ANGELAKI

journal of the theoretical humanities

volume 15 number 1 april 2010

geoffrey roche
MUCH SENSE THE STARKEST MADNESS
sades moral scepticism

Much madness is divinest sense

To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
Emily Dickinson, Poem XI

i introduction

heodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in Dialectic of Enlightenment [Dialektik

der Aufklrung, first published in 1944], argue that Donatien-Alphonse-Franois,
the Marquis de Sade (17401814), and Friedrich Nietzsche have brought the
Enlightenment project of grounding morality in reason to an end. For Adorno and
Horkheimer, Sade has revealed philosophys moral impotency, in particular the
impossibility of deriving from reason any fundamental argument against murder
[].1 Marcel Hnaff, Susan Neiman, and Annie Le Brun have similarly suggested
that Sade has demonstrated that morality is no more philosophically justified than
immorality.2 There is no doubt that there is much discussion of moral philosophy in
Sades surviving works. But are these extraordinary claims of Sades sceptical powers
justified? To answer this question, this paper sets out to identify the moral and metaethical claims made in Sades works, and to assess his arguments for those claims.3
Sade (hereafter to be understood to be shorthand for Sades characters in
this paper)4 holds that moral categories are not founded on sound philosophical
principles. As such, he is amoral, that is, of the view that moral categories are
groundless, and that to filch my neighbours purse, rape his son, his wife, or his
daughter are mere pranks [].5 Yet Sade also holds that activities which are
contrary to moral principles are preferable, given the pleasure that they give the
agent. This combination of self-regarding hedonism and amoralism is an explicit
doctrine of immoralism.
Sades characters propose three distinct philosophical doctrines in defence of
immoralism.6 The first theory, Sades naturalism, is an inversion of Jean-Jacques
Rousseaus benevolent naturalism, which holds that human nature is essentially
benign, and that moral guidance can be derived from an appeal to this original nature.
Sades variant of this view holds that a morality can be derived from the natural order,
which for Sade demands aggression and domination of others. Most clearly
articulated in the poem La Vrit [The Truth, c.1784], this doctrine will not be given
an extensive treatment here, having been discussed exhaustively elsewhere and shown
to be fallacious by two of Sades own characters.7
In what follows I focus on Sades moral scepticism and individual egoism, the
latter having been identified by Tzvetan Todorov as the basic principle of Sades
ethical theory.8 In section ii I analyse Sades arguments for moral scepticism and find
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/10/010000-00 2010 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of Angelaki
DOI:

sades moral scepticism

that they rely on an outdated foundationalism.9 In section iii I note that Sades
arguments against the social contract as a moral theory are incompatible with the
practical demands of his own characters. While they reject the social contract as a
theory of ethics, Sades description of immoral agents who can cooperate without an
overarching morality looks much like a social contract arrangement that is both
deeply impractical and theoretically confused. In section iv I assess Sades case for
immorality on hedonistic grounds, or, in the words of J.L. Mackie, an extreme
egoism that demands that everyone else should give way to me.10 In section v I
assess Sades argument that it is prudent to live a life of crime in a corrupt age. I
conclude that none of Sades arguments succeed in defending intentional immoralism
as either a consistent theoretical position or as a coherent philosophy of action. But
my conclusion is not wholly negative. In attempting to defend the claim that no act is
morally wrong, Sades work serves as a revealing reductio of both moral scepticism
and moral foundationalism.
ii sades arguments for moral scepticism
Sade offers three arguments for moral scepticism in his novels. The first is based on
moral relativism: the claim that moral differences across cultures show that there is no
universal moral truth. The second argument holds that morality cannot be grounded in
reason alone. Thirdly, Sade argues that moral guidance cannot be sought in moral
sentiments.
I begin with Sades argument from relativism. In contemporary ethical
terminology, Sade can be said to hold to the central premise of moral realism. That is,
he holds that, were morality to hold, it must be in some sense real: it must be
grounded on verifiable truth-claims, whether they be claims about some eternal,
immutable truth, or some natural fact about the world.11 Sade appeals to moral
relativism to support the view that no such moral reality exists. As morality across
cultures is highly variable, Sade reasons, there is no universal moral truth. Concepts
of morality and justice are accordingly merely localized human conventions.12 Yet
Sade himself undermines this argument in three ways. Firstly, his own characters
directly argue against the claim that moral variance across cultures entails moral
scepticism. As morality is a requisite of any society for the safety and well-being of
its members, notes Monsieur de Saint-Prt (Florville and Courval, in The Gothic
Tales, 1800), every society will develop some form of morality with recognizable
characteristics.13
Secondly, to accept the sceptical thesis proposed by Sade, we would need first
to demonstrate the impossibility of ever gaining cross-cultural agreement about
certain specifiable evils. Despite his thorough and compelling cataloguing of moral
difference across history and cultures, Sades own work depicts acts and crimes that
would now be considered morally aberrant anywhere in the world, such as the rape,
torture and murder of children or ones own family members.14
Thirdly, even if there are observable variances in the morals of different
cultures, it does not follow that no moral system has normative force anywhere.15
Sades characters routinely attempt to remove themselves from the socially
constructed moral world of others for this very reason, relocating themselves and their
victims to remote forests or islands to evade detection and punishment. Their repeated
acknowledgement of the fact that they are criminals who enjoy crime also indicates a
tacit acceptance that morality has normative force wherever they happen to be, and

