second objective of this paper is to clarify this trichotomy. It will be argued that these various ways of understanding sadistic enjoyment parallel the three approaches Beauvoir uses in her understanding of Sade’s life and work. Moreover, these three different approaches provide an insight into the various forms of sadistic enjoyment. The paper is divided into four parts. First, Beauvoir’s interpretation of Sade’s cruelty during his life will be discussed and connected to the notion of enjoyment in terms of pleasurable sensations. Second, we shall examine how Beauvoir understands Sade’s literature as a reaction to his imprisonment and it will be argued that this explains Sade’s transgressive enjoyment. In the third section we question the deeper motives of Sade’s literary output and how this is connected to apathetic enjoyment. In the final section it will be evaluated how Beauvoir’s perspectives on Sade’s life and work are related to each other and how her analysis of Sade integrates with her existentialism. We will also conclude that while Beauvoir’s existential approach to Sade is unique it also shares a formal characteristic with the readings of her contemporaries, notably Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot.
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1. Sade’s sexual peculiarities
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”14 With these famous words Beauvoir opens the second part of SS, a book in which she attempts to eradicate the deep-rooted conviction that woman is born with unchangeable essences. In particular, she advances the thesis that passivity is imposed on women by a patriarchal society. According to Beauvoir, Sade’s life should be understood in the same way. Sade’s deeds do not reflect an innate predisposition but are instead a construction whereby he seeks to attain a specific goal. First, we will explain what Sade’s goal is and how he tries to attain it. Second, it will be clarified how this is related to the experience of enjoyment. For most of his life – Beauvoir emphasises – Sade was a law-abiding person who generally followed the customs of his society. In addition to obeying the laws of his time he participated in cultural life, was an officer in the army, accepted various kinds of employment, and acceded to his father’s request to marry Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil in 1763. Beauvoir argues that despite following the rules and regulations of his society, Sade dreams of an unbridled freedom that ignores the other and reduces the other to nothing. Regarding this desire for an absolute freedom, Beauvoir says: “There was only one place where he could assert himself as such, and that was not the bed in which he was received only too submissively by a prudish wife, but in the brothel where he bought the right to unleash his fantasies.” (MBS? 15) Soon after his marriage, Sade visits brothels where he abuses young women. In the closed space of the brothel his dream of an absolute freedom was realized in the figure of the tyrant. According to Beauvoir, Sade falls back upon his family history. Indeed, Sade was the scion of an aristocratic and powerful family whose prestige and position was waning. He relies on his family’s past and brings it back to life in the brothel. However, Sade’s behaviour is not an attempt to restore faded glory, nor is he solely determined by his
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origins, rather he actively uses the past of his libertine and powerful family because in the role of the tyrannical despot he can express his desire for sovereignty. Beauvoir interprets Sade’s behaviour as the manifestation of a desire for unbridled freedom. However, she argues, this understanding clarifies only one side of Sade’s life. Indeed, Sade is characterized by both a desire for the other and a lack of involvement with others. Beauvoir links these aspects together with the claim that Sade’s violence functions as a solution to his lack of empathy.15 She writes that “his sadism strove to compensate for the absence of one necessary element [empathy] which he lacked.” (MBS? 33) Thus, although Beauvoir conceives of Sade’s violent behaviour first as an expression of freedom she argues that his tortures meet a desire for the other. This remarkable statement requires further clarification. Key to understanding Beauvoir’s reading of Sade is her distinction between body and flesh. She claims that during the intense sensation of pain the human body transforms into flesh. A clarification of two aspects can help us to understand this distinction. First, in The Second Sex Beauvoir suggests that the human body is not a dead thing but alive, which means that the body is an expression of our personal desires, attitudes, and expectations (TSS 43).16 Therefore, Beauvoir calls the body the psycho-physiological unity of body and soul. Consequently, people respond with a personal and involved attitude: one reads in the body of the other specific desires and acts in accordance with the interpretation of an expressive body. Second, we have all experienced the phenomenon of forgetting hunger while watching a fascinating movie. This distance towards one’s own body not only characterizes a certain part of our activities but is a necessary condition for functioning during daily life. Too much preoccupation with the body is a hindrance to our normal actions and is reserved for welldefined places and moments. In summary, having a body implies both that it expresses a soul (i.e., personal desires, attitudes etc.) and that it does not preoccupy one’s attention
