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The Unreasonable Self: De Sade and
Rousseaus Attack on the
Rational Individual
by ricky1871

What is the true nature of the self? Ponderers,
philosophers, writers have grappled with this question for
millennia. Plato imagined that mans soul seeks to reunite
with the perfection of the divine in an imperfect material
world. Hence, our innate quest for beauty and form.
Christianity believed that the true self is spiritual,
immaterial, that man must live on faith and not trust merely
in his senses or reason for truth. Socrates argued that ideal
man is rational, dispelling prejudice and an un-examined life
in favor of a life based on self-improvement and
enlightenment through reason. By the 18
th
century, the man
of reason was in the ascent. Rational man, Socrates man,
was the ideal self: self-reliant, self-composed, confident in
his own ability to find truth and order through his reason
alone.
Two thinkers would challenge the supremacy of this
conception of the self, but from completely devergent angles
of attack. Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Marquis de Sades
conception of the individual are strikingly opposed. De Sade,
in his novel Justine, paints man as innately evil, as a being
who takes the most pleasure from inflicting pain and misery
on his fellows. Man is amoral and pitiliess, yet this is
nothing to despair of for De Sade. Quite the contrary, he
argues that in order for humans to be truly happy, they must
be completely free to pursue all their desires and passions,
no matter how cruel their manifestations. In On the Origins of
Inequality, Rousseau, noting the evil that exists in his own
time, does not draw the same stark conclusion for mans
essential self as De Sade. Rousseau argues that the evil acts
of modern humanity are an abberation of their original
nature. Man in primitive times, in his natural state was a
simple, peaceable and naturally compassionate creature. The
true nature of the self is good. It was only when man began
to reason, to develop his faculties beyond their simple state
in the pursuit of civilised life, that man became corrupted,
cruel and domineering. For Rousseau, man fell from his
original, virtuous state when he civilised himself.
De Sade and Rousseau represent polar opposites in their
conception of self-hood. Yet, more important than their
disagreements, is that they share in common an ambivalence
towards the Enlightenment idea that places rationality at the
center of the self. They both, for differing reasons, argue that
the self is determined by forces outside and beyond
rationality, that rationality is only a tool for our natural
desires or our sentiments and thus a secondary element of the
self. In this respect, both Rousseau and De Sade make
important contributions to the later modernist doubts
concerning the so called rational individual. Like De Sade
and Rousseau, later writers and thinkers would characterize
the self as being driven by subterranean forces of impulse,
intuition and unconscious desire. De Sade has developed an,
in some ways very nuanced, understanding of the forces that
motivate the individual beyond rationality. His theories of
pan-sexuality and of the deep, often malign, impulses that
really govern human behaviour, have their echoes in later
writers like Freud, Conrad, Mann and Woolf. These writers,
just like De Sade, would later explore how sex, madness,
perversion and the unconscious shape human behaviour in
ways that our rational self cannot detect or control.
Rousseau, in his own way, contributes to the anti-rational
attack on the idea of the self-contained man of reason. He
instead celebrates mans innate sentiment, virtue,
compassion and simplicity. Primitive man, for Rousseau, is
shaped by nature. His instinct, emotions, strength, even his
powers of reason are set by nature at a level at which man
might live contentedly. Early man innately knows his way
around the natural world. Natural man relies on feeling and
intuition rather than his relatively undeveloped reason. Such
a celebration recurs in later writers like Nietzsche and Ernst
Junger, who hail the essential vitality and virtue of
instinctual human action. Furthermore, Rousseau contributes
a deep pessimism towards contemporary civilisation and
rational civilised man, arguing that he is degenerative, fake
and inauthentic, a key theme for modernist writers. De Sade
and Rousseau, extremely divergent thinkers, nevertheless
contribute to the western disenchantment with so called,
ordered, rational man. They argue, in their own unique ways,
that man is naturally more vital, more free, more flexible and
more instinctual than the enlightenment thinkers of their time
would have liked to admit. Here we explore these two
thinkers opposing conceptions of the essential nature of the
self. It is through this exploration of apparent opposites
however, that we will better understand their converging
assertions that self-hood is not determed by reason alone. De
Sade and Rousseau unpick rational man from radically
different angles.
I
Is the core of the human psyche naturally good or evil?
Are our deepest and most fundamental impulses toward
cruelty or compassion? While De Sade argues that mans
most natural and happiest state is in committing acts of evil,
Rousseau believes that man is essentially good, that all
virtue stems from a natural compassion, an instinctual
aversion to pain in others.
