Understanding Sade

Abstract

My aim is a simply reading of Sade with an initial –and “naive”– reading fleeing from the current way to read him imagining more than that in his writings is reflected. In order to accomplish my purpose, firstly, I will claim that Sade could be an atheist and materialist, but those characteristics are not the best keywords for understanding him. Sade is atheist and materialist because he takes the option of sex and such choice implies (a) we shape our identity in real time and it is impossible to guess a narrative of the self with future and past. For this reason (b) speaking and acting continuously it is needed for being something (no matter what do you say and do). Because when you speak, you speak to other people and when you act, you are making things in a world with other people, (c) the libertine is essentially a social being. Such assertion could seem alien for Sade, but, as I conclude, his work –because his novelistic quality– has a final twist of transgression which can manage with contradiction.