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continuously. During the experience of extreme physical pain, however, both these aspects of embodiment are missing. The hurting person cries, groans and screams. The face retracts into a spastic cramp, an animal spasm that communicates nothing and where the recognizable image is obliterated. Whereas in normal life the body expresses one’s soul, in agony the animated body is destroyed. Moreover, it is impossible not to focus on a wounded body. The distance, which in everyday life keeps the body in the background, fades away and makes the body come to the forefront as a haunting instance. Thus, pain means the destruction of the body and the breakthrough of the flesh as the impersonal, anonymous dimension of existence in which one is passively delivered and which one cannot escape. Applying this distinction between body and flesh to Sade’s work, Beauvoir reasons that Sade’s violent deeds intend to reduce the other to flesh. However, she holds it does not follow that Sade is ultimately focused on the victim’s death. Beauvoir points to the fact that Sade himself never committed murder but rather stops his deeds at the moment his victim collapses. This observation has a central place in Beauvoir’s interpretation. The fact that the victim as a person is almost disappearing, but is nonetheless still alive, makes possible a relationship with the other. Thus, in order to retain a relation with the other Sade faces a difficult task: he must balance reducing the other to passive flesh without sacrificing the other’s life.17 How should we understand this? If Sade had killed his victims then he would have only faced mute objects without freedom or the possibility of reaction. However, by reducing the other to flesh without going to the end – which is the other’s death – he is able to hear the victim’s lamentations, cries, and wails. According to Beauvoir, this is exactly what Sade wants. When Sade stops his deeds at the moment before death – when the other only feels pain – he is searching for the victim’s cries during their long drawn-out agony. The reason is that these cries, wails, and lamentations express a reaction or resistance against Sade’s cruel deeds. Whereas death is the
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radical destruction of freedom, the cries at the moment the victim is reduced to flesh express a residue of freedom. Sade does not only want to reduce the other to flesh, he is also interested in the victim’s freedom. But what then is the reason for this interest? Why does Sade, although he reduces the other to an anonymous thing, want to perceive a glimpse of freedom in the other? According to Beauvoir, Sade reasons as follows: “In his revolt, the tortured object asserts himself as my fellow creature.” (MBS? 35) Besides passivity, Sade is also looking for the victim’s resistance because the freedom entailed by this reaction reflects Sade’s own freedom. Although their freedom is entirely different – Sade’s is absolutely free while the victim only expresses a last trace in crying – the victim shares with Sade the very fact of freedom. A crucial step in Beauvoir’s argument is that this identification enables Sade to see himself not only as free but also as flesh.18 It is first by reducing the other to pure flesh, and then by perceiving his own freedom in the other’s cries that Sade becomes aware of his own flesh. Through this awareness Sade recognizes that his life is embedded in an impersonal dimension of existence – the flesh – which precedes his freedom. According to Beauvoir, Sade’s longing for the other is satisfied herein. Indeed, from Beauvoir’s perspective, it is only by sharing the same unchangeable impersonal background, namely the flesh, that Sade experiences a relation with the other. In this context Beauvoir pays attention to Sade’s enjoyment for the first time. Here, she describes his enjoyment in terms of rage and fury. According to Beauvoir, the enjoyment of Blangis in The 120 Days of Sodom can be understood as the literary representation of Sade’s own enjoyment: “Horrible shrieks and dreadful oaths escaped his heaving breast. Flames seemed to dart from his eyes. He frothed at the mouth…he whinnied… and he even strangled his partner.” (MBS? 32) These jubilant cries indicate that Sade’s enjoyment is stronger than ordinary sexual sensations. The intensity of Sade’s enjoyment, Beauvoir explains, rests in his extreme lack of empathy. Sade’s satisfaction of his desire for the other is
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more intense because he breaks through the absolute isolation which in normal life hinders his strong desire. Here we find Beauvoir making a direct connection between sadistic enjoyment and the mediating role of cruelty: “No one would seek sensation so passionately and recklessly, even if it had the violence of an epileptic seizure. The ultimate trauma must, rather, guarantee by its obviousness the success of an undertaking, whose stake exceeds it infinitely.” (MBS? 44) This “undertaking” is the revelation of the relationship with the other through cruelty. Thus, when Beauvoir examines Sade’s life, she understands his enjoyment not as related to extreme violence as such but to violence as far it makes possible a relation with the other. Sade’s enjoyment in terms of the experience of pleasurable sensations is an effect of being able to feel the other.
2. Sade’s imprisonment and literature
On June 27, 1772, the Marquis’ life changes irrevocably when he gives some prostitutes poisoned sweets. Sade is condemned to death but manages to escape and in the following years succeeds in a sustained effort to mislead his pursuers. Five years later, he is imprisoned in Vincennes and then moved to the Bastille. He is liberated during the French Revolution when the Bastille is attacked by the rebels. Sade’s imprisonment occupies a central place in Beauvoir’s interpretation of Sade’s life. She directly links his literary activity to this fact. Specifically, she understands a particular part of Sade’s literature, the philosophical aspect, in terms of three reactions to his incarceration: defence, apology, and revenge. According to Beauvoir, these reactions function as three different explanations of Sade’s literature, and this literary activity also causes enjoyment. Before one can understand how Beauvoir understands the relation between Sade’s imprisonment, philosophy, and enjoyment, it is necessary to summarise the main content of Sade’s philosophical writings.