In De Sades Justine, man is evil by nature. Almost
immediately, De Sade establishes people as calculating and
hypocritical. They fawned on Justine and her sister when
their father was wealthy and alive, but shun them as
beggarly orphans when they are down on their luck (p.18).
De Sade attacks the idea of innate virtue and human
altruism. As Justine asks despairingly, Are people respected
only by the gains others can get from them? (p.20).
Humans are, for De Sade, innately selfish and self-serving
in all their actions. The vast majority of the characters in the
novel Justine commit crimes, betrayals and acts of cruelty
for their own gain, their own petty satisfaction and even for
their own sexual pleasure. Furthermore, crime, more often
than virtue, pays. Characters, such as Roland the
counterfeiter, have become immensely rich through crime. In
the same manner, Rodin, the doctor, has become well known
and respected for his medical knowledge, which is based on
the biopsies of live human subjects. Even for the straitlaced
Justine, as the criminal Madame Dubois points out, An
honest deed almost brought you to the gallows, a crime
saved you from it. What use is good in the world anyway?
(p.32). According the De Sade, crime, misdeeds and
misanthropy are deeply embedded in everyday existence.
Indeed, there is, quite often, much pleasure and material
advantage to be gained from evil.
Evil and cruelty bring great pleasure, underpinning De
Sades argument that evil is innate in the human species. The
male characters of the novel have monstrous sexual
proclivities, ranging from a love of flagellation to blood
letting and rape. The monk Clement demonstrates to Justine
that the greatest pleasure only comes from inflicting extreme
pain on others. Clement argues, To improve it [pleasure], it
is not necessary that it be shared by the woman. Is it not in
fact evident that everything the woman shares with us she
takes away from us? (p.96). Supreme pleasure is utterly
selfish; the more it is denied to others through pain, the more
intense the feeling for the cruel actor. This selfish aspect
raises another aspect of the pleasure of evil. Evil acts affirm
the individuals potency, place them at the centre of the
universe and exalt the unfettered ego. The monk Clement:
See how simple it all is, Therese: the only important thing
in sensual pleasures is reaching the fullest measure of
enjoyment (pp.97-8). Evil acts thus reinforce the essential
selfishness of the ego as it seeks its own pleasure, not only at
the expense of others, but also in contempt of collective
moral sanctions. As the thief Roland states, I owe only to
myself for what I rob. Never requiring submission, why
should I show gratitudeI ask nothing from you-I take
(p.146). Like the monk Clement, Roland celebrates the
superior pleasure gained from selfish, pitiless acts. For De
Sade, this fact that men enjoy inflicting pain, and that
pleasure is fundamentally selfish, is evidence that humanity
is innately evil. It is our nature to feel great enjoyment in
committing evil acts.
Love of evil is, essentially, love of danger and the
forbidden. For De Sade, virtue is gained by courting with,
and overcoming danger and the forbidden. Firstly, there is
virtue in crime, because criminal acts can achieve a kind of
rough justice. De Sade, like Rousseau, acknowledges the
extreme injustice of modern civilisation. He provides a
radical solution by promoting the use of gratuitous violence
to right wrongs. Thus, the miser, Monsieur Hairpin, argues
that stealing from the rich is virtuous because one is
reestablishing an equilibrium of wealth (p.30). The thief
Madame Dubois further promotes the virtue of crime. We
are all created free and equal by nature; but if chance puts
out of order this first law of nature, is it not up to us to
correct its caprices by our strength and numbers?
(p.33).Virtue that obeys laws and conventional morality is
weak and cowardly, simply serving oppression and
inequality further. Traditional morality is a tool of the
wealthy to keep down the less fortunate. Man must break the
rules of an unjust society to regain what is rightfully his, to
reclaim a lost equality. The criminal becomes a kind of hero
against the system. Thus, Hairpin and Dubois argue that
religious virtue reinforces injustice and immorality. True,
natural virtue, on the other hand, is having the strength, the
boldness and the cunning to commit an act of evil in order to
right a greater systematic evil.
Secondly, by commiting crime, the individual improves
their character. What man takes from others by force or
daring, only increases his own strength, experience and
personal virtue. By putting oneself in danger, one develops
courage, intellect and confidence. Crime thus improves the
individual, not only on a material level, but also on a
personal one. As the thief and swindler Madame Dubois
argues, The weakness of our bodies, lack of reason, the
stupid prejudices in which we are brought up, the vain
promises of religion, and the laws are what stop fools from
becoming criminals and doing great deeds! But a man strong
and vigorous knows where his interests really lie, and he
mocks God and man, braves death, despises the laws and is
thoroughly convinced that he alone is the measure of all
things! (pp.38-9). Rather than degrade their personal
character, individuals who commit crime improve it. By
overcoming barriers or fetters on the individual, such as
poverty or cultural sanctions, men become stronger and
liberated. By challenging the forbidden and courting with
danger, they develop the courage to fulfill their own desires,
to think and act for themselves. They become heroes.