roche
whatever they believe or do.16 As such, Sades argument that moral relativism entails
moral scepticism is weak.
Sades second argument for moral scepticism is that moral knowledge cannot
be grounded in reason alone. In particular, he implies that there is no logically
compelling reason as to why an individual should place a greater priority on agentneutral considerations than on considerations specific to the agents benefit. From
Juliette (1797):
If from immolating three million human victims you stand to gain no livelier
pleasure than that to be had from eating a good dinner, slender though this
pleasure may appear in the light of its price, you ought to treat yourself to it
without an instants hesitation; for if you sacrifice that good dinner, the
necessary result is a privation for you, whereas no privation results from the
disappearance of the three million insignificant creatures you must do away
with to obtain the dinner []17
Accordingly, Sades immoralists hold that self-regarding (agent-specific) reason
alone does not require that one is moral. This view is not, in itself, controversial.
David Hume and Rousseau had already made essentially the same point, yet had not
thereby become moral sceptics.18 More recent philosophers have also noted the
difficulty of providing some logical proof of the irrationality of crime.19 Yet there is a
crucial step missing in Sades reasoning. The question here is why Sade thinks that
only self-regarding motives are the only relevant guide for decision making, and what
other factors are being omitted from consideration. Note that Sade assumes that
rationality concerns benefits and costs to the agent alone; any person who is harmed
by ones own actions is deemed an insignificant creature, which is simply an
incorrect premise: he gives no explanation as to why such moral solipsism is
rationally required. Unless they (or their author) are simply guilty of bad faith, Sades
immoralists share a serious cognitive blind-spot: they have affective deficits that
make it impossible for them to acknowledge the subjective reality of the suffering of
others. This is despite the fact that, being sadists, they know exactly what they are
doing to others.
Sades third reason for accepting moral scepticism is that moral knowledge
cannot be grounded in moral sentiments. It may indeed be the case that moral
sentiments are not a reliable guide for moral deliberation in all cases.20 But Sade gives
no new argument on this point, arguing instead that the inner voice against
wickedness is nothing whatever but the effect of our prejudices and education, and
that if we had been born and reared in some other climate, it would address us in a
very different language.21 Again, Sades own characters tend to verify the importance
of moral sentiments, given that they go to enormous lengths to numb any such
sentiment in themselves, and remark on how unusual their own personalities are.
Juliettes mentor in immoralism, Clairwil herself lacking any sense of remorse or
guilt describes a person without sensibility as an inert mass, equally incapable of
good or evil, and human only insofar as he has the human shape.22 On her own
terms, then, through attaining the state of moral apathy, Clairwil is herself incapable
of being a moral agent.23
Many have assumed that Sades arguments for scepticism are cogent enough
to be at least disturbing, if not conclusive. They would be truly disturbing if, like
Immanuel Kant, we were to assume that morality must be grounded purely in our
capacity for reason, or that morality must be grounded on a metaphysical, verifiable

sades moral scepticism

truth. Yet a number of contemporary philosophers hold that such foundationalist
assumptions are simply mistaken, being the wrong way of framing what is essentially
a social and cooperative, rather than a metaphysical, problem. Although moral beliefs
are subjective, they are not arbitrary. Rather, they are based on beliefs and facts, or
statements that are widely agreed to be true, just as economic entities, such as money,
are both partly socially constructed and yet inescapably real.24 As Mackie has argued,
morality is to be made, not to be discovered: the object is rather to decide [] what
principles of conduct to accept and foster as guiding or controlling our own choices
and perhaps those of other people as well.25 In the spirit of this insight, Charles E.
Larmore, Simon Blackburn, and Allan Gibbard have proposed accounts of moral
value and moral judgement as a projected or negotiated value, as opposed to being
grounded on the fictitious external authority of external value.26
Sades characters do not dwell on such matters as shared goals and values, and
it is perhaps this lack of richness that makes them so chillingly irrefutable. Their own
values and goals, assuming such people could exist in real life, are alien to us: they set
fire to their own children, eat excrement, and prefer to live underground or in castles
with their victims for months on end before torturing and murdering them all. If
Mackie, Blackburn and Gibbard are correct, we do not need an independent, strictly
rational justification to show why the acts of these immoralists are irrational, just as
our collective goals and desires do not need an independent justification. This is not a
knock-down argument against moral scepticism, but it clarifies where the burden of
proof lies.
Put in these terms, the question then becomes: why would we assume that
morality must be grounded in a metaphysical, verifiable truth, and that merely human
laws and morals are somehow insufficient? More directly, why would we assume (as
does Le Brun) that Sade proves that (of all things) atheism logically leads to crime?27
This is, after all, a profoundly conservative view, and we see it in the most
conservative thinkers. Rousseau sums up the entire Sadeian schema in a single
sentence:
[the good man] is ordered in relation to the common centre, which is God, and
in relation to all the concentric circles, which are the creatures. If the divinity
does not exist, it is only the wicked man who reasons, and the good man is
nothing but a fool. (Emphasis added)28
The implication of this view, common to both Sade and Rousseau, is that ethics
cannot be merely human, as humans themselves are not in a sense eternal and
universal. To be good is to be associated with something universal and eternal, that
is, something divine. Like Rousseau in the quote above, Sade could not accept that
moral principles could manage without some universal, eternal and perfect Truth to
underwrite it. Sades case against morality is fundamentally Christian: it is
unintelligible unless one accepts the view that only God makes life meaningful and
the lives of others morally relevant, as Donald A. Crosby has forcefully shown.29 Kai
Nielsen puts it well: A man who says, If God is dead, nothing matters, is a spoilt
child who has never looked at his fellowman with compassion.30
iii the criminal social contract

roche
Social contract theory would appear to be immune to Sades moral scepticism, in so
far as it is not grounded on any metaphysical claims of the nature of morality, and
does not presuppose or require any moral sentiments of its envisioned participants.
Sade argues against the social contract model nevertheless, offering three claims.
Firstly, Sade offers a genetic argument: the social contract is not a sound moral theory
as it allegedly originated in an unjust agreement.31 Secondly, Sade appeals again to
naturalism: conventional morality stinks of commerce, as opposed to the natural
impulse of the life of crime.32 Sades third argument is more nuanced. He does not
deny that the social contract is a sound means of coordinating rational, self-interested
individuals to maximize mutual benefit. Yet he denies that this is what a morality is,
following Rousseau in rejecting attempts to define morality as collective, rational selfinterest.33 Rather, Sade sees reciprocal cooperation in terms of an underlying mental
calculus, rather than as a morality, properly so called. If there were a rational,
instrumental explanation for behaving in a moral manner, this would not, for Sade,
provide a moral reason. It is an argument for prudence (in the words of the character
Saint-Fond: what the devil would the merit be in virtue if vice werent preferable to
it?).34 Sades other criminal characters hold to the same dichotomy between virtue
and vice: virtue is pure of any instrumental reason, and crime is entirely rational.
Hence, they would argue, cooperation amongst criminals is merely organized vice.
The social contract alone cannot be the basis of a true, universal morality, as Sade
clearly recognized. The social contract may exclude some people from the contract, in
particular those who are of more instrumental use or value to the members of the
criminal group as non-consenting victims than as members of a reciprocal agreement.
This will be the case in particular where the immoralists, being sadistic psychopaths,
acquire more personal satisfaction from destroying other people than not. Sylvestre,
the head of a criminal gang in La Nouvelle Justine, makes explicit the mere
usefulness, rather than the morality, of criminal social organization:
Because the solidity of our partnership becomes useful to its preservation, we
prefer to make a few sacrifices to this end that will be amply compensated by
all the means well then have to commit crimes.35
The criminal social contract is significant for Sades case for immoralism in three
ways. Firstly, such arrangements (both in Sades fictions and in real life) do much to
counter most philosophical objections to the claim that immorality is irrational even
for egoists. Criminal organizations show that ones social needs do not require that
one be moral, and they significantly reduce the risk factors associated with immoral
behaviour. As sociological research and game theory analysis have shown, there are
indeed situations where it is rational for egoists to cooperate, even though individual
defection may appear to be individually rational.36 Sades criminal gangs and societies
(appearing in The 120 Days of Sodom, Juliette, La Nouvelle Justine and Aline et
Valcour) illustrate this well. These groups coordinate the financial, material and
intellectual resources of the members, provide contacts for members in other cities
and countries, and satisfy the social needs and antisocial preferences of the members.
Yet there is something seriously amiss here. Sades characters are not merely
egoists; they are also avowed immoralists and moral sceptics. Consequentially, there
is a tension between the requirements of group membership and the avowedly
immoral doctrine of the members, an objection to the practicality of immoralism
raised in Platos Republic.37 The Statutes of the Society of the Friends of Crime (in
Juliette), Sades most fully rendered secret society, makes this tension explicit. As