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In Sade’s novel Juliette, we find the libertine monk Claude reading Therese the Philosopher, in which pornographic and philosophical passages alternate. This mixture of philosophy and pornography is also found in Sade’s prose, which may at first sight be surprising for those who have never read Sade. One expects violence and sex but no theoretical reflections. However, those who are somewhat familiar with Sade’s oeuvre know Philosophy in the Bedroom. This book includes one of Sade’s best known dissertations: Yet another effort, Frenchmen, if you would become Republicans. The radical philosophy and apology for murder which are exposed in this pamphlet are heavily influenced by the materialistic philosophy of the eighteenth century. The theoretical reflections of Denis Diderot, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert and Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach comprise Sade’s intellectual background.19 In her essay, Beauvoir pays a lot of attention to Sade’s philosophy. For instance, Beauvoir points out that Sade attacks eighteenth-century civil society, holding that the values and laws of society affirm and maintain established and unjust power relations. For Sade, the altruistic virtues of brotherhood and charity are mere inventions of the bourgeoisie in order to oppress the masses. However, for Beauvoir, Sade’s unmasking of ideological mystification is not aimed at achieving social equality. The source of his attack lies elsewhere; Beauvoir stresses that his aversion is grounded in his philosophy of nature. Social order, for Sade, is not organized in conformity with nature’s laws. He attributes this to a lack of insight into nature’s essence. In this context, Beauvoir quotes Sade: “When we look at Nature we readily understand that everything we decide and organize is as far removed from the perfection of her views and as inferior to her as the laws of the society of blind men would be to our own.” (MBS? 65). In Sade’s philosophical dissertations both metaphysical insight into Nature and reason’s imperative to live in conformity with Nature are central. From this perspective, Sade’s program is similar to the rationalist projects of Bacon, Descartes and Spinoza: to destroy all illusions.
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When Beauvoir goes deeper into Sade’s philosophy of nature, she writes: “Nature retains its sacred character for de Sade. One and indivisible, it is an absolute, outside of which there is no reality.” (MBS? 65) As an exponent of modern thinking, Sade also replaces God by Natura naturans constantly bringing matter into life. For Sade, Nature is a machine producing new life continuously. Besides life, death is also an effect of Nature’s work. Nature needs matter in order to continue her creative activity but since matter is not inexhaustibly available Nature must destroy the products she first created. Destroyed life and freed matter enables Nature to continue her activity endlessly. Thus, from nature’s perspective, death is a necessary condition for nature and not merely an end. Death is a metabolic process which enables dissolved matter to live in another form of existence. Sade says that “what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true end, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter, what every modern philosopher acknowledges as one of Nature’s fundamental laws.”20 In summary, according to Sade, Nature is the eternal movement of matter from one form to another. This eternal movement is regulated by creation and destruction as the two main laws of Nature. According to Beauvoir, Sade’s materialist philosophical background reveals the real reason for his attack on eighteenth-century civil society and its values. The reason why Sade wants to destroy virtues such as compassion and parental love is that they maintain social life. However, Beauvoir points out that one ought to be careful here: Sade’s argument against the stability of the power relations is not that it hinders social equality. Sade attacks the fact of affirming social structures because this act is not in accordance with Nature’s cycle of life and death. Indeed, what Nature wants is creation and destruction, the endless movement of matter which is hindered by inert, stable structures and civil virtues. The affirmation of eighteenthcentury civil society is a coagulation of matter’s movement. The way the virtuous and morally good Justine dies, Beauvoir argues, should be understood from this perspective. By letting her
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die by lightning, Sade wants to indicate that life must be in conformity with Nature and that Nature will inevitably take revenge when this requirement is neglected. On the other hand, many of Sade’s philosophical dissertations are a long eulogy on vice. While from an anthropomorphic perspective, murder is considered as morally reprehensible, from Sade’s metaphysical perspective it is at the service of Nature. Destruction of life frees new material which enables nature to continue its productive activity. Sade writes: “Destruction being one of the chief laws of Nature, nothing that destroys can be criminal; how might an action which so well serves Nature ever be outrageous to her?” (JNE 237-8) This is the reason why murderous Juliette (Justine’s sister) is not punished, as expected, but rewarded. Juliette is the real heroine of Sade’s universe because she helps Nature to destroy life. How does Beauvoir relate this aspect of Sade’s literature to the vicissitudes of Sade’s life? When Sade is imprisoned he comes to recognise that his actions – which he believes to be innocent – do not conform to the social order. He realises that if he wants to be included in society he will need to ignore his individual pleasures. However, given the existential importance of his sexual peculiarities with regard to his relations with others, he will not give up his actions. According to Beauvoir, Sade’s literature is a means to defend his sexual behaviour. Specifically, by writing his theoretical dissertations Sade tries to justify his strange and cruel deeds by understanding them as part of a larger metaphysical project. Sade wants to defend his bizarre behaviour by making his readers believe that his life is in line with Nature’s need for destruction and his crimes motivated by the search for truth. This metaphysical anchoring, Sade hopes, will convince society to accept his bizarre conduct. Thus, while Sade realises that his actions are incompatible with the moral mores, his materialist philosophy is aimed at the perpetuation of bizarre pleasures without danger of being imprisoned by the authorities. In other words, Beauvoir argues that Sade’s philosophy expresses a desire for autonomy and the desire to have his individuality recognised.