On mans natural state, whether we are good or evil,
Rousseau holds the contrary view to that of De Sades.
Rousseau argues that, rather than being innately evil, man is
naturally good. For Rousseau, primitive man, lacking
complex reasoning powers, was unable to conceptualise
manipulating or harming others for his own gain. Rather,
early man was characterised by his simple and good-natured
temperament, which Rousseau calls the only natural
virtue. I am speaking of compassion, which is a
disposition suitable to creatures so weak and subject to so
many evils as we certainly are (p.197). Compassion is an
instinct towards goodness, that trumps human cunning or
dis-ingenuity, such is the pure emotion of nature, prior to
all kinds of reflection (p.198). Compassion, this aversion to
the pain of others, this recognition of ones own shared
suffering with all living creatures, defines mans natural
state. Moreover, it is the basis for all subsequent human
virtues. But what is generosity, clemency or humanity but
compassion applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to mankind
in general? Even benevolence and friendship are, if we judge
rightly, only the effects of compassion, constantly set upon a
particular object (p.199). Thus, for Rousseau, man is a
good animal at heart. Humans are not defined by their
reason, and therefore their ability for cunning, deception and
manipulation, but by their simple temperament, sentiment
and feeling, which are essentially virtuous.
De Sade takes the evil and injustice that he sees around
him in contemporary society and argues that this state of
affairs is the natural and eternal state of man. Rousseau, on
the other hand, argues that the evil nature of modern society
is not the natural state of man, but a degeneration from a
more perfect, virtuous natural state. As outlined above,
Rousseau believes that man begins his existence in a simple
and primitive, but virtuous state, incapable of doing great
harm to others. It is only with the development of society,
the growth of civilisation out of a more primitive and
subsistence past, that man becomes evil. Indeed, for
Rousseau, mans virtue sinks in direct relation to the rise of
civilised society, we are tempted to believe that, in
following the history of civil society, we shall be telling also
that of human sickness (p.181).The growth of agriculture,
for example, introduces slavery to mankind, as some men are
required to till the land and toil, while others grow rich from
ownership of the land. Rousseau argues that, with the growth
of civilisation, slavery and misery were soon seen to
germinate and grow up with the crops (pp.214-5). The beauty
of the agrarian landscape conceals suffering and injustice.
Furthermore, this growth of property, of possessions and
wealth sowed the seeds of jealousy, covetousness,
competition and pride. The constant bustling to be on top of
the social pyramid, to possess the most wealth and status
gave rise to the horrible state of war (p.219). Human
kinds vices, their possessiveness, their jealousies, hatreds
and covetousness, are not innate to the species. They are
instead an outgrowth of the unnatural progression of
civilisation. Man abandoned his natural state, and with that
also his innate compassion. In so doing, he became evil.
Whether De Sade asserts that man is innately evil, that he
is led by an evil impulse, or whether Rousseau argues that
man is led by a fundamentally compassionate impulse, both
writers are bypassing reason as a prime driver of human
action. Opposites converge upon this idea that reason takes a
back-seat to much more powerful forces that are completely
unreflective, indeed pre-rational. In the next section, we
explore how both writers argue, from opposing angles, that
reason is indeed the tool of natural drives, whether good or
evil in make-up.
II
De Sade argues that reason is far from benign, working
to improve the lot of mankind. Rather, reason always serves
the selfish individual. For him, this is the most natural and
best way. Rational self-interest aids our most fundamental
desires and we must always be true to these desires and
passions. Indeed, for De Sade, the impulses of men, whether
evil or benign, are irrepressible. Reason is not the master of
instinct, it is the other way around. Rousseau agrees that
reason serves the passions, but argues these passions are far
from cruel or uncontrollable. Man, in a state of nature is
simple, his passions easily satisfied without great effort or
disruption. Nature, the great balancer and harmonizer, has
also fashioned an innate harmony in man. Following the way
nature has made him, man may easily satisfy all his simple
longings. For Rousseau, it is our ability to reason beyond our
natural needs, to imagine new and more extravagant ones,
that creates monstrous passions. Reason, usurps our true
nature, turns our passions into a Frankenstein, an un-
appeaseable and violent force.