sades moral scepticism

would be expected of a group that imprisons, rapes and murders children, the Society
has a clearly stated immoralist doctrine: God does not exist,38 morality is groundless,
free will is a myth, and the only moral imperative is to follow natural instincts, no
matter how destructive.39 As such, the Sodality [] approves and legitimates
everything, and considers as its most zealous and most estimable Members those who,
unhesitatingly and unrepentantly, acquit themselves of the greatest number of those
vigorous actions fools in their weakness call crimes []40 This doctrine is of a piece
with that of the other criminals in Sades works, for whom words like punishments,
rewards, commandments, prohibitions, order, and disorder are merely allegorical
terms drawn from what transpires in the sphere of human events and intercourse.41
Merely allegorical or not, the Society of the Friends of Crime relies heavily on
punishments, commandments, prohibitions and the maintenance of order so as to
maintain the cohesion required to function and benefit its members. Members, having
signed and sworn by an oath upon being granted membership, are required to accept
the obligations of membership and subsume individual desires to that of the corporate
entity.42 Amongst themselves, members must honour a code of egalitarianism, trust,
mutual care, honesty and non-malevolence; they cannot carry weapons, inflict serious
pain on or even bully one another.43 Those who neglect their duties are forcefully
constrained to fulfil them and [are then] driven ignominiously out of the Sodality;
more serious violations (forming secret cabals within the Society, or betraying Society
secrets) may merit the death penalty.44 In return, the Society promises financial and
legal protection for its members, the pleasure of raping, torturing and murdering
children, and, somewhat pathetically, collective self-esteem: rejected by society,
these outcasts will find consolations and friends in a society which recognizes their
value []45 As such, as noted by Batrice Fink, membership of the criminal secret
society apparently entails similar conflicts and anxieties to those that (for Sade)
characterize conventional morality and social compromise.46
The Statutes address this tension between the need for immoralists to
cooperate and their immoralist credo. Firstly, they assert that there is no contradiction
between the legally enforced equality of the Sodality members and the Sodalitys tacit
assumption that its members are superior to their victims. The first statute makes a
clear distinction between the doctrine of natural superiority and the legally enforced
equality of all members of the Sodality, not because people are equal in the eyes of
Nature but because distinctions of any kind may have a detrimental influence upon
the Sodalitys pleasures and are certain sooner or later to spoil them.47 Secondly, the
Statutes assert that the Society gives members the means to express whatever Nature
inspires them to do (to their victims), whereas conventional society stifles such
inclinations. Yet neither of these arguments are convincing. The legal enforcement of
equality is justified here by an appeal to the principle of reciprocal altruism and
consequentialism (that is, utilitarianism), but the Statutes arbitrarily exclude the
victims. As for the appeal to nature, this is both fallacious and, in the context of
Sades immoralists, bizarre. The Society of the Friends of Crime has specific bans on
any expression of emotion associated with sexual relationships,48 enforces incest, and
encourages members to have their own children raped and slaughtered.49 More to the
point, Sades narrative voice implausibly implies that the Sodalitys principles are less
contrived and artificial than a legal system that punishes people for raping and
murdering children.
The elitism of the Sodality is also deeply problematic. The Sodality would
have a sensible, if pedestrian, moral theory (utilitarianism plus the social contract
model) if it were not for the exclusion of the welfare of its victims from their

roche
reasoning. How is it, then, that its members could utilize the familiar conceptual
framework of moral obligation, duty and prohibition, and place themselves under the
rule of their own laws, whilst dismissing the Law of the outside world as being merely
a mortal and artificial contrivance?50 Sades immoralists assume superiority over
their victims, but this assumption (and its relevance) is questionable. Their elitism is
frequently associated with an assumed intellectual superiority: members must swear
to atheism and must have a demonstrated disdain for morality, both of which Sade
associates with great intelligence. Yet this begs the question that rejecting morality is
intelligent. As for the natural inferiority of Christianity, this seems scarcely
relevant: victims are kidnapped at the age of five, before they can be said to have any
religious beliefs.51 Where Sades characters explicitly address their alleged superiority
over their victims, they do little more than assign themselves the status of gods and to
their victims the status of debauchery-objects, automata, specimens and so
on.52 As such, a central principle in Sades doctrine the innate superiority of the
killers over their victims is based on an erroneous claim, reinforced by nothing more
than dehumanizing rituals and tortures: the removal of clothes, or names; the branding
of serial numbers or descriptions of tortures, and the mutilation of organs of speech
and sense.53 The immoralists appeal to reason seems merely a veneer for an
unthinking tribalism.
The Sodality is a variant of Platos retelling, in the Protagoras, of the
mythological account of the origins of justice and ethics. Zeus, pitying the first people
and their struggle against their environment and wild beasts, gave them a sense of
justice and ethics so that they might flourish and survive.54 Sade inverts this picture
completely. The immoralists operate in groups large and wealthy enough to
successfully drag away and torture the children of men without fear of their laws. But
to accomplish this, the immoralists must have their own socially established patterns
of behaviour that put pressure on individual members to put the group ahead of their
own interests. They make an agreement with the collective with an eye to reaching a
goal from which mutual benefit will be derived. At the very least this arrangement
requires that promises are kept. If morality is an illusion, it is apparently one that the
principal characters in Sade cannot entirely escape. Reciprocal altruism is a socially
evolved means by which we counteract our natural selfishness. But the Sadeian
immoralists believe in natural selfishness, not to mention a natural propensity to
torture and murder. Were a single member of the Sodality, for the sheer thrill of it, to
betray, torture and execute every last member of the Sodality, those pleading for their
lives would not be able to do so without contradicting their own most cherished
principles.
iv hedonism and egoism in sade
Whereas Sades attempt to merge reciprocal altruism with moral scepticism leads to
paradox, his association of moral scepticism with egoism and hedonism would appear
to be on firmer ground. Recall that Sades basic morally sceptical claim is that rape,
torture and so on are morally trivial, and that such activities are hedonistically
preferable, given the pleasure that they give the agent. I have shown that Sades
arguments for moral scepticism are not strong and that, in practical terms, it is
difficult to see how immoralists could function without contradicting their own
immoralist beliefs. Supposing that Sades moral scepticism was not problematic:
could the hedonistic part of Sades argument still hold, nevertheless?