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Beauvoir also pays attention to those passages in Sade’s oeuvre which indicate that his literature is rooted in another source. More specifically, she refers to the passages in which Sade’s thinking clearly resembles the mechanistic world view of Julien Offray de La Mettrie, author of Man the Machine. In these passages, Sade states that human life not only is a product of Nature but that Nature is also at work in a person’s life. A human being is in the hands of Nature and Nature continues in the cycle of her own creations. This naturalisation of human life not only considers a person’s body but also a person’s actions. This means that cruelty does not have to be understood as a conscious choice to live in conformity with Nature. Cruelty rather means the efficacy of Nature with the sadist’s as her servants. In Juliette, for instance, one reads: “But were one really to wish to persuade oneself that this talk about freedom is all empty prattle and that we are driven to whatever we do by a force more puissant than ourselves.”21 It is in passages like these that the link between cruelty and personal responsibility is destroyed. According to Beauvoir, this amounts to an appeal to the reader to help Sade free himself of guilty feelings.22 That Sade feels guilt, Beauvoir notices, is beyond dispute. For example, she mentions the emotional upheaval that his imprisonment causes: “De Sade reacted at first with prayer, humility and shame. He begged to be allowed to see his wife, accusing himself of having grievously offended her. He begged to confess and open his heart to her.” (MBS? 18) This feeling of guilt not only shows that Sade appreciates morality and realizes his mistake, his regret also reveals his emotional involvement with regard to society. In short, when Sade develops his metaphysical system, this is not only an expression of his desire for the recognition of his autonomy as detached from society but also an expression of solidarity with and attachment to society and its values. Despite the fact that Sade’s literature expresses attachment to society no reader is left untouched by his novels. According to Beauvoir, indignation arises because Sade’s literature crosses the reader’s moral boundaries. At first sight, the turmoil caused by his prose seems to
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be an unintended effect. For Sade, developing a cosmology of evil is the only way to justify his actions: by doing so, Sade inevitably and unintentionally exceeds his reader’s moral limits. However, Beauvoir claims that Sade is well aware of this effect; he knows his audience and is very aware of his reader’s limits. Moreover, through his writings Sade consciously violates the moral boundaries: uproar and indignation are not a by-product but the explicit aim of Sade’s literary activity. The basis of this intended transgression is Sade’s resentment, which, like freedom and guilt, is rooted in his incarceration. Sade wants to avenge himself against the Old Regime which excluded him by putting him in jail. Consequently, the development of an immense philosophical system channels his resentment. Sade consciously develops an atheistic philosophy and apology for murder which defies moral boundaries because by this transgression he can take revenge on society. According to Beauvoir, this literary activity, driven by resentment, causes enjoyment: “He delighted in the shocking effects of truth.” (MBS? 50). Although Beauvoir points out that Sade wants to live in conformity with truth, she also stresses that he enjoys the fact that this truth defies society. We may thus conclude that Beauvoir directly associates Sade’s enjoyment with his transgression of moral boundaries. In other words, when Beauvoir considers Sade’s philosophy as an expression of resentment, she understands his enjoyment from the perspective of the transgression of society’s moral categories.23
3. Sade’s dream and literature
When Beauvoir explains Sade’s philosophical reflections as a reaction to his incarceration, she understands the relation between Sade’s life and work as contingent. Sade, as this interpretation implies, would not have written if society had not imprisoned him. However, Beauvoir argues that Sade’s literature has another, deeper cause. His imprisonment
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accelerated his decision to write, but the real cause lies elsewhere, and therefore in fact the link between his life and work is not contingent. In support of her argument, Beauvoir points to the reader’s inability to identify with his characters. The reader cannot gain insight into Sade’s libertines because the reader is not permitted access to their inner life and underlying motives. Sade’s characters seem to be almost non-psychological entities. Beauvoir holds that in Sade’s literary universe the libertines’ apathy is central.24 How should we understand the strange but interesting thesis that the sadist is characterized by apathy? What is the origin of this insensitivity? In what sense does this aspect of Sade’s literature suggest that Sade would have written even though he was not in prison? Before answering these questions, the apathy of the sadist will be discussed. Normally, human beings live in mutual involvement with each other, which implies that a person cares about whether her or his acts will be harmful to others or not. The one who lives by mutual involvement takes into account the possibility that s/he will not be able to continue her or his behaviour without hindrance. This personal involvement is associated with an emotional, reactive attitude: one is responsive to the emotions and expectations of others. For example, a person spontaneously shows compassion when her or his actions hurt someone else. However, everyday life requires not only focusing on the other but also selfinvolvement. Indeed, much of our natural affections cannot be understood as detached from our “self” in a broad sense. Emotions such as shame and fear imply involvement with one’s body or self-image. This is the case not only for our emotions but also for our behaviour. First, actions express personal interests and preferences, and thus involvement. Someone becomes involved in what s/he does, and it is by this involvement in her/his actions that s/he expresses her/his interests. Second, acts express self-interest: generally spoken, one is directed to what is good for one and one’s interests.