For De Sade, reason serves the selfish ego. In the age of
reason, the age of Enlightenment, reason was seen as the
greatest asset of man. Through reason he could improve the
lot of himself and of society at large. Mans reason would be
his salvation, breaking the bonds of ignorance and slavery,
and improving the material comfort of human life. Above
all, reason would benefit mankind. But De Sade turns this
theory on its head, arguing that reason is far from altruistic.
The individual will use rational calculation for their own
gain alone, not for the improvement of society. So, we find
that Justines sister, Juliet, reasons that the best life a poor
but beautiful young woman can achieve, is by selling her
natural talents to the highest bidder. She desires a life of
luxury, and so, she becomes a famous mistress to the
wealthiest and most powerful men in France. She is
hardened against the fine sentiments of her sister. For
example, she believes marriage is a prison, rather than an
escape from poverty. She argues, But if they abandoned
themselves to prostitution they could, at least, assure
themselves of money, variety and loves delights (pp.18-9).
Thus, rationality is basically self-interested and amoral. We
think about what is most beneficial for ourselves even if that
flies in the face of conventional wisdom and morality. Other
characters exhibit this same sense of self-interest. The
wealthy businessman Monsieur Dubourg abuses his social
position to exploit poor young girls. His mindset is
dominated by a cold, economic rationality in which no-one
gets help for nothing, and the best a poor girl can offer a rich
man is the pleasure of her body. Reason, in the novel Justine,
serves self-interest. It is above all cold, calculating and
selfish, working for the gain of the ego, rather than for the
betterment of others and for society at large.
Reason is indeed far from altruistic or compassionate.
People dont merely put themselves first. More often than
not, human beings will use other people for their own
calculated self-interest. Most of the characters in the novel
use others to further their own gain. Monsieur Hairpin first
attempts to trick Justine into stealing some jewellery for him
and, when that fails, he takes it himself and blames Justine
for the crime when the burglary is found out. Here, Hairpin
uses his unscrupulous cunning to avoid punishment,
callously bringing misery upon an innocent. Madame
Dubois, on the other hand, uses calculated self-interest to
increase her own benefit. She uses Justine, a virgin, to lure
unsuspecting men with the promise of an untainted maiden,
and then robs them. Both Hairpin and Dubois use their
cunning in order to increase their own benefit to the
maximum, even if it is at the expense of others. The great
robber chief, who kidnaps Justine, argues that all men
behave this way, that What society calls its interest is
nothing but a mass of private interests put together. If you
have nothing to offer to society what interest does it take in
you? (p.39). He argues, for example, that a member of a
gang of thieves does not work for the benefit of his criminal
comrades, but for himself. He simply sees the advantage in
banding together, thus increasing his strength through
superior numbers. It is also like this with society at large.
Their is no such thing as a natural brotherhood, or of
compassion for fellow men. Rational self-interest serves only
to benefit the individual; their desires, whims and appetites.
Whether humans exploit or aid others is entirely dependent
on how much personal benefit they will receive.
But De Sade goes further with this argument that reason
serves the selfish ego. For De Sade, reason is, in fact, a slave
to desire and appetite. Men are, in the end, not governed by
their reason. They are not even in control of themselves.
What moves men is their deepest sexual drives. The Count
Bressac, driven by a mad and perverted lust states, Laying
aside the moral, if you could only imagine the physical
sensations of these divine practices!-it is impossible to resist
them! It is a pleasure so keen, a titillation so quick and
sharpone loses his wits, talks nonsense (p.51). For
Bressac, humans are essentially madmen, incapable of
resisting their desires. And human reason is simply a tool to
help men attain their object. Even Justine is a slave to her
desire. She both reviles and secretly loves Count Bressac.
But the more she tries to resist her feelings, the stronger her
desire becomes. But is it love and evil that can be cured?
Every reason she found to oppose it only fanned its flame the
more; the more cause she found to hate him, the more
charming he appeared to her (p.54). Thus, our predilections,
both evil and benign, are deeply ingrained forces governing
the self. Acknowledging this fact, the monk Clement reasons
that we are not the master of our tastes! Shouldnt we
follow the promptings of our nature? Arent these tastes also
part of nature; we wouldnt have them if they werent
(p.98). Desire is the core of the self, is is a part of nature,
and prior to reason. De Sade attacks the Enlightenment idea
that man is in rational possession of himself, is master of his
desires. On the contrary, this belief that man can keep a lid
on his wanton drives is, for De Sade, the source of suffering
in men. Reason and self-restraint should not be the master of
the drives. Only when humans allow reason to serve desire,
no matter how perverted that desire is, will they be truly
liberated and truly happy. This is because, by liberating
desire, men are expressing their essential nature.
