Nature

Abstract

References to nature abound in Sade’s works, both in the libertine books for which he gained notoriety and in his more conventional novels, stories, and plays. The way in which nature is conceived in these texts takes its bearings from the ideology of nature that underpinned the influential Enlightenment philosophies of his time, especially those formulated by so-called Radical Enlightenment thinkers such as La Mettrie, d’Holbach, Helvétius, and Diderot. Drawing on a combination of ideas derived from Spinoza, Lucretius, and Epicurus, these philosophers argued that nature represents a purely physical system of interactions between particles that are made up of matter and motion. This materialist doctrine coincided with a fervent defense of atheism. In the minds of the Radical Enlightenment philosophers, God constitutes not only a logical fallacy, but also an agency that both justifies human suffering as a form of redemption for human beings’ sinful earthly existence and induces more pain and misery by preventing human beings from living in accordance with their own state of nature. These materialist, rationalist, and atheist principles then informed a moral philosophy that is predicated upon the fundamental, natural equality of all human beings and the promotion of a utilitarian ethics in which citizens will only experience happiness if they agree to work together for a common good. Self-interest needs to be balanced against the interest of others, because this virtue of reciprocity is the only way for individual pleasure to be guaranteed. One can easily recognize, here, the Epicurean guide to the good life, which does not advocate limitless hedonism, but rather a strictly measured, calculated satisfaction of essential desires as the necessary precondition for mental tranquility (ataraxia)....