sades moral scepticism

Sade assumes hedonism to be a sound principle, but gives no discussion as to
why one would take mere pleasure seeking (in particular intense, sadistic and
destructive pleasure seeking) to be the only good. He does offer, however, a number
of reasons for doubting that other-regarding hedonism (that is, utilitarianism) is a
sound moral theory.55 Firstly, Sade argues that subservience to any principle of the
greater good is to compromise ones own happiness. The moral impulse, according
to Sade, is neither spontaneous nor natural. Rather, it is
the sacrifice the obligation to live in society squeezes out of a man, an infernal
enforced sacrifice he makes to considerations the observation whereof will
bring him, in return, a certain minimal pittance of happiness []56
Secondly, Sade suggests, perhaps unintentionally, that utilitarianism is unjust. He
describes a justice system that attempts to render both parties as content as is
possible regardless of the guilt of the criminal. In order to honour this principle,
Brigandos, the chieftain of a Gypsy community, passes judgment on a case
concerning the violent attempted rape of a thirteen-year-old girl. Rather than punish
the rapist (who had threatened to shoot the victim dead), the judge merely observes
that the rapist had taken as he had needed to, that his only crime was not to pay the
girl for compensation on the spot, and that a harsher sentence would merely increase
pain.57 Less ambiguously, doctors who perform hideous experiments on young girls
and the poor in the name of the greater good is a recurring motif in Sade.58
Regardless of Sades intentions here, pointing out the excessive demands or
injustice of utilitarianism is not an argument for hedonism. As Sade illustrates,
hedonism is simply the inverse of classical utilitarianism: it demands too much of the
agents victims. Similarly, noting the unintentional injustice of a strictly utilitarian
moral schema is no argument for the intentional injustice of immoral egoism. Sades
work is perhaps the strongest case ever penned for the immorality of hedonism, in so
far as he acknowledges the full range of the human potential to find pleasure in
destroying other people. Sades prioritizing of hedonism over utilitarianism does,
however, anticipate an important criticism made by Henry Sidgwick: utilitarianism
can give no reason as to why hedonism is any less rational.59 Similarly, Sade rejects
the idea that the pleasure of others is rationally required. Rather than supporting an
ethics of benefit to all, Sade takes the hedonic premise as a justification for crime, in
so far as crime may be more pleasurable than virtue, in particular those crimes that
lower the happiness of others.
This view may plausibly be taken for a reductio of egoism. But suppose that
we do not accept this. Suppose that there really is an irresolvable tension between
egoistic hedonism and utilitarianism, or, more generally, moral reasoning and rational
self-interest. Why would even an immoral egoist be a wilfully immoral person, rather
than prudently remain ostensibly moral? Imitate me, if you wish to be happy,
advises the criminal Bressac in La Nouvelle Justine.60 But is this plausible? In other
words, even if we suppose that Sades moral scepticism is theoretically sound, and
even if a life of immorality could be satisfying for a certain class of antisocial egoists,
could it stand as an applied philosophy of action, as Sade suggests?
Sade offers two arguments for immoralism on hedonistic grounds. The first is
hedonistic: all things considered, an immoral life is said to be more pleasurable. The
second is prudential: an immoral life is said to be more prudent. These arguments are
significant in that both challenge the traditional view that immoralists are either
insane or foolish, in so far as immoralism is indeed irrational and ultimately

roche
undesirable for the agent.61 As Sade emphasizes, deeply immoral people frequently
have both the intelligence and the power required to evade punishment, and might
actually enjoy doing wicked things. Confronted with this insight it is tempting to end
matters there, and accept that philosophy simply does not need, or is not equipped, to
provide a response to the egoistic challenge.62 Yet Sades work provides a useful
basis for examining the implications of wilful immoralism, suggesting that such
resignation may be premature.
Sades central claim for immorality on hedonistic grounds is that morality is
an unnecessary constraint on pleasure, and that this constraint must be overcome for
those few strong and intelligent enough to flourish beyond the constraints of others.
This claim closely follows that of Thrasymachus and Glaucon, in Platos Republic,
and Callicles, in Platos Gorgias.63 Like Thrasymachus, Callicles and Glaucon, Sades
immoralists reject the traditional association of ethics and rational decision making,
asserting instead rational egoism: the truly rational person acts only to maximize their
own self-interest, conceived by Thrasymachus and Callicles in terms of wealth and
power and their attendant pleasures.64 For Sade, this invariably involves obtaining
pleasure at the expense of the pain or death of others. Rather than making his case in
the terms of a Benthamite calculus, Sade presents crime as like unto the lightning,
whose traitorous brilliances embellish the atmosphere but for an instant, in order to
hurl into deaths very depths the luckless one they have dazzled.65 Yet Sades
implicit argument from hedonism is also jarringly straightforward: if self-regarding
factors, such as pleasure to oneself, are ranked higher by the agent than the agentneutral principle of considering the happiness of all who may be harmed by ones
actions, one should be immoral.
In reply, as Juliettes husband, the Comte de Lorsange, argues, an immoral life
will incur costs and risks that make it undesirable even to the egoistic hedonist. The
calculations of the wicked are simply erroneous: to get himself one pleasure he
loses a thousand, to pass one happy day he destines himself to a million dismal days;
such is the contagion of vice []66 We can make a further distinction between two
hedonistic arguments for being ostensibly moral: call these the external harm
argument (the argument that crime likely leads to the gallows); and the internal harm
argument (crime causes damage to oneself at the psychological or character level, or
harms ones interests, regardless of whether one is directly punished). In response to
such objections, Sades immoralists propose stratagems to avoid detection and
punishment. They explain the importance of self-control, deceit, secrecy and careful
planning, prudent management of economic resources, and the seeking of agreements
and protection from individuals and entities more powerful than the justice system.
Where the law is unavoidable, Sade recommends that one studies law and commits
crimes that have relatively light sentences, and gives disturbingly insightful advice on
how to avoid ones conscience betraying oneself.67
Consideration of internal harms is less straightforward, however. In response
to Thrasymachus and Glaucon, Socrates argues that immorality incurs psychological
costs. He notes that the immoralist will have a disordered soul, its higher qualities
corrupted by surrender to ones basest desires and drives.68 Hume and Mackie argue
in much the same way, noting the loss of peace of mind that accompanies the holding
of ideals at odds with those of ones own society.69
Secondly, it is difficult to see how a thorough immoralist could have any true
friends. To commit violent, immoral acts against others, one will be unwelcome to
most other people. Sades successful immoralists are invariably tyrants or their
lackeys. Owing to the dynamics of the tyrants social arrangements, they will by