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In contrast with normal life, in Sade’s literary world the libertine is apathetic. This is echoed clearly in the following passage wherein Clairwill says to Juliette: “If after you have done calculating you end by approving, as I am very sure you shall, the extinction of all sensibility in a pupil, then the first branch to lop off the tree is necessarily pity.” (JUL 281) The sadist’s apathy means that he destroys the reactive attitude. The sadist is isolated from the daily circuit in which people spontaneously engage with each other and anticipate each other’s opinions, emotions, and expectations. However, according to Beauvoir, the libertine does not merely destroy involvement with others. She writes that “de Sade conceives the free act only as an act free of all feeling.” (MBS? 78) Beauvoir holds that Sade’s libertines not only destroy pity but all feelings. This means that they also destroy their self-involvement, i.e., the fear and shame that spontaneously arise in certain situations. According to Beauvoir, this is another reason why Juliette, and not her sister, is the true heroine of Sade’s universe. While Justine is suffering Juliette herself is not taken by the sensation of pain, and even ignores it. According to Beauvoir, Juliette is the real heroine of Sade’s universe because her radical insensitivity is an expression of the destruction of self-involvement. This apathetic, insensitive attitude also implies that the sadist lacks the two aspects of self-involvement noted above. First, the libertine eliminates his personal preferences and interests. If sexual preference is normally given to one’s wife, then the libertine also has to focus on his younger sister or mother. Second, the sadistic crime does not aim at defending the sadist’s interests. Sade is situated beyond personal selfishness. In particular, Beauvoir argues that sadistic negation should not be understood as a complacent affirmation of superiority. In claiming that in the sadistic universe apathy is central Beauvoir reminds us that the sadist radically breaks with conventional attitudes. In ordinary life, one who assumes such a detached, apathetic attitude is inevitably viewed as cruel and inhuman. Thus, the sadist’s attitude is opposed to normal life and can be described as unnatural, forced, and a mere
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construction. This implies, for Beauvoir, that the sadist’s libertinism is not a relaxation of body and soul but requires training. However, Beauvoir pays no attention to the specific methods the sadist uses to assume the unnatural, apathetic attitude. In this context, one may refer to the Sade study of Klossowski: “With quantity the objects are depreciated; the reality both of the other and of the self are dissolved.” (SMN 97). Here, Klossowski argues that it is precisely the excess of criminal acts in Sade’s literature that permits the reduction of the other to an object and the destruction of their concrete reality. Thus, the rapid succession and repetition of crimes entails that the sadist will not be involved in the suffering of his victim. In Sade one can read the same idea as follows: “Well, this cure is quite as sweet as it is sure, for it consists simply in reiterating the deeds that have made us remorseful, in repeating them so often that the habit either of committing these deeds or of getting away with them scot-free completely undermines every possibility of feeling badly about them.” (JUL 17). In her focus on the apathy of the sadist, Beauvoir appeals to the ethical notion of apathy found in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason.25 Kant holds that apathy is a necessary condition for morality. The practical will of the moral individual may not be determined by his ‘pathological’ nature, i.e., his desire for pleasure and well-being. For Kant, apathetic obedience to the moral law implies the efficacy of freedom understood in a negative way: one may not be affected by and should be detached from spontaneous and natural desires. According to Beauvoir, apathy in Sade is similarly grounded in freedom: the sadist distances himself from any kind of spontaneous focus on the other or self. However, Beauvoir stresses that in Sade’s literature the libertine’s freedom of involvement does not represent Sade’s own emotional life. Despite his commitment to an unhindered freedom in the brothels, Sade cannot free himself from his pity and remorse. Moreover, as we have discussed in the first part of our essay, through his cruelty Sade is spontaneously searching for contact with the other. In short, the sadistic universe contrasts with Sade’s life. The apathetic libertine in Sade’s literature
