The phrase “the philosophy of sadism” may call to mind a doctrine that endorses making others suffer, or the cruel philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. Intellectual history, however, tells a less simple story. To begin with, no single, unified philosophical system called “sadism” ever took shape. After it became a term of sexology in the late nineteenth century, sadism was transformed in post-Freudian psychoanalysis into a set of problems concerning aggression, the exercise of power, drives, destructiveness, and infantile phantasy. Meanwhile, in twentieth-century thought, and especially in postwar French thought, it was less the medical concept of “sadism” than Sade himself, as a writer, who was reread as an intellectual device for thinking about freedom, the other, prohibition, death, law, desire, jouissance, and language.
“The philosophy of sadism” in this article therefore does not refer to one body of thought. The first half deals with how the concept of sadism itself changed as it passed from sexology into psychoanalysis; the second half deals, separately, with how Sade as a writer was reread in twentieth-century thought. For a general overview of sadism, see “What Is Sadism?” The literature of sadism is discussed in detail in “What Is the Literature of Sadism?”
Contents
- What Is the Philosophy of Sadism?
- Sade’s Own Thought Is Not the Same as “the Philosophy of Sadism”
- How Did Freud Transform Sadism?
- Abraham and Klein: Why Did Sadism Become a Question of Infancy?
- Why Did Twentieth-Century Thought Rediscover Sade?
- Klossowski: Does Sade End as an Atheist?
- Blanchot: From Sadism to “Negation” and “Language”
- Beauvoir: Sade and “the Freedom of the Other”
- Bataille: Prohibition, Transgression, Death, Sovereignty
- Lacan: What Does “Kant with Sade” Mean?
- Deleuze: Are Sadism and Masochism Really a Pair?
- Barthes: Reading Sade as a “System of Language”
- What Has the Intellectual History of Sadism Been About?
- How Do Sadism and Masochism Differ in Theory?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Summary: Sadism Expanded from “Cruelty” to Questions of the Other, Law, and Desire
What Is the Philosophy of Sadism?
To understand “the philosophy of sadism,” two histories must first be separated. One is the history in which sadism, made into a category of sexology by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, was reshaped by the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, Abraham, Klein, and others. Here sadism itself is treated as a theoretical concept. The other is the history in which the Marquis de Sade, as a writer, and his works were reread by twentieth-century thinkers. In this second history, medical sadism is not necessarily what is being discussed. Through Sade, these thinkers took up problems such as freedom, the other, death, negation, sovereignty, law, desire, jouissance, institution, and language.
| Line | Main figures | Central problems |
|---|---|---|
| History of the concept of sadism | Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Abraham, Klein | Sexuality, aggression, the exercise of power, drives, destructiveness, object relations |
| History of Sade’s reception in thought | Klossowski, Blanchot, Beauvoir, Bataille, Lacan, Deleuze, Barthes | Freedom, the other, negation, death, transgression, law, jouissance, institution, language |
The two lines intersect along the way. Deleuze, for example, wrote about Sade as a writer while also criticizing the very pairing of the concepts “sadism/masochism.” That does not mean, however, that Freud, Bataille, Lacan, and Barthes successively refined one and the same “theory of sadism.” Rather, much of what goes by the name “the intellectual history of sadism” is, more precisely, an intersection of several intellectual histories concerning Sade and sadism.
Sade’s Own Thought Is Not the Same as “the Philosophy of Sadism”
First of all, Sade himself did not propose a philosophy called “sadism.” The word “sadism” was coined later from his name; Sade never called his own philosophy that. Nor can the concept of sadism that took shape in late-nineteenth-century sexology and twentieth-century psychoanalysis simply be projected back onto the eighteenth-century Sade.
When discussing Sade himself, one has to deal with questions that can be directly attributed to his works and thought, such as atheism, nature, freedom, crime, law, politics, and the critique of religion. These are treated in detail in a separate article, “What Was Sade’s Thought?” What matters for this article is what came afterward: twentieth-century thinkers began to read Sade not merely as a “cruel writer” or a “case of sexual abnormality,” but as a figure for thinking about what happens when modern freedom and reason are pushed to their limits. For that reason, “what Sade himself thought” and “what later thinkers thought by means of Sade” must be kept apart.
How Did Freud Transform Sadism?
Freud is one of the greatest turning points in the history of the concept of sadism. In nineteenth-century sexology, sadism was classified as a “perversion” in which sexual satisfaction is linked to another person’s pain, humiliation, or submission. Freud, however, did not confine sadism to a particular sexual preference; he reworked it into a question of the aggressiveness, exercise of power, and activity contained in the ordinary sexual drive, and later of destructiveness. Even so, it is impossible to sum up “how Freud defined sadism” in a single sentence: the theory itself changes between 1905, 1915, 1920, and 1924[1].
