Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy
He might be best known for sex and violence, but Lode Lauwaert shows that the Marquis du Sade sits at a crossroads of surprisingly disparate branches of western culture: abstract art, Tom and Jerry, gnosticism, Kant’s moral philosophy, romanticism, scholasticism, stoicism and more. To explore these links, Lauwaert reads six interpretations of Sade in French postwar philosophy – looking specifically at Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes and Gilles Deleuze.
Lauwaert shows how these interpretations of de Sade can be read as a lively introduction to a postmodern way of thinking that is often considered inaccessible, but which dominated the French intellectual scene after the Second World War. This perspective takes the subject away from the centre of the universe and sees it as an expression of a non-human force. And that helps us to better understand contemporary thinkers such as Catherine Malabou and Quentin Meillassoux.
Key Features- Focuses on the philosophical reception of de Sade in the years after the Second World War
- Will also appeal to those working in postmodernism, literary theory, critical theory, cultural studies and psychoanalysis
Introduction
1. Godlessness, Purity, and Simulacra
2. The Terror of Writing
3. Apathy, Energy, and Transgression
4. Ethics and Modernity
5. Sadism as Formalism
6. Literature and the Clinical
Conclusion
Bibliography
Endnotes.
According to Lauwaert, many French thinkers wrote about Sade’s work in relation to recurring themes and ideas in their own oeuvres. [...] He sees each of their engagements with Sade as embedded within some thematic concern in each of their own works, and thus posits that a stronger link can be established between Sade’s ideas and post-War French philosophy.
According to Lauwaert, many French thinkers wrote about Sade’s work in relation to recurring themes and ideas in their own oeuvres. [...] He sees each of their engagements with Sade as embedded within some thematic concern in each of their own works, and thus posits that a stronger link can be established between Sade’s ideas and post-War French philosophy.
A much needed survey of an important body of work … Lauwaert usefully provides a reliable text that will surely open the French literature on de Sade to a wider readership ... Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy is a valuable and useful volume that leaves room for further engagement with an intriguing body of work.
Writing with great clarity, erudition and insight, Lode Lawaert has produced a fascinating study of the interpretations of de Sade by Klossowski, Blanchot, Bataille, Lacan, Barthes and Deleuze. Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy is an invaluable introduction to post-WWII French philosophy via Sade.
Often acknowledged as having exercised a profound fascination on French thinkers in the 20th-century, but rarely, if at all, recognised for its far-reaching significance, Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy explores the reception of de Sade's seductive writings in Bataille, Blanchot, Klossowski, Lacan, Barthes and Deleuze. Lauwaert's singular achievement is to have examined the complex ways in which critical themes in the development of these French thinkers – desire, sexuality, violence, language, Humanism, sacrifice and the sacred, the unconscious, God – passed through their respective confrontation with de Sade, as if thinking for or against Sade represented a rite of passage to philosophy itself. In addition to illuminating and informed treatments of these key moments in de Sade's reception, Lauwaert presents a perspicuous argument for why, as Apollinaire foretold, the divine Marquis came to dominate the 20th-century and its postmodern beyond.