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overcomes the spontaneous desire for the other which thwarts, in everyday life, Sade’s own desire for freedom. Therefore, according to Beauvoir, we must understand the libertine’s apathy as a literary, epic representation of Sade’s own thwarted desire for absolute freedom. In his literature Sade projects a dream which he cannot realise in everyday life. While Sade’s life is characterised by the desire for both unbridled freedom and the other, as the first reader of his own prose, Sade can taste in the libertine’s apathy his own desired unbridled freedom. This recognition of apathy, Beauvoir argues, implies that one cannot fully understand the relation between Sade’s life and work if this relation is considered as merely contingent. Sade’s prose not only is a reaction to a particular event – his imprisonment – but also a compensation for what he is not able to achieve: unbridled and absolute freedom. This leads us to the third kind of enjoyment Beauvoir mentions alongside enjoyment in terms of the experience of pleasurable sensations and transgression. When Beauvoir goes deeper into the libertines’ apathy in Sade’s prose, she writes: “It is no longer excitement we must seek, but apathy.” (MBS? 77) In Sade’s prose, the libertine faces a special and uncommon kind of enjoyment. Unlike the experience of enjoyment in normal life, Beauvoir holds, sadistic enjoyment has nothing to do with the experience of pleasurable sensations. Indeed, this kind of enjoyment implies immediate self-involvement: these are “my” sensations. According to Beauvoir, sadism rather has to do with insensitivity and the absolute negation of sensations. However, this does not mean that the sadist enjoys his insensitivity towards the pain of his victim. Indeed, this would imply that the sadist’s enjoyment, albeit in a negative way, is still based on the relationship with the other. From Beauvoir’s point of view the sadist’s enjoyment should rather be understood as an effect of the awareness that he acts independently of any involvement. The sadist enjoys the fact that he is able to act in absolute freedom. In summary, when Beauvoir pays attention to apathetic enjoyment in Sade’s literature she understands this as the enjoyment of unbridled freedom. Therefore, with
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Beauvoir’s thesis that Sade’s literature compensates for his lack of freedom in daily life, it can be concluded that in her view, Sade himself enjoys his literature not only because of the transgression of the moral boundaries but also because his literary universe is a reflection of his dream.
4. Beauvoir’s existentialist reading of Sade
In the secondary literature it is often unclear which of Beauvoir’s perspectives is discussed. Indeed, Beauvoir not only discusses Sade’s cruelty but also the relationship between Sade’s life and work. Thus far these approaches have been clearly separated, and Beauvoir’s three ways of understanding sadistic enjoyment have been considered. It is clear that each way of enjoyment corresponds to one of the three perspectives. However, despite this threefold distinction, one can also perceive several similarities between the three conceptions of enjoyment Beauvoir mentions in her study of Sade’s life and work. It is often said that the main goal of the sadist’s life is enjoyment. As the common sense conception of sadism holds, the sadist in the first place is only interested in enjoyment and therefore, he is even able to enjoy the cruellest deeds. In Beauvoir’s essay, this idea has no central place. In each of her three perspectives enjoyment is not seen as a goal but only as an unintended effect of a particular activity. Another similarity is found between the first and third perspective. While the first understands enjoyment in terms of the experience of pleasurable sensations, which is ignored in the third case, in both perspectives enjoyment is related to an existential problem. From Beauvoir’s perspective on Sade’s life, enjoyment is an effect of the experience of attachment to the other; the libertine’s enjoyment in Sade’s literature and the way that Sade personally enjoys his own literature both relate to the experience and reflection of absolute freedom. Besides this, there also is another similarity
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between the first and third which makes them different from the second perspective. This difference considers the relationship between enjoyment and transgression, understood as exceeding moral boundaries. From the second perspective, enjoyment and transgression are directly linked. According to Beauvoir, Sade wants to take revenge on society. While writing provocative literature Sade explicitly transgresses the reader’s moral categories and that causes enjoyment. In short, Sade enjoys the transgression of the moral law. Neither Beauvoir’s first nor third perspective entail a direct link between enjoyment and transgression. Although both Sade and the libertine are inevitably regarded as morally reprehensible, they do not enjoy transgression of the moral law as such. Their enjoyment rather has to do with the experience of a relation with the other or absolute freedom. Both in the first and in the last perspective, transgression is not a goal but a by-product of the solution of Sade’s existential problem with others and freedom. In addition to the similarities between the different interpretations of enjoyment Beauvoir mentions, one can also perceive a similarity between the three perspectives from which she writes about Sade. In the first perspective Beauvoir focuses on the role of cruelty in Sade’s life; in the second and third perspective she discusses the relationship between Sade’s life and work. It will be argued that these three perspectives should be understood against the background of Beauvoir’s existentialist philosophy. In other words, she interprets Sade’s life and the relationship between his life and work as a singular case which reveals in a magnified way a more general existential problem. In order to understand this we shall now turn to a consideration of Beauvoir’s existentialist view. Beauvoir explicates her existentialism for the first time in Pyrrhus et cinéas and three years later, in 1947, she presents a more developed version in The Ethics of Ambiguity. The title of the latter work summarises the core of her philosophy, namely that human existence is characterized by an ambiguous condition. She writes: “In spite of so many stubborn lies, at