Like De Sade, Rousseau argues that the passions are the
source of reason and thought, It is by the activity of the
passions that our reason is improved; for we desire
knowledge only because we wish to enjoy (p.186).
Rousseau believes that original, primitive man was highly
instinctual, that his senses were even more perfectly
developed than modern manss. De Sade uses this theory that
man is basically instinctual to justify the murderous or cruel
appetites of evil men, claiming that such appetites are
natural. Yet, for Rousseau, savage man was too simple, his
mind lacking sufficient reason or cunning to be ambitious,
cruel or avaricious. But who does not see, without recurring
to the uncertain testimony of history, that everything seems
to remove from savage man both the temptation and the
means of changing his condition? His imagination paints no
pictures; his heart makes no demands on him (p.186). His
heart makes no demands on him, because primitive man has
all he needs, is amply provided for by nature. Thus he has no
need of to be cruel, selfish, or greedy. He is indeed governed
by his instincts, as De Sade argues. But for Rousseau,
primitive mans instincts are docile, his reason feeble and,
therefore, he is content and peaceable.
Rousseau argues that the development of reason, far
from serving our natural desires, actually usurps them and
perverts them. For Rousseau, mans natural passions are
peaceful. His limited reason serves mans wants, with little
effort, by acquiring what nature has provided for her
creations. Those evil and limitless proclivities that De Sade
justifies as natural and prior to reason or virtue are, for
Rousseau, actually the unnatural outgrowth of an over-
developed capacity for reasoning. Man is abundantly
provided for by nature in his primitive state, yet he still
craves more. Why should this be? Rousseau argues that this
is because the mind, being a symbol of mans unique free-
will, his ability to choose, depraves the senses; that is, it
runs beyond mans simple needs and seeks ever greater
wants and desires. the will continues to speak when
nature is silent (p.184). Mans free-will, his reason can
devise infinite wants far beyond what nature provides.
Rousseau defines natural human happiness as food, female
and sleep and thus relatively easily attainable. But mans
reason, usurping the senses, over time and through
association and competition with others, created unnatural
needs. These increase our wants and passions, but not our
happiness. Thus, De Sade argues that reason serves our
passions, which no matter how monstrous, are natural and
thus legitimate. Rousseau, on the other hand, insists that, in
modern man, the passions and mans essential nature have
been usurped and perverted by a runaway rationality, which
restlessly creates larger and more extravagant needs and
desires. Such a restless capacity for reasoning makes us more
and more discontent and malevolent the further it takes us
from our natural, simple, proto-rational state.
For Rousseau, the most important pre-rational instinct
that determines natural behaviour, is compassion.
Compassion is one of the greatest victims of the rise of
reason. Reason, Rousseau argues, develops through mans
increasing association with others, with his incorporation
into a more lasting and complex social organisation. For
Rousseau, society, from earliest times, was competitive, with
men and women vying with one another to be the best and
most admired among their peers. This competitiveness
developed rational self-interest, a kind of selfish reasoning
that sought the greatest advantage for the individual in
regards to his social position. Out of this early competitive
self-interest, man grows more calculating and less
compassionate. His sentiment recedes as his reason
develops. Thus, by Rousseaus time, The wise and socially
ambitious have lost all traces of their natural compassion
while the lower orders, though rough and uncouth, retain
traces of their primitive virtue: It is the populace that flocks
together at riots and street-brawls, while the wise man
prudently makes off. It is the mob and the market women,
who part the combatants, and hinder gentle-folks from
cutting one anothers throats (p.199). The less intellectually
developed are more in tune with compassion, more in tune
with the general suffering of humanity and therefore more
ready to relieve it. On the other hand, it is the development
of reason and cunning, so necessary for those who wish to
make a name for themselves in civilisation, that has
undermined natural human compassion.
Thus, we see that reason is the tool, the hand-maiden of
the senses and instincts, a product of our need to satisfy the
drives. Both De Sade and Rousseau take this to be the
natural purpose of reason. De Sade sees reason as the natural
tool for servicing mans evil inclinations, through cunning.