sades moral scepticism

necessity be surrounded by rather base people; anyone of quality would be frightened
away, will present competition, or will pose a mortal threat. In other words, a
thoroughly immoral lifestyle would be incompatible with the basic human needs of
living in a community and abiding by its social rules. The Society of the Friends of
Crime only illustrates, rather than solves, this tension. As such, it is commonly argued
that a life of crime is contrary to our needs as social beings.70 Baron de Montesquieus
diagnosis of the tyrannical state is based on similar principles. Even if one were to
successfully take power and establish a dictatorship, Montesquieu reasons, such a
victory would lead to ones inner corruption. Since a despots every whim is granted,
the tyrant loses the capacity to deliberate, to exercise their intelligence, or to develop
their character.71 Finally, it is argued that the pleasures of crime are inferior to those
of the virtuous life. In the words of Hume, besides the pleasures of conversation,
society, study, even health and the common beauties of nature, but above all the
peaceful reflection on ones own conduct, the pleasures of immorality are mere
worthless toys and gewgaws.72
Sades work acknowledges all of these objections, with a perplexing
ambivalence. Concerning the first argument, Sade appears to concede that his
immoralists are insane, remarking that a man with singular tastes is sick; if you will,
[he is like] a woman with hysteric vapours.73 Saint-Fond, a paedophile and mass
murderer, describes himself as superhuman; Clairwil, another sadistic murderer, is
described as having never cried or felt pity in her life, and Juliette talks to corpses as
if they were alive.74 The novel Juliette ends with Noirceuil ripping his own sons
heart out and eating it as Juliette sets her young daughter alight.75
Sades work also supports the association of a life of immorality with
loneliness and social isolation. Throughout Juliette, immoral characters complain of
both loneliness and dysphoria, and are frequently betrayed and killed by each other.76
This is despite the fact that there are reasons to doubt that a life of crime is really so
lonely or traumatic, as Joyce notes. A criminal can easily be moral within his local
community, causing deliberate harm only to outsiders.77 This is, of course, typical of
organized criminal groups, such as the Mafia or Yakuza, who have clearly defined
and demanding in-group moral codes that are ruthlessly enforced. Sade has actually
weakened his case for immorality by associating it with an absolute and rare extreme:
the fact that Charles Manson and Josef Fritzl have few friends is not a good argument
against robbing a bank. The same can be said of Montesquieus argument: there is no
straightforward connection between being a tyrant and losing ones intelligence or
other positive attributes. Some tyrants appear as ludicrous buffoons outside their own
jurisdictions; others do not.
More complex is the assertion that an immoral life is of greater worth to the
hedonistic agent than a life of virtue. Against Socrates and John Stuart Mill, Sade
recognizes no qualitative hierarchy between higher and lower pleasures, and, in
keeping with a rigorously materialist ontology, does not recognize a divine self or
higher principle that demands an ethos of self-cultivation. Further, against Socrates
and Hume, Sades case for the pleasures or merits of socially disapproved acts was far
less straightforward in the eighteenth century than it is now in the twenty-first. Two
examples in particular stand out. The first is the legal and moral status of writing and
publishing philosophy, which had exposed a number of philosophers (significantly,
Sades favourites: Rousseau, Denis Diderot, dHolbach, Voltaire, Julien Offray de La
Mettrie, Niccol Machiavelli, and Claude Adrien Helvtius) to significant risk,
whether legal action and censorship, loss of employment, or exile.

10

roche
This all rather complicates Socrates assertion that lawless pleasures block
the path to philosophy. For Sade, as he understood the term, philosophy was itself a
lawless pleasure (as it was for Socrates himself, in the end); and obeisance to official
opinion or law in eighteenth-century France would itself be self-harm for those who
sought to go beyond the confines of officially sanctioned religious doctrine.
The second problematic area is sexuality. Where Sade acknowledges the
pleasures of homosexuality and non-procreative sex, yet grants that such acts are
commonly considered immoral, his thinking is entirely in keeping with the period. He
had himself once been burnt in effigy for, among more serious crimes, sodomy.78
Contemporary philosophers (notably not the French philosophes, who themselves
occasionally wrote erotic literature) were no less conservative.79
Yet Sade has done Epicureanism no favours by associating it with rape, torture
and murder, and his work forcefully illustrates just how unusual someone has to be to
consciously and wilfully enjoy harming other people.80 As such, his argument from
hedonism for immoralism is cogent, if at all, for only the sorts of people that he
depicts: people who think nothing of torching hospitals or masturbating with corpses;
who prefer to rape and torture people in dungeons than to spend time with loved ones;
whose only credo is to worship shit.81 As Mackie notes, for an individual to actually
benefit more from being immoral than moral, they would need to be psychopaths: that
is, individuals with no capacity for moral feelings or human sympathy.82 Additionally,
for Sades characters to have values to meet their immoral behaviours, they would
need to oppose the very principles that society is based on. This is indeed the case: in
the words of one, representative sadistic killer, the lives of all the women who dwell
on the face of the earth, are as insignificant as the crushing of a fly.83 Having made
these points clear, it may be said that the question why should I be moral? is only a
genuine existential question for such people, in so far as only they would consider it a
reasonable question to ask.
v the argument from prudence
Sades second argument for immoralism on hedonistic grounds is prudential: an
immoral life is said to be more prudent. This argument is implied in the very subtitles
of his two most philosophically rich novels: Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue and
Juliette or The Prosperities of Vice. Accordingly, Sade argues that in a completely
corrupt age, to follow the law is to expose oneself to risk or even martyrdom, asserting
that the greatest mistake which can be made in a completely corrupted world is to
want to put up a lonely fight against the general contagion.84 The following quote
sums up two central premises to this argument: that wickedness is a requirement of
survival for the poor, and that the powerful are frequently corrupt:
There are two kinds of wicked men in the world: those whom great wealth and
prodigious influence put beyond the reach of so tragic an end [the scaffold],
and those who, if apprehended, will not avoid it. The latter kind, born with
nothing, if they have any wit at all, can have only two prospects in view: either
Wealth or the Wheel.85
According to this view, poor people must break the law in order to survive, or to
avoid unjust punishment, for only through theft or prostitution can one escape
grinding poverty. Yet this lacks nuance. Only a severely dogmatic moralist could

