To be an effective force for good, or anything else worthwhile, you must understand and make peace with your capacity for cruelty, debauchery, and evil. Few authors provide more vivid guidebooks for the dark alleys of your psyche than the French philosopher, pornographer, nobleman, and free-speech crusader Donatien Alphonse Françios, Marquis de Sade, author of 100 Days of Sodom, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Justine, all of which keep the promises of their titles.
To be clear: In his novels, plays, and short stories, de Sade fetishizes inflicting torture and degradation on relative innocents as part of an ethic of sexual libertinism and lust for power. He wasn’t a nice guy. He was thrown in prison then and remains controversial now, if tremendously influential, having forever left his mark on the worlds of philosophy, psychology, and sexuality. He was a hero to Georges Bataille (of sorts: Bataille suggested that hero-worship must be based on a misunderstanding or poor reading comprehension) and no doubt a guilty pleasure for other more prominent, less brave thinkers, doers, and other public figures who like to make a good impression outside of impact play. He may be intimidating, but like your own demons, he’s worth getting to know.
To revisit de Sade’s work in this squeamish and skittish age is to open a dialogue with the most callous and selfish areas of your mind. This can be upsetting, or it can unlock untold riches and transform your life for the better. If you’re afraid of your own shadow, unacquainted with the humor and humanity that lurks within your darkest impulses, de Sade says, embrace it. You are that, too. Jesus, Buddha, and your therapist would likely agree.
This makes his work a psychic release valve. It’s not pleasant, but it takes off some of the pressure, especially peer pressure. Plus, he has some genuinely useful advice on how to live more courageously and independently when thoughtless herd conformity is as pervasive as ever.
Here are a few quotes that capture the magic of Brother Marquis. As you’ll see, there’s nothing to fear, much to gain, and even a few laughs to be had in his carnival of cruelty. Dig in.
“There is a sum of evil equal to the sum of good. The continuing equilibrium of the world requires that there be as many wicked people as good people.”
He doesn’t cite stats on this, but he makes his point. Counter to his sociopathic self-presentation, de Sade’s literary career has some of the marks of a humanitarian mission. The unsavory parts of human nature aren’t going away — modernity has simply masked and exacerbated the worst of them — so it is crucial to meet our inner evil with understanding, compassion, and even some light celebration. Owning our worst predilections makes it possible to understand what we truly want and how we want to be in the world, without shame, pretense, or false piety. De Sade paid a hefty price for his candor, but it should be obvious to anyone who pays attention to human affairs that he was onto something vital.
“Nothing we can do outrages nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigor and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power.”
If it exists, it’s “natural.” Whatever our feelings about morality, it is best understood not as a set of Newtonian laws but as a constructed, self-imposed, ever-shifting set of recommendations for how to treat each other. It can be frightening to consider that you might not be an entirely good person, but take some responsibility for your thoughts and behavior and don’t drag “nature” into it.
“Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace.”
We don’t generally gravitate toward stories of people getting along. The more deeply we can accept our fascination with gore, torture, and turbulence, the more peace we can make with our minds and hearts. Every beautiful thing must have at least trace amounts of ugliness to make it interesting. See if you can spot it.
“No kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain. Its impressions are unmistakable.”
The kink community is growing in cultural influence, which makes sense when you consider that there’s always been more BDSM-flavored seasoning in our lives than most of us care to admit. Just as we all have an inner sadist on call, we clearly harbor some masochistic tendencies as well. We may claim to recoil from pain, but our actions don’t do much to prevent it. Indeed, some of us court pain and grow from it, others stumble repeatedly and unthinkingly into its path, and none of us is unacquainted with its power. Pain makes us beautiful. De Sade’s interest was in inflicting it, but there may be more to gain from opening ourselves to the full experience of feeling it. If you can’t enjoy your pain, let someone else have it. If it’s especially delicious, spread it around.
“Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted. Therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.”
Most of us aren’t full-time sadists or sociopaths, and we mustn’t pretend to be, lest we get eaten alive by the genuine article. But how much do we actually want to follow conventional morality, and how much do we just want to get along? Can you be a good person who is also dishonest? Ever the extreme individualist, de Sade challenges us to think and feel for ourselves, to fully own our worst traits, and to claim our power. As long as you can’t help to be cruel, get better at cruelty. Don’t hurt people mindlessly or passive-aggressively. Torture people in the ways that will give them the most pleasure, strength, and inspiration. Be the evil you want to see in the world.
“I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure.”
As a literary light, de Sade is underrated, with strong skills in humor and hyperbole. Even in prison, where he spent much of his life and composed his most notorious work, he committed his talents in service of free thought and self-realization. He may have focused on his own animal gratification, but it can be argued that a “true” sadist wouldn’t challenge us to interrogate our beliefs and take responsibility for ourselves and our desires. If he wanted to see us suffer, he would lie to us and convince us we’re safe in the middle of the road. The seemingly heartless Frenchman came with some useful hidden gifts for humanity.
“Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.”
In the pithy words of the Marquis’s fellow pariah Oscar Wilde, “everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Sex may not be everything, but it’s perpetually online. Anything made taboo becomes powerful. Sex is where we hide things, parts of ourselves we’re afraid would subject us to shock, ridicule, or rejection in the mixed company we pretend to enjoy. Whether we commit, play the field, or channel our libidinal currents into our life’s work through “sex transmutation,” we’re horny, it feels great, and we may as well get used to it. If people were better at sex, we might not need to start wars, build freeways, ostracize scapegoats, or screw up the environment. We might be much more comfortable with ourselves and each other after a few orgasms. Just a thought.
“My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: They immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.”
De Sade may have been a monster, but he knew what he liked, and not everyone can say that. If you’re honest with yourself and understand what you want, focus your desire, lust, and passion on that hotspot until the world feels the full force of your mind, heart, spirit, soul, and true intention. If it doesn’t work out, at least we’ll get a great light show.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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