When reason is used to reign in these natural cruelties in the
name of the protection of society, then, argues De Sade,
reason is perverted beyond its natural function to serve the
individuals selfish desires. Rousseau, on the other hand,
argues that natural man is basically proto-rational, relying on
an intuition for survival bestowed on him by nature. For
Rousseau, reason itself, if unchecked, becomes perverse,
enlarging desire and selfishness infinitely. The history of the
development of civilisation and reason is, for him, a history
of the development of the perverse, the unnatural. Thus, both
thinkers argue that man is happiest when his reason is
relegated to its proper subservient position as a tool of
natural instinct and desire.
III
De Sade creates a unique and nuanced view of human
sexuality. Men and women are actually pan-sexual,
encompassing many kinds of sexual roles. What is more, he
puts sexuality at the center of human motivation, claiming
that sexual desire is all-consuming and un-appeaseable. It is
the life-force that determines human behaviour and men and
women are unable to resist it. But De Sades sexualities
are essentially cruel and selfish. Rousseau, on the other hand,
argues that sex is actually very basic and not at all the violent
passion that De Sade paints it as. Sex, for Rousseau, is no
more important than any of the other essential human needs
and does not consume any more energy than them either. It
is only with the rise of civilisation, with its competitive and
acquisitive spirit, that sex becomes perverted and entwined
with relations of power, dominance and cruelty.
Our sexuality, actually, our essential nature, is not fixed
or reducible to a single or simple element or theory. For De
Sade, humans are complex beings. Diversity defines human
behavior. The characters of the novel Justine are pan-sexual.
Their predilections cover homosexuality, heterosexuality,
polygamy, sadism and voyeurism. The doctor, Rodin is
deeply aroused by inflicting pain on school children through
savage whippings. Roland, the counterfeiter, receives the
greatest pleasure from auto-eroticism, from both strangling
his hapless victims, and himself. The Marquis Gernande is
almost entirely impotent. He is only aroused by the ritual of
slowly bleeding his young wife to death. Perhaps the most
pan-sexual character of all is the Count Bressac, a young
dandy, who indulges in cross-dressing, homosexual love and
extreme sadism. He encapsulates several sexualities in
one. Thus, rather than being a fixed or rigid category, sex is
multi-faceted. For De Sade, the attempt to enforce one kind
of sexuality, heterosexual, monogamous love, on everyone is
a mistake because it goes against the true diversity of human
sexuality. As the Monk Clement argues, Ones tastes, ones
character and temperament is given to him in his mothers
womb and nothing later can change it, education nor nothing
else (p.95). These multiple sexualities are an innate part
of human nature. Deviance is, in fact, normal. Only a kind of
libertarian freedom, that encourages people to do as they
please without fear of punishment, is the best suited to real
human behaviour. For De Sade, happiness comes from the
freedom to pursue ones imagination and desire.
What this pan-sexuality points to, for De Sade, is the
essential amorality of human behaviour. Human behaviour is
reflected in the amoral and indifferent workings of nature.
Nature builds and destroys with no real discrimination.
Neither is there any real purpose to natures creative or
destructive acts beyond the unstoppable energy of nature
itself. Nature just is, and thus cares nothing for mans fate.
The Count Bressac states, Can anyone say that the
construction of a biped costs nature more than that of a little
worm? (p.56). And thus, for Count Bressac, creation and
destruction, nurturing and killing are not more hallowed nor
more abominable than the other, in the eyes of nature. There
is no good or evil. The wise man recognises this and allows
himself free play of his desires, becomes a true being of
nature; he too becomes amoral. Because there is, thus, no
evil in anything, De Sade upholds the absolute freedom of
the individual: freedom from ignorance, social control,
indoctrination and morality, ideals of honour, disgrace or
reputation. These things are false values as they can be found
nowhere in nature. The individual is free to act and think as
they please, as nature does. Youll learn that there is no real
evil in anything and that its stupid to repent and not do what
is useful and agreeable to you (p.162). We find in Justine,
characters pursuing their own pleasure without regard to the
feelings of others, characters with no regard for reputation,
characters defying morality, others pushing the boundaries of
creative cruelty. Most of the characters basically pursue life,
free of any constraints on body or conscience. Amorality, for
De Sade, means liberty, natural liberty.
De Sade paints mans sexual nature as extremely varied
and colourful. He takes perversions of all kinds to be a
normal part of human sexual life. Furthermore, sex is all
powerful, determining mans behaviour. Rousseau, on the
other hand, argues that mans sexual identity is actually very
simple and undemanding. For Rousseau, mans physical
needs are easily, indeed, enviably well supplied for by
nature. taking him all round, [man is] the most
advantageously organised of any. I see him satisfying his
hunger at the first oak, and slaking his thirst at the first
brook; finding his bed at the foot of the tree which afforded
him a repast; and with that, all his wants supplied (p.177).