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every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude.”26 Freedom is a central concept for Beauvoir, which she understands as the ability to transcend the facts of one’s existence. She posits that this freedom is expressed primarily in the desire for autonomy. However, for Beauvoir human life is also based on attachment to facts which one cannot freely choose. Everyone is passively subject to an impersonal dimension of existence that precedes one’s liberty. According to Beauvoir, a person not only gains insight into this ambiguous condition but attempts to reconcile these two aspects. Love is cited as an instructive example of this balancing act since it is primarily characterized by both preserving one’s singularity and being drawn into a dynamic which erases personal identity.27 Both freedom and attachment to an impersonal dimension of life take a central place in the three perspectives through which Beauvoir interprets both Sade’s life and the relationship between his life and work. Let us first examine Beauvoir’s interpretation of Sade’s life. Here, as we have seen, Sade’s deeds are interpreted by Beauvoir in two different ways. Although Sade’s behaviour is without a doubt morally reprehensible, Beauvoir understands it as an expression of absolute freedom. However, at the same time, Beauvoir argues, Sade’s violent deeds intend to reduce the other to pure flesh. The ultimate goal of this deed is to reveal that Sade’s life itself is embedded in and passively delivered to an impersonal dimension, namely the flesh. In short, Sade’s deeds are an expression of the ambiguity of life. In the second perspective Beauvoir focuses on the relation between Sade’s imprisonment and his philosophical treatises. As has been shown, here she argues that Sade’s philosophy has a double meaning. On the one hand, in writing his treatises Sade intends to defend the sexual peculiarities that contradict existing moral codes. This means that Sade wants to save his autonomy and freedom. On the other hand, Beauvoir holds that literature is the means by which Sade tries to resolve his feelings of guilt. Although at first glance Sade
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seems to be driven by hate and fury against society he is deeply involved in social values. Sade’s life, Beauvoir argues, is embedded in the moral and juridical structures of society which shape and precede his individual choice and freedom. Thus, as is the case with Sade’s cruel deeds, the relation between his life and works expresses the ambiguity of life. Finally, in the third perspective, Beauvoir focuses on the libertine’s apathy in Sade’s literature, i.e., the radical detachment from others and the self which reflects Sade’s dream. This reveals that Beauvoir examines the relation between Sade’s life and work from Beauvoir’s existentialist theme of freedom. Therefore, one should read Must We Burn De Sade? against the background of the general existentialist schema in which she stresses life’s ambiguity, that is, one’s freedom and attachment to the impersonal dimensions of life. Our analysis suggests that Beauvoir was especially interested in Sade because his life and the relationship between his life and works reveal in a magnified way that which is central to her existentialist philosophy.
References
1
Pierre Klossowski, Sade My Neighbour, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991). Hereafter SMN. 2 Georges Bataille, ‘De Sade’s Sovereign Man’, in Eroticism: Death & Sensuality, trans. Mary Dalwood (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1962), 164-76. Hereafter SSM. 3 Maurice Blanchot, Lautréamont and Sade, trans. Michelle Kendall and Stuart Kendall Stanford (California: Stanford University Press, 2004). Hereafter LS. 4 Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, trans. Richard Miller (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989). 5 Jacques Lacan, ‘Kant with Sade’, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 645-68. Hereafter KS. 6 Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, trans. Jean McNeil (New York: Zone Books, 1991). Hereafter CC. 7 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality’, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. by John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 81-119. 8 Albert Camus, The Rebel. An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. Anthony Bower (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953), 32-43. 9 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1963), 379-412. 10 Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Faut-il brûler Sade?’, Les Temps Modernes, 74 (1951), 1002-33; Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Faut-il brûler Sade? (fin)’, Les Temps Modernes, 75 (1952), 1197-1230. From now on the English translation of Beauvoir’s study will be used: Simone de Beauvoir, Must We Burn De Sade?, trans. Annette Michelson (New York: Peter Nevill Ltd, 1953). Hereafter MBS?. 11 An exception is Pierre Klossowski, who briefly discusses Sade’s life. See Pierre Klossowski, ‘Eléments d’une étude psychanalytique sur le marquis de Sade’, Revue française de psychoanalyse, 3/4 (1933), 458-74. 12 When discussing Beauvoir’s reading of Sade’s life ‘Sade’ will be used. On the other hand, the words ‘sadist’ or ‘libertine’ are used when referring to the characters of Sade’s prose.