1905: Aggression and Overpowering
In the 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, sadism and masochism are treated as questions of sexual perversion. Yet even in early Freud, sadism is not simply “the desire to enjoy another person’s pain.” It is conceived as an aggressive component of the sexual drive, or a tendency to overpower the other, that has become independent and exaggerated. Freud also argues that sadistic and masochistic tendencies can both exist in the same person.
What is important here is that “normal sexuality” and “perversion” are not completely separated. For Freud, some of the elements that had been called perverse can exist as components of ordinary sexual life. Because the Three Essays was repeatedly expanded in later years, however, any rigorous claim that a particular passage “was present in the first edition of 1905” requires checking a critical edition of the first edition rather than later editions[1].
1915: The Exercise of Power Comes Before Pain
In “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes” (1915), the initial form of sadism is placed first in violence or the exercise of power against another person. At this stage Freud does not treat “inflicting pain on the other” as itself the original aim of the drive. This differs considerably from the common understanding that “sadism = enjoying watching others in pain.”
In Freud’s 1915 model, there is first violence or the exercise of power directed at another; this is turned back onto the self, and masochism arises when activity is further reversed into passivity. Later, through identification with the one who suffers, inflicting pain on others comes to take on meaning as a sadistic aim in its own right. In other words, at least for Freud in this period, what lies at the root of sadism is not “pain” alone. What matters is the direction of a drive that overpowers others and exercises power.
1920: The Turn Brought by the Death Drive
When the “death drive” is introduced in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), the earlier explanation begins to waver. In the scheme that held up to 1915, the central sequence was that sadism comes first and becomes masochism when turned back onto the self. Once the death drive is introduced, however, it becomes difficult to explain all masochism as a secondary reversal onto the self, and the possibility of a primary masochism comes to the fore.
It must be noted that the death drive itself is not sadism. The death drive is a more fundamental theoretical device of late Freud, and sadism is explained in relation to it through destructiveness, externalization, and the sexual function.
1924: Primary Masochism and the Repositioning of Sadism
In “The Economic Problem of Masochism” (1924), Freud explicitly acknowledges a primary, erotogenic masochism. Here a new arrangement is presented: part of the destructive drive is directed outward and becomes a force acting on objects, and when part of it is incorporated into the sexual function, it appears as sadism.
Freud’s theory thus shifted from a focus, in 1915, on the reversal of sadism into masochism, to a position, in 1924, that acknowledges primary masochism and repositions sadism as derived from externalized destructiveness. Here sadism expanded greatly, from a sexological category in which “particular people are excited by others’ pain” into a concept for thinking about aggression, overpowering, activity/passivity, destructiveness, and the direction of drives.
Abraham and Klein: Why Did Sadism Become a Question of Infancy?
After Freud, the concept of sadism moved still further away from adult sexual behavior. In 1924 Karl Abraham subdivided the pregenital stages of development and organized aggression, destruction, retention, possession, and control in the oral and anal stages as forms of relation to objects[2]. Abraham did not, however, originate the idea of an “anal-sadistic stage” itself. Freud had discussed the anal-sadistic organization in 1913; Abraham’s importance lies in further dividing it into stages and systematizing it in connection with object relations.
Here sadism is extended into a question of pregenital object relations: biting, destroying, expelling, retaining, possessing, and controlling the object.
Klein: Phantasy and Destructiveness
Melanie Klein pushed this direction further, into the phantasies of infancy. What is important in Klein around 1930 is a model in which the infant, in phantasy, seeks to possess, attack, and destroy the inside of the mother’s body, and fears retaliation for it[2].
By this point, the word “sadism” has moved quite far from a concept explaining adult sexual preferences. Sadism has changed from sexual perversion → the aggressive component of the sexual drive → pregenital aggression → infantile phantasies of possessing and destroying the object. Note, however, that concepts that later became important in Kleinian theory, such as the depressive position, the paranoid-schizoid position, and projective identification, were systematized at different times. Concepts from the 1940s should not be projected back onto her theory of infantile sadism as it stood in 1930.
Why Did Twentieth-Century Thought Rediscover Sade?
Here the story changes significantly. What Freud, Abraham, and Klein dealt with was essentially “the concept of sadism.” From around the 1940s, however, and especially in French thought, it was Sade as a writer and his works themselves, rather than sadism as a clinical concept, that came to the fore as a philosophical problem. A series of important works engaging seriously with Sade followed: Klossowski in 1947, Blanchot in 1949, Beauvoir in 1951–52, Bataille in 1957, Lacan in 1963, Deleuze in 1967, and Barthes in 1971[3].
