Porno(u)topia of Marquis de Sade: “Philosophy in the Bedroom” vs “Symposium”

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22240/sent34.01.095

Keywords:

Marquis de Sade, Plato, «Symposium», «Philosophy in the Bedroom», lechery, Paideia, practice, theory, pornographic discourse, pornotopia, pleasure, republicanism

Abstract

The article studies philosophical, political, educational program of Marquis de Sade as an attempt to do away with the tradition of Platonic-Christian philosophizing, deconstruct its meaning and form. “Philosophy in the Bedroom” is interpreted as a parody of “Symposium” of Plato, which presents its own Sadian materialist conception as the opposite of Plato's metaphysics. In this context, we prove some essential theses in relation to the historical and philosophical significance of the Sadian heritage: 1. Sade creates an original controversy of Plato's dialogue, introducing new Conceptual Personae according to gender and class distinction and complementing theory and practice. 2. The practice enables the transition from erotological discourse to pornographic discourse and transform Platonic idealist seduction as part of Paideia into the pedagogics of the materialistic lechery. 3. The pornographic discourse allows Sade to create a new conceptual apparatus by which an apology for sensual pleasure is opposed to the ideology of Platonic love. 4. His own utopia/pornotopia of the individual pleasure deconstructing the utopias of the public good of Plato's “Republic” and republicanism of the Enlightenment. 5. Thus Sade tried to make the foundations for a new stage of philosophizing, which would occur after the revolution.

Author Biography

Oleh Perepelytsia, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, professor of the Department of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy

References

Abramovici, J. (2015). Sade et les limites du corps. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política, 1(26), 233-239. Retrieved from http://www.revistas.usp.br/cefp/article/view/108677

Allison, D. B., Roberts, M. S., & Weiss, A. S. (Eds.). (1995). Sade and the narrative of transgression. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511519413

Barthes, R. (2007). Sade, Fourier, Loyola. [In Russian]. Moscow: Praxis.

Beauvoir, S. de. (1967). Must We Burn Sade. In Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings (pp. 35-64). New York: Grove Press.

Deleuze, G. (1992). Presentation of Sacher-Masoch. [In Russian]. In A. V. Garadja (Ed.), Venus in Furs. L. von Sacher-Masoch. Venus in Furs. G. Deleuze. Presentation of Sacher-Masoch. S. Freud. Works about Masochism (pp. 189-313). Moscow: RIK Kultura.

Delon, M. (2015). Sade, un humanisme impossible? Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política, 1(26), 220-232. Retrieved from http://www.revistas.usp.br/cefp/article/view/108678

Foucault, M. (2010). A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. [In Russian]. Moscow: AST, & AST MOSKVA.

Gallop, J. (1982). The Immoral Teachers. Yale French Studies, 63, 117-128. https://doi.org/10.2307/2929835

Gallop, J. (2005). The Liberated Woman. Narrative, 13(2), 89-104. https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2005.0009

Hénaff, M. (2005). Sade: The Invention of The Libertine Body. [In Russian]. Saint Petersburg: Humanitarian Academy.

Horkheimer, M., Adorno, T. (1997). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. [In Russian]. Moscow: Medium; Saint Petersburg: Juventa.

Klossowski, P. (1991). Sade my neighbor. Evanston: Northwestern UP.

Lacan, J. (2006). The Seminar: Book VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960. (A. Chernoglazov, Trans.). [In Russian]. Moscow: Gnosis, & Logos.

Ludwig, P. W. (2002). Eros and Polis. Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497773

Marcus, St. (1966). Pornotopia. Encounter, August, 9-17. Retrieved December 4, 2015, from UNZ.org Periodicals, Books, and Authors website: https://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1966aug-00009:19

Milner, J.-Cl. (2009). The Constats. [In Russian]. Saint Petersburg: Machina.

Nadeau, M. (2007). Mœurs, vertu et corruption: Sade et le républicanisme classique. Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 347, 29-46. https://doi.org/10.4000/ahrf.8393

Perepelytsia, O. (2011). Marquis de Sade: The Ego and his Pleasures. [In Russian]. Philosophical Peripeteias. The Journal of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. 952. 41-47.

Perepelytsia, O. (2013). The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade: Percept and Concept on the Background of Narrative. [In Russian]. International Journal of Cultural Research. 1(10). 48-51.

Perepelytsia, O. (2014). The Mediums of Enlightenment: Obscene Deviation. [In Russian]. Kharkiv: V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.

Phillips, J. (2000). Sade and self-censorship. Paragraph. 23(1), 107-118. https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2000.23.1.107

Phillips, J. (2001). Sade. The Libertine Novels. London: Pluto Press.

Phillips, J. (2007). La prose dramatique de Sade: Ce “dangereux supplément”? L'Annuaire théâtral: revue québécoise d'études théâtrales, 41, 50-62.

Phillips, J. (2012). Obscenity Off the Scene: Sade's “La Philosophie dans le boudoir”. The Eighteenth Century, 53(2), 163-174. https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2012.0012

Phillips, J. (2014). Sade. French Studies: A Quarterly Review, 68(4), 526-533. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knu159

Plato. (1993). Symposium. [In Russian]. In Plato, Collected Works in 4 vols. (Vol. 2, pp. 81-134). Moscow: Mysl.

Plato. (2005). Symposium. [In Ukrainian & Greek]. Lviv: UCU Press.

Prokopenko, V. V. (2012). Philosophical Paideia and Platonic question. [In Russian]. Kharkov: Monograph.

Protopopova, I. (2011). The philosopher and the tyranny of desire: the Marquis de Sade as mirrored by Plato. [In Russian]. New Literary Observer, 112(6). Retrieved from http://www.nlobooks.ru/node/1507

Sade, D. A. Fr. Marquis de. (2010, September 15). La Philosophie dans le boudoir ou les instituteurs immoraux. Retrieved December 2, 2015, from Les Classiques des sciences sociales website: http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/sade_marquis_de/sade_philo_dans_le_boudoir/sade_philosophie_boudoir_sp.pdf

Sade, D. A. Fr. Marquis de. (s.d.). Philosophy in the Bedroom. [In Ukrainian]. Retrieved November 27, 2015, from Mreadz.com website: http://mreadz.com/read346228/p1

Schaeffer, J.-M. (2010). The End of the human exception. [In Russian]. Moscow: New Literary Observer.

Schorderet, A. (2011). Faire flèche de tout bois: Sade et la poétique de la parodie (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Zurich Open Repository and Archive http://www.zora.uzh.ch/48959/4/Schorderet_Faire_fleche_de_tout_bois-V.pdf

St-Martin, A. (2015). Sade, chroniqueur de son époque dans sa correspondance et le voyage d'Italie. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política, 1(26), 206-219. Retrieved from http://www.revistas.usp.br/cefp/article/view/108676

Downloads

Abstract views: 1348

Published

2016-06-16

How to Cite

Perepelytsia, O. (2016). Porno(u)topia of Marquis de Sade: “Philosophy in the Bedroom” vs “Symposium”. Sententiae, 34(1), 95–110. https://doi.org/10.22240/sent34.01.095

Issue

Section

ARTICLES

Metrics

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.