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See Debra Bergoffen, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir. Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 113-38; Debra Bergoffen, ‘Menage à trois: Freud, Beauvoir, and the Marquis de Sade’, Continental Philosophy Review, 2 (2001), 151-63; Judith Butler, ‘Beauvoir on Sade: Making Sexuality on Sade’, in The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Claudia Card (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 168-88; Karen Green, ‘De Sade, de Beauvoir and Dworkin’, Australian Feminist Studies, 15 (2000), 69-80. 14 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Howard Madison Parshley (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 301. Hereafter SS. 15 In her essay, Beauvoir often stresses that Sade desires the other. Therefore, one cannot hold that Sade only desires absolute freedom and that he neglects the other. However, Bergoffen holds that Sade neglects life’s ambiguity. See Bergoffen, ‘Menage à trois: Freud, Beauvoir, and the Marquis de Sade’, 159-61. 16 Here, Beauvoir uses Husserl’s distinction between material and living bodies. See Sara Heinämaa, Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference. Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 21-51; Sara Heinämaa, ‘The Body as Instrument and as Expression’, in The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, 66-86. 17 Although he does not discuss Sade’s life but the characters in his prose, Lacan also stresses that the sadist does not want to kill the victim but keeps her/him alive. See Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, trans. by Dennis Porter (Routledge: New York, 1992), 261. Hereafter EP. Lacan relates this observation to the fact that the sadist’s project is still captured by the symbolic order and is not able to reach “the real object”. For a thorough discussion of this reading see Marc De Kesel, Eros and Ethics. Reading Jacques Lacan’s Seminar VII, trans. Sigi Jöttkandt (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009), 135-140. Both interpretations are opposed to Sartre’s interpretation of sadism which holds that the sadist reduces the other to a mute object. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 379-412. 18 In her interpretation of Beauvoir, Bergoffen links this interpretation to Lacan’s mirror stage. See Debra Bergoffen, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir, 125. Since Sade identifies himself with his victim, this reference to Lacan is not wrong. However, unlike Beauvoir, Lacan understands aggression as the effect of identification. 19 For a historical introduction to Sade’s philosophy, see Caroline Warman, Sade: from Materialism to Pornography (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002). 20 Marquis de Sade, Justine, philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings, trans. Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse (London: Arrow Book Limited, 1965), 330. Hereafter JNE. 21 Marquis de Sade, Juliette, trans. by Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 14. Hereafter JUL. 22 Bataille and Deleuze defend the opposite thesis. They hold that Sade’s philosophical dissertations aren’t directed to the reader but deny them. Their argument is based on two observations: on the one hand, the fact that the main literary technique of Sade’s prose is repetition which destroys all meaning and renders any normal reading impossible; on the other hand, the fact that Sade’s cold, strict and abstract reasoning seems to exclude the reader. See Georges Bataille, ‘De Sade and the Normal Man’, in Eroticism: Death & Sensuality, 177-96 (189); Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, 18-19. 23 The fact that Beauvoir understands Sade’s transgression as a reaction to a contingent circumstance (his imprisonment) is obvious. Indeed, it is often said that transgression expresses an innate disposition or a natural desire to transgress the moral law. 24 Not only Beauvoir, but also Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Klossowski, and Lacan stress the sadist’s apathy. See Georges Bataille, ‘De Sade’s Sovereign Man’, 171-72; Maurice Blanchot, Lautréamont and Sade, 36-39; Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, 26-30; Pierre Klossowski, Sade My Neighbour, 96-98; Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 77-80. 25 Also Deleuze, Lacan and Foucault associate Kant with Sade: Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, 81-90; Jacques Lacan, ‘Kant with Sade’, 645-668; Michel Foucault, ‘Préface à la transgression’, in Dits et écrits I, 1954-1975 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), 261-278 (268-269). 26 Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Citadel Press, 1976), 9. 27 This short introduction is not intended as a complete summary of Beauvoir’s philosophy. Two central concepts, which she repeatedly returns to in her essay on Sade, are explained. This should be sufficient to understand the argument of the text. For a more extended introduction to Beauvoir’s thought, see Barbara Andrew, ‘Care, Freedom, and Reciprocity in the Ethics of Simone de Beauvoir’, Philosophy Today, 3/4 (1998), 290-300; Eva Gothlin, ‘Reading Simone de Beauvoir with Martin Heidegger’, in The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, 45-65; Sonia Kruks, ‘Beauvoir: the Weight of Situation’, in Simone de Beauvoir. A Critical Reader, ed. Elisabeth Fallaize (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 43-71; Monika Langer, ‘Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty on Ambiguity’, in The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, 87-106.
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