That said, 1947 should not be regarded as “the year philosophical study of Sade suddenly began.” Readings of Sade existed before then, including those of the Surrealists, Bataille’s early essays, and Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment[3]. The dividing line around 1947 is a rough marker of the period in which Sade came strongly to the fore as a philosophical problem-device in postwar thought.
The question from here on is not only “Why do people become cruel?” Other questions come to the fore: What becomes of the other when freedom is pursued to its limit? Does reason restrain violence, or can it also organize violence? What does it mean to transgress a prohibition? Are law and desire really opposites? Can there be a law that commands desire? What structure does a language have that speaks of violence without end? Sade changed from “the representative sadist” into an intellectual experimental device for testing the limits of modern freedom, reason, law, and desire.
Klossowski: Does Sade End as an Atheist?
Pierre Klossowski published Sade My Neighbor (Sade mon prochain) in 1947 and substantially revised it in 1967[3]. For Klossowski, Sade’s atheism is not merely the proposition that “there is no God.” Once God has been denied, what binds human beings? Is a desire that has denied law and norms truly free? Does the very act of trying to destroy all values not end up generating new norms and repetitions? These questions come to the fore.
Sade’s atheism, in other words, is read not as a mere critique of religion but as a device that destabilizes the very relationship among God, law, norms, and drives. In his later thought Klossowski went on to develop questions of signs, repetition, and the simulacrum, but care is needed before projecting these back onto the 1947 Sade My Neighbor as its central concepts. The 1947 edition and the 1967 revised edition are not identical in content either. To summarize Klossowski’s reading of Sade briefly, it is reasonable to say that he reinterpreted Sade from a simple atheist into a writer who exposes the contradictions between norms and desire.
Blanchot: From Sadism to “Negation” and “Language”
Maurice Blanchot’s Lautréamont and Sade (Lautréamont et Sade) was published in 1949[3].
1949: Reason, Apathy, Negation
What first becomes important in the 1949 study of Sade is reason, apathy, and negation. In Sade’s works, crimes and sexual acts are not simply depicted with passion. While carrying out their crimes, the characters argue at endless length about why crime is right and why morality is wrong. As a result, violence appears less as an outburst of passion than as something organized by cold reason.
Through Blanchot’s reading, the question one brings to Sade shifts from “Why are people cruel?” to what kind of world is created by a reason that pushes negation to its limit?
Later Blanchot: Repetition and Language
On the other hand, readings that foreground repetition and language themselves need to be treated separately, distinguishing the 1949 book from Blanchot’s later work. In “L’Inconvenance majeure” [The Major Impropriety] (1965) and The Infinite Conversation (L’Entretien infini, 1969), the movement in Sade of “saying everything,” together with limitless repetition and the power of language, emerges as a more important problem[3].
Blanchot’s reading of Sade, then, is not monolithic. In 1949, reason, apathy, and negation come to the fore; in the later work, the problems of repetition and language are developed further from there. In this way Sade came to be positioned not as a writer depicting abnormal proclivities but as a writer for thinking about negation and the limits of speech. It was not Blanchot alone, however, who began this literary and philosophical reassessment; several parallel receptions existed, including Klossowski’s.
Beauvoir: Sade and “the Freedom of the Other”
Simone de Beauvoir published “Must We Burn Sade?” (“Faut-il brûler Sade?”) in 1951–52[4]. Here Sade becomes a problem for thinking about freedom and the other. Suppose a human being affirms their own freedom to the utmost. What happens when that freedom becomes the freedom to use another person’s body and life for one’s own ends?
The Sadean subject pushes his own desire and freedom to the extreme. Yet the other before him is also a free being, just as he is. This raises the question of how one’s own freedom can coexist with the freedom of the other. If the other is treated as a mere thing, one appears able to act freely. But if the other really is just a thing, how much meaning can there be in conquering them? Domination is possible precisely because the other is a free being different from oneself. In Sade’s world, therefore, the desire to eliminate the other and the desire that needs the other contradict each other.
Beauvoir neither affirmed Sade wholesale nor concluded simply that he was evil and should be burned. Through Sade she considered the conflict that arises when an embodied freedom encounters the freedom of the other.
Bataille: Prohibition, Transgression, Death, Sovereignty
In Georges Bataille’s reading of Sade, “transgression” becomes the central problem. Bataille’s transgression, however, is not simply “breaking the rules”[5]. If prohibition itself disappeared entirely, there would be no transgression either. Transgression does not consist in destroying and abolishing the prohibition; it exists as the experience of crossing a boundary that exists precisely because the prohibition exists.
This is why sexuality, violence, death, and sacrilege matter to Bataille. Human societies place certain prohibitions on death and sexuality. At the same time, human beings seek to go beyond those prohibitions. Prohibition and transgression are not simple enemies; each needs the other. In Erotism and Literature and Evil (both 1957), Sade becomes an important figure for thinking about this extreme relationship.