This simplicity equally applies to mans sexuality: the
sexes united without design, as accident, opportunity or
inclination brought them together, nor had they any great
need of words to communicate their designs to each other;
and they parted with the same indifference (p.189). This is
an extremely individualistic and free conception of natural
human sexuality. We also sense from this quote Rousseaus
belief that man is essentially a creature of intuition, not
reason. Sex is simply a feeling that must be sated, without
fuss or drama. The desire, not reason, precedes the action.
Rousseaus libertarianism here mirrors, in some ways, that of
De Sade. Both see humans as essentially free to express
themselves sexually when, where and how they see fit. But
Rousseau does not believe that mans sexual energies are all
consuming, determining human behaviour. For Rousseau,
primitive men and women quietly await the impulses of
nature, yield to them involuntarily, with more pleasure than
ardour, and, their wants once satisfied, lose the desire
(p.202). Unlike De Sade, whose characters possess a
plethora of sexual identities, and who are slaves to their
passion, Rousseau believes that sex, for men in a state of
nature, was very basic, no more important than the other
human needs for food, safety or shelter.
De Sade takes the sexual perversions, the sexual cruelty
and power that have arisen in contemporary society, as signs
of natural human sexuality. Indeed, he argues that humans
are their happiest when they are free to live out these
perversions and cruelties. Rousseau, however, argues that
sexual perversion and cruelty are not at all natural to man.
Rather they are the result of men and women leaving their
natural state and developing unnatural relations as
civilisation progressed. Firstly, in society, through
comparison and competition, men and women develop
vanity and a desire to possess a beautiful sexual object to
enhance their status. The ambition and jealousy that results
from the concurrent evolution of amourous attachment and
of the ego leads to sexual conflict. A tender and pleasant
feeling insinuated itself into their souls, and the least
opposition turned it into an impetuous fury: with love arose
jealousy; discord triumphed, and human blood was sacrificed
to the gentlest of all passions (p.212). Sexual relations
became stormy because humans developed a sense of vanity
and entitlement far beyond natural sexuality. Secondly, the
rise of civilisation perverted sexuality by placing unnatural
sanctions and rules upon sex. Rousseau argues, as De Sade
does, that monogamy and laws against adultery are exactly
counter to real human sexual needs. As civilisation
developed such sanctions, it gave rise to the crimes of
passion and sexual frustration that naturally occur when
humans are forced to repress their sexual desire. Rousseau
believes that original human sexual life was extremely loose,
easily gratified and thus lacking the venom of modern
sexuality. It is only with the development of civilisation,
which perverts and represses mans true sexual energies, that
sex became cruel, domineering and the cause of so much
violence.
At the core of De Sades theory of the self is the
overiding power of sexuality, unemcumbered by any
restrictions of reason or morality. Sex profoundly determines
behaviour and motivation. Men are driven mad by sex while
reason is helpless to restrain erotic appetite. Identity is thus
deeply entwined with sexuality. Rousseau refuses to give sex
a prime role in human motivation, prefering to argue for the
natural harmony of mans instincts. For Rousseau, man
reflects nature, which is harmonious and balanced. The
instinctual drives rise in man, only to be satiated and return
to a natural equilibrium. He does not privilege sex as a great
determining force. But neither does he privilege reason.
Rather man is characterized by his natural intuition in
harmony with the natural world. Again, for Rousseau, it is
only with the development of civilisation and therefore also
reason, that sex becomes cruel and perverted out of all
natural proportion. Reason, employed for the gratification of
the self in competition with others in civilised society,
poisons the natural harmony and placidity of our drives.
IV
In conclusion, we encoutner unavoidable contradictions
between the works of both De Sade and Rousseau. Their
respective theories on the nature of the self represent two
poles. De Sade champions mans innate perversions, his
cruelty, his will to power and domination, in a word, his evil
nature. He argues that the malaise of modern man is not the
immorality of his time, but rather the virtue. Conventional
morality is for him a big lie, designed to keep the strong in
their place. Thus, those who matter to De Sade, the strong,
the courageous, the cunning are left chaffing and miserable
under unnatrual fetters. In order for men to be happy, they
must be fully liberated from all tradition and all moral
sanctions. Rousseau also sees the morality of modern
civilisation as fake, as a mask to cover the deep rot of
modern man. But, unlike De Sade, he does not celebrate the
immorality, or cruelty of man as natural. On the contrary, he
recognizes the immorality of civilisation as just another sign
of degeneration. In every aspect of life, man has degenerated
from a more simple, intuitive and compassionate self.