11

sades moral scepticism

declare Juliette immoral simply because she turned to prostitution in order to survive,
or Justine truly virtuous because she foolishly trusts every monk, no matter how many
times she is raped. More specifically, Sade does not consider the possibility that there
is a hierarchy of moral principles involved in these situations, and that one can
rightfully ignore less important moral principles in order to honour the more basic
principle of saving ones own life. It is an open question as to whether the laws and
institutions of a state are ethical at all if people incur the full force of the law for
merely stealing food, or cohabiting out of wedlock, as was frequent in the eighteenth
century.86 Sade makes a point in noting that being rational is only contingently related
to being law abiding. Yet this is quite different to a critique of being moral. In an
environment in which prostitution or theft is a necessity of survival for the poorest
people or, as Blackburn notes, not even murder is forbidden or punished, society (for
those who cannot protect themselves) has simply collapsed, and no decision
concerning moral orientation can be made by appeal to moral principles.87
The second problem with this argument is that Sades immoral characters do
not live in utterly corrupted environments. In Justine, Juliette and The 120 Days of
Sodom the immoralist characters acknowledge this through their acts: the great
lengths to which they avoid detection, whether through the use of false identities, the
secret locations of their crimes, or by constantly moving from place to place. Further,
they are able to cheat and deceive people precisely because their victims are trusting
and wrongly assume that the immoralist characters are trustworthy. Sades
immoralists are parasites of the ethical norms of others. This is not to say that the
immoralists are irrational: game theory analysis shows that, so long as there are not
many other immoralists in an otherwise stable society of trustworthy people, freeriding may constitute a perfectly rational strategy. Yet the success of such a strategy is
environmentally contingent: the more stable and moral a society, and the lower the
number of fellow criminals, the greater the ease with which one can profitably
freeload.88
vi conclusion
[] we can imagine [the noble-minded of the past] returning from an orgy
of murder, arson, rape, and torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as
though they had committed a fraternity prank [] (Nietzsche, Genealogy of
Morals)89
Sades philosophy is not so much a denial of morality as an affirmation of the
worthlessness of the rest of humanity; the affirmation that only the libertine rapist
and murderer is worthy, and that their victims are nothing. This is a controversial
claim, and, unless the reader is to dogmatically identify with the villains and not the
victims, Sade and his defenders are saddled with an impossibly high burden of proof.
To reiterate: Sades argument for naturalism does not provide grounds for believing
that aggression and sadism are typical or required of us. Secondly, moral relativism
does not entail moral scepticism, and moral scepticism does not entail the negation of
morality, unless one is to accept (and this is an outdated and controversial
assumption) some variant of moral realism or foundationalism. Further, even if the
theoretical ground of a strong anti-moral theory were to be established, immoralism is
not a plausible philosophy of action. This is because it is impractical for a group of

12

roche
immoralists to adhere to a doctrine that negates the principle of having obligations to
anyone, including the group itself. Immoralism may be rationally held by an
individual, but only hedonistic egoists of a certain type (psychopaths) living in a
particular environment (moral and unsuspecting) would benefit from being immoral,
and then only in purely hedonistic terms.
To conclude: even if, in the words of Adorno and Horkheimer, Sade
demonstrates the impossibility of deriving from reason any fundamental argument
against murder, we can reply: it is impossible to derive from Sade any cogent reason
why this should concern us.90 The fact that people strongly prefer that neither they nor
their friends are brutally raped, tortured and murdered, for reasons that are largely
agreed upon, is reason enough to suspect that immoralists need better arguments than
those provided by Sade.
Yet Sades thoughtful attempt to invert moral philosophy is insightful and
important, for two reasons. He clarifies the psychological costs of living a thoroughly
evil life, showing that immoralism is just as implausible and contradictory a
philosophy of practical reason as the most extravagant consequentialism. Further, his
work serves as a forceful reductio of both moral realism and egoism. In this sense,
Adorno and Horkheimer are correct to see in Sade a formidable critic of moral theory.
Perhaps, too, we can see the educational merit in Sades refreshingly honest portrayal
of the implications of immoralist theories in general.
I would like to thank Jacob Busch, Lauren Ashwell, Katrina Lawson, and Sterling
Lynch for various conversations that informed and strengthened the arguments in this
paper. I would also like to thank Charles Pigden, Chris Mathews and Denis Robinson
for bringing some important texts to my attention. Finally, I would like to thank Erik
Koed and an anonymous reviewer for Angelaki for invaluable guidance and criticism
of earlier versions, and S.K. for her generous assistance with material in French.
notes

1 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John

Cumming (London: Verso, 1999) 118.
2 Marcel Hnaff, Sade: The Invention of the Libertine Body, trans. Xavier Callahan
(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999) 28889; Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern
Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Melbourne: Scribe, 2003) 19095;
Annie Le Brun, Sade: A Sudden Abyss, trans. Camille Naish (San Francisco: City
Lights, 1990) 70.
3 A number of critics have disagreed with the whole principle of reading Sade as a
philosopher, arguing that Sade was primarily a writer of humorous satires (John
Phillips), of pure text (Roland Barthes) or pure fictions (Hnaff). See John Phillips,
Laugh? I Nearly Died! Humor in Sades Fiction, The Eighteenth Century: Theory
and Interpretation 40.1 (1999): 4667; Roland Barthes, Sade/Fourier/Loyola, trans.
Richard Miller (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997) 137. To place Sade in the
context of other philosophers, argues Hnaff, we draw Sade into a debate that is not
and cannot be his own [because a] theoretical statement embedded in a work of fiction
is itself a work of fiction [] (Hnaff 290). In response, it could be argued that Sade