Natural man was deeply intune with nature, from which he
emerged, and thus much more content. For Rousseau,
reason, far from being the crowning achievement of
civilisation, reveals the core of its rot. It was reason,
cunning, disengenuity that aided in humanitys fall into the
unnatural state of civilisation. Everywhere, Rousseau argues,
the man of civilised reason is without compassion, while the
simpleton still has the capacity to feel for his fellow man.
Where De Sade argues that it is mans ability for cruelty that
defines his nature, Rousseau argues that it is his ability for
compassion, for feeling that is his most natural characteristic.
Yet is is also evident that both thinkers converged on one
very important subject. De Sade and Rousseau mounted a
powerful attack upon Enlightenment conceptions of the
rationlly centered, self-contained individual. Rousseau
bequeaths to Western culture the ideals of sentiment, of
spirit, of intuition and of essence. That is, he places the heart
above the mind. Compassion, courage, an innate sense of
justice, these things he values above the acquirement of
reason and cleverness. Indeed, reason is the result of a
corrupt and degenerate culture that has forgotten the value of
sentiment. Such a culture values the clever man above the
wise man. Such a society thinks with calculation rather than
with the heart. This idea of an essence, or spirit beyond
reason is key to understanding the later avant garde and
modernism in general. The irrational force within, the spirit
to act and create from the depths of ones own intuition; to
feel, not to think. Writers like Ernst Junger would later
celebrate this anti-rational self in his work Storm of Steel,
hailing the vital and instinctual energy, the natural bravery
and virtue of soldiers under fire. Junger would also depict a
world in which the civilisation of his time seems to be
nothing but artifice. The essential being, for Junger, lies in
the elemental forge of war. It is not the evils of war that
Junger celebrates, but the way in which war requires that the
individual fall back upon his intuition, his instinct. Junger
hails the rediscovery of his vital self, just as Rousseau had
urged. Other writers, too, such as Aldous Huxley would later
continue Rousseaus general pessimism with the progress of
civilisation as far from beneficial and enlightening to
mankind. Huxley, like Rousseau, depicts a future in A Brave
New World, in which, far from making men free and equal,
civilisation has enslaved every aspect of human life,
including the free, inquiring, creative mind.
De Sade also developed an early theory of the anti-
rational self, of how behaviour is shaped by deep and
complex sexual desires and impulses. For De Sade, man is
far from being completely in control of himself, he is not
motivated by his reason alone. Indeed, his deep sexual
desires have shaped his rationality. His reason is nothing but
the tool of his desires, allowing him to satisfy them through
cleverness and cunning. Thus we have a paradox in De
Sades thought, of man being free, yet not free. Free to do as
he pleases, but still bound to his deep sexual and emotional
urges. Of course, De Sade simply argues that man should be
free to express his innate urges however he pleases. This
concept that De Sade develops, that man is unknowingly
influenced and guided by his deepest impulses and instincts
plays a major part in the subsequent development of the self
in European culture. Writers after De Sade, especially those
of the modernist epoch, grapple with a dual conception of
man. Is man purely rational, self-contained and in control of
himself, or is he subject to the secret wishes of his psyche?
For example, Freud, like De Sade, completely undermines
the idea of a self-contained, rational individual in his works
which explore the deep and often disturbing and forbidden
impulses that really motivate behaviour. Thomas Mann, too,
explores this idea in his work Death In Venice. His main
character, a usually straitlaced professor, slowly succumbs to
the deep desires that he has repressed for decades. He is
destroyed, in the end, by powerful impulses that his rational
self has absolutely no control over. Western culture, before
and since De Sade, has both celebrated the ideal rational man
and, at the same time, brooded over a deep anxiety that,
perhaps man is nothing more than a collection of animal
instincts, vital, primitive and ultimately destructive.
De Sade and Rousseau, two very divergent writers on the
nature of the self, nonetheless, contributed to European
thought a deep pessimism with the idea of enlightened man;
the truly self-contained, rational individual who can explain
everything in the world by reason alone. They both
demonstrated that there are other, hidden and very powerful
forces within the human psyche, or spirit, that determine and
drive human behaviour. Their work is key to understanding
the gradual deconstruction of rational man in European
culture, and the attempt to re-enchant self-hood, to invest life
with an ineffable, mythical essence and vitality.

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