13

sades moral scepticism

repeatedly referred to himself as a philosopher in his correspondence, that he filled his

novels with philosophical debate, frequently plagiarized from Julien Offray de La
Mettrie and Baron dHolbach, and that he did on occasion write explicit statements of
philosophical belief, such as the poem La Vrit. But these facts are really beside the
point. Against Hnaff, I suggest that it is simply a fallacy of relevance to take as
relevant the identity of the author (whether as a writer of philosophy or a writer of
fictions) when analysing an argument penned by that author. That is, the fictional
context of an argument does not bear on that arguments validity. If this were not the
case, the philosophical novel would be a logical impossibility, as would the explicitly
(and paradoxical) philosophical claims of Sades importance made by Phillips, Hnaff
and others. In short, whether Sade had ever existed (and was in fact the product of an
elaborate literary hoax) is irrelevant to the general, philosophical thesis I am
proposing: against Adorno and Horkheimer, I argue that the works traditionally
attributed to Sade do not contain a compelling rejection of conventional morality. The
poem La Vrit is in Marquis de Sade, uvres compltes, eds. Annie le Brun and
Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 15 vols. (Paris: Pauvert, 198691) 1: 54859. For Sades
insistence that he was a philosopher, see Marquis de Sade, Justine, Philosophy in the
Bedroom and Other Writing, trans. Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse (London:
Arrow, 1991) 137, 138, 153.
4 As Sade denied authorship of his immoralist works, we cannot be sure that his
characters represent his own views. For examples of such denials, see Marquis de
Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings, trans. Austryn Wainhouse and
Richard Seaver (London: Arrow, 1990) 116, 122.
5 Marquis de Sade, [the story of] Juliette [or, Prosperities of Vice], trans. Austryn
Wainhouse (New York: Grove, 1968) 174.
6 A fourth, conventional theory appears in Sades 1793 novel Aline et Valcour ou le
Roman philosophique [Aline and Valcour or the Philosophical Novel]. Zam,
philosopher-king of a fictional island near New Zealand, espouses a doctrine of
benevolent despotism based on the more Spartan principles of Rousseau. See Marquis
de Sade, Aline et Valcour ou le Roman philosophique, ed. Jean M. Goulemot (Paris:
Le Livre de Poche, 1994) 294339.
7 Sades characters all but identify the naturalistic fallacy in two passages. In The
Misfortunes of Virtue, the character Dubois presents the naturalistic argument in
favour of vice. In response, Justine notes that this same argument can just as easily be
applied to defend virtue. See Marquis de Sade, The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other
Early Tales, trans. David Coward (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999) 126. In Juliette, Pope
Pius VI notes that all creatures, including humans, are merely the result of
Natures unthinking operations [] He concludes that man thus has no
relationship to Nature, nor Nature to man [] whether he were to quadruple his
species or annihilate it totally, the universe would not be in the slightest the worse for
it. If man destroys himself, he does wrong in his own eyes (Sade, Juliette 76667).
For discussion of Sades ethical naturalism, see Pierre Klossowski, Sade my
Neighbor, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1991) 8693;
Caroline Warman, Sade: from Materialism to Pornography, SVEC 2002:1 (Oxford:
Voltaire Foundation, 2002) 14663; Maurice Blanchot, Sade, trans. Richard Seaver

14

roche

and Austryn Wainhouse, in Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writing
(London: Arrow, 1991) 3772.
8 Tzvetan Todorov, Le Jardin imparfait: La Pense humaniste en France (Paris:
Grasset, 1998) 4546.
9 This is not to say that Sades arguments for immoralism were not possibly very
compelling to his contemporaries.
10 J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin, 1990) 88.
11 For a discussion of this view, see Richard Joyce, Moral Anti-Realism in
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Monday 30 July 2007),
available <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/> (accessed 8 Aug.
2009). For Sades anti-realism stance, see Juliette 17071.
12 In Juliette, Sade writes:
we had better, I think, come to some sort of understanding upon what we mean
by just and unjust. If now you meditate a little upon the ideas lying behind
these terms, you will recognize that they are most profoundly relative, and
profoundly lacking in anything intrinsically real. Similar to concepts of virtue
and vice, they are purely local and geographical; that which is vicious in Paris
turns up, as we know, a virtue in Peking, and it is quite the same thing here
[] Amidst these manifold variations do we discover anything constant? Only
this: each countrys peculiar legal code, each individuals peculiar interests,
provide[s] the sole basis of justice [] Despite the allegations of your demiphilosopher Montesquieu, justice is not eternal, it is not immutable, it is not in
all lands and in all ages the same; those are falsehoods, and the truth is the
reverse: justice depends purely upon the human conventions, the character, the
temperament, the national moral codes of a country. (Sade, Juliette 605, 606
07; my emphasis)
13 Saint-Prt reasons:
One might as well doubt the reality of a river, because it divides into a
thousand different streams [] Show me a single race that lives without
virtue, a single one among whom good deeds and humanity are not the
fundamental bonds, I will go further, show me even a band of villains who are
not kept together by some principles of virtue, and I [will] renounce my cause;
but if on the contrary it is shown to be useful everywhere, if there is no nation,
no state, no society, no individual that can do without it, if man, in fact, cannot
live happily or safely without it, would I be wrong, my child, in exhorting you
never to relinquish it? (Marquis de Sade, The Gothic Tales of the Marquis de
Sade, trans. Margaret Crosland (London: Picador, 1990) 10405)
14 Sade, Juliette 78298, 620, 917.

15

sades moral scepticism

15 For discussion of this point, see sections 2 and 3 of Chris Gowans, Moral
Relativism (substantive revision Wednesday 10 Mar. 2004), Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, available <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moralrelativism/> (accessed 30 Oct. 2009).
16 Sade, Juliette 17071; idem, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings 495.
17 Idem, Juliette 642.
18 See David Hume, Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. Henry D. Aiken (London
and New York: Hafner, 1948) 25; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile or On Education,
trans. Allan Bloom (London: Penguin, 1991) 314.
19 See, for example, Alison Hills, Is Ethics Rationally Required?, Inquiry 47.1
(2004): 119; Richard Joyce, The Myth of Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2001), in particular chapter 4; Kai Nielsen, Ethics without God, rev. ed. (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus, 1990) 178.
20 For discussion of this point, see Joshua Greene, From Neural Is to Moral
Ought: What are the Moral Implications of Neuroscientific Moral Psychology?,
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4 (Oct. 2003) 84649.
21 Sade, Juliette 171.
22 Ibid. 277.
23 As such, Sade echoes Baruch de Spinoza: [h]e who is moved to help others
neither by reason nor by compassion, is rightly styled inhuman, for [] he seems
unlike a man (Benedict de [Baruch de] Spinoza, On the Improvement of the
Understanding/The Ethics/Correspondence, trans. R.H.M. Elwes (New York: Dover,
1955) 22122.
24 For discussion on the social reality of money, see Gloria L. Ziga, An Ontology
of Economic Objects, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 58.2 (1999):
299312. For discussion on realist and quasi-realist accounts of morality, see Peter
Tramel, Moral Epistemology in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. James
Fieser and Bradley Dowden (2008), available <http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/morepis.htm> (accessed 5 Aug. 2009).
25 Mackie 106.
26 Ibid. 34; Charles E. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1992) 149; Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions (Oxford: Clarendon,
1998) 236; Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative
Judgment (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).
27 Le Brun, Sade 70.
28 Rousseau 292.

16

roche

29 See Donald A. Crosby, The Specter of the Absurd: Sources and Criticisms of
Modern Nihilism (New York: State U of New York P, 1988) chapter 9.
30 Nielsen 118.
31 Sade, Juliette 115.
32 Ibid. 144.
33 See, for example, Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices,
Publick Benefits, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty, 1988); Robert Nozick, Invariances:
The Structures of the Objective World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2001) 26667;
Baron dHolbach, The System of Nature Vol. 1, adapted from an original translation
by H.D. Robinson, 1868 (London: Clinamen, 1999) 99, 108, 221.
34 Sade, Juliette 318.
35 Marquis de Sade, La Nouvelle Justine, 2 vols. (Paris: ditions 10/18, 1978) 1: 380.
Trans. author and S.K.
36 For discussion, see Mackie 165; Nielsen 176; Robert Axelrod, The Emergence of
Cooperation among Egoists, American Political Science Review 75.2 (1981): 306
18; Steven Kuhn, Prisoners Dilemma in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
ed. Edward N. Zalta (fall 2003 ed.), available
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/prisoner-dilemma/> (accessed 8
Sept. 2009); Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
(London: Penguin, 2002) 25558.
37 Plato, The Republic, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 1987)
9697.
38 Note again the explicit association of atheism and immorality.
39 Sade, Juliette 418.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid. 41; Sades emphasis.
42 Ibid. 427.
43 Ibid. 421, 424, 425.
44 Ibid. 420, 42125.
45 Ibid. 421.

17

sades moral scepticism

46 Ibid. 143; Batrice Fink, The Case for a Political System in Sade, Studies in
Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 88 (1972): 493512 (501).
47 Sade, Juliette 418.
48 Article 29 of the Statutes of the Sodality of the Friends of Crime reads:
The jealousies, the quarrels, the scenes entailed in love, as well as the
language of love, endearing expressions, tender ones, etc., are absolutely
prohibited; all this is detrimental to libertinage, and libertinage is the business
to which the Sodality is to attend. (Sade, Juliette 423)
49 Ibid. 419, 423.
50 Ibid. 418.
51 Ibid. 425.
52 Ibid. 147, 206, 243, 270.
53 Ibid. 619, 626, 740, 908; idem, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings 611
622, 666.
54 Plato, Protagoras and Meno, trans. W.K.C. Guthrie (London: Penguin, 1986) 53
55. Cited in Mackie 108, 110.
55 Sade does not explicitly refer to utilitarianism by name, but he refers to Claude
Adrien Helvtius, a utilitarian ethicist for whom all morality and social policy is a
matter of configurating society to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. See Sade,
Juliette 175.
56 Ibid. 143.
57 Sade, Aline et Valcour ou le Roman philosophique 539. For discussion of this
account as a reflection of Sades moral autism, see Laurence Bongie, Sade: A
Biographical Essay (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1998) 24143.
58 Sade, La Nouvelle Justine 1: 212; idem, The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other
Early Tales 57, 59, 104; idem, Juliette 72728.
59 Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907) 420.
60 Sade, La Nouvelle Justine 1: 138.
61 See, for example, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis and
Cambridge: Hackett, 1994) 191.
62 For discussion of this approach, see John Van Ingen, Why be Moral? The Egoistic
Challenge (New York: Lang, 1994) 3755, 79.

18

roche

63 Whether or not Sade had read Platos Republic is not known. Jean Deprun has
noted the similarity between Sade and Callicles, and that there was an excellent
translation available in Sades time. See Jean Deprun, Sade devant la Rgle dor
in La Qute du bonheur et lexpression de la douleur dans la littrature et la pense
franaises: mlanges offerts Corrado Rosso, eds. Corrado Rosso and Carminella
Biondi (Geneva: Droz, 1995) 30711 (309). Michel Foucault loosely makes the
association of Juliette and Thrasymachus in Madness and Civilization; see Michel
Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans.
Richard Howard (New York: Vintage, 1988) xixii.
64 Plato, Gorgias, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1994)
4243; idem, The Republic 85 86.
65 Sade, Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings 453. Note the
narcissism implicit in this description: crime is brilliant as it dazzles the victim
with the assailants power.
66 Sade, Juliette 553.
67 Ibid. 215, 124, 27980.
68 Plato, The Republic 392.
69 Hume 261; Mackie 190.
70 See, for example, Nielsen 116; Hume 259; [Franois-Marie Arouet] Voltaire,
Philosophical Dictionary, trans. Theodore Besterman (London: Penguin, 1972) 29.
71 Here I am paraphrasing Hilary Bok, Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de
Secondat in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Friday 18
July 2003), available <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu>, section 4.1
(accessed 24 Oct. 2009).
72 Hume 261.
73 Sade, La Nouvelle Justine 1: 357.
74 Idem, Juliette 243, 274, 1030.
75 Ibid. 1186.
76 Ibid. 598, 958, 1003, 1030, 1168.
77 Joyce, The Myth of Morality 33.
78 Sade, The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales xli.

19

sades moral scepticism

79 For compilations of such libertine works, see Michel Feher (ed.), The Libertine
Reader: Eroticism and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France (New York:
Zone, 1997); and Patrick Wald Lasowski (ed.), Romanciers libertins du XVIIIe sicle
(Paris: Bibliothque de la Pliade/Gallimard, 2000). For discussion of Kants sexual
conservativeness, see Alan Soble, Kant and Sexual Perversion, The Monist 86.1
(2003): 5589.
80 For discussion of Sades account of the psychology of sadistic pleasure, see
Geoffrey Roche, Enigma of the Will: Sades Psychology of Evil, Janus Head 11.2
(2009): 365-401.
81 Sade, Juliette 710, 763.
82 Mackie 213.
83 Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings 251.
84 Idem, Juliette 55051.
85 Idem, The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales 12627.
86 See Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts
to Australia 17871868 (London: Pan, 1987) 24.
87 Simon Blackburn, Being Good (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001) 71.
88 For discussion of this point in the context of evolutionary theory, see Linda
Mealey, The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model,
Behavioural and Brain Sciences 18.3 (1995): 52399; Martin A. Nowak, Robert M.
May and Karl Sigmund, The Arithmetics of Mutual Help, Scientific American 272.6
(1995): 7681.
89 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals, trans.
Francis Golffing (New York: Anchor, 1956) 174.
90 Adorno and Horkheimer 118.

Geoffrey Roche
unblinkinggaze@gmail.com

20