For Bataille, Sade also bears on the problem of “sovereignty.” The Sadean subject is read as a being who rejects the everyday order of labor, preservation, calculation for the future, and social utility, and turns toward present expenditure and excess. However, Bataille did not morally recommend Sade’s crimes or sexual cruelty as such. Nor can Bataille’s own concept of “sovereignty” be attributed directly to the thought of the historical Sade. For Bataille, Sade is a touchstone for thinking, under extreme conditions, about the relationship among prohibition, transgression, death, eroticism, and sovereignty.
Lacan: What Does “Kant with Sade” Mean?
Jacques Lacan’s “Kant with Sade” (“Kant avec Sade”) was published in 1963 and included in Écrits in 1966[6]. Judging from the title alone, Lacan might seem to be claiming that “Kant was a sadist.” That is not the case. What Lacan compares is not Kant’s personal character with Sade’s, but the structure of the form in which law or command operates on the subject.
Kant’s moral law commands the subject, “you ought to…,” independently of pleasure or personal interest. In Sade’s works, by contrast, jouissance and sexual acts sometimes go beyond private pleasure (“doing it because one likes it”) and are organized as commands almost like laws. What Lacan finds here is not the simplistic claim that morality and vice are the same. Rather, it is the question: are the law that is supposed to limit desire and the command that orders jouissance really complete opposites?
Law is ordinarily thought of as something that prohibits desire. But what happens if the law itself takes the form of a command: “Enjoy!”? Through this comparison, Sade becomes material for thinking about the structure of law, desire, the big Other, fantasy, and jouissance. “Kant with Sade” is a difficult essay, but it must at least be made clear that it is not a psychological diagnosis to the effect that “Kant = sadist.”
Deleuze: Are Sadism and Masochism Really a Pair?
In his 1967 Coldness and Cruelty (Présentation de Sacher-Masoch), Gilles Deleuze strongly questioned the tradition of combining sadism and masochism into a single “sadomasochism”[7]. This concern had a prehistory: Deleuze published the article “From Sacher-Masoch to Masochism” (“De Sacher-Masoch au masochisme”) in 1961, and developed further discussion of Masoch in 1963. The 1967 book stands as a large-scale systematization of those reflections[7].
Nineteenth-century sexology organized sadism and masochism as paired concepts: active/passive, inflicting/suffering. Freud discussed their mutual conversion and their coexistence within one person. Deleuze, however, argues that when the works of Sade and Sacher-Masoch are compared, the two are not simple mirror images of each other.
“Institution” on Sade’s Side
In Deleuze’s reading, institution is what matters on Sade’s side. Sade’s world contains rules, order, organization, the inversion of law, theoretical discourses, and impersonal institutions. The libertine does not simply commit cruel acts on a whim; he seeks to organize desire institutionally and logically.
“Contract” on Masoch’s Side
In Masoch’s works, by contrast, contract, education, waiting, and staging become important. The one who suffers does not merely receive pain one-sidedly; he creates the conditions that constitute the relationship, enters into a contract, and guides the other into a specific role. For this reason, the difference between the two cannot be explained merely by calling sadism active and masochism passive.
What Deleuze criticized was the complementary scheme in which sadism and masochism are obtained by turning one and the same drive inside out. It would be a mistake, however, to understand this argument as “Deleuze proved medically that the phenomenon of sadomasochism does not exist.” It is a philosophical and critical argument that cuts across literature, psychoanalysis, symptomatology, and the forms of law.
Barthes: Reading Sade as a “System of Language”
In Sade, Fourier, Loyola (1971), Roland Barthes placed Sade alongside Fourier and Loyola and discussed him as someone who founds a language of his own[8]. Barthes treats the three as “logothetes,” that is, founders of languages, and he organizes the operations of founding a language into four: self-isolation, articulation, ordering, and theatricalization[8].
Here the center of understanding Sade shifts once more. The question is no longer “How cruel a man was Sade?” but how, in Sade’s works, bodies, acts, characters, meals, places, and desires are articulated, ordered, combined, and put into language. In Sade’s works, the body is minutely divided, acts are enumerated, characters are arranged by role, and desires proliferate as combinations. Here even sexuality and cruelty become not mere passion but elements composing one vast system of language.
Sade, rediscovered in the early twentieth century through textual editing and avant-garde appreciation, could, more than half a century later and in Barthes’s hands, even be read as a writer who creates a new language. This symbolizes how far the reception of Sade had traveled from the medical concept of sadism.
What Has the Intellectual History of Sadism Been About?
Setting out the intellectual history covered so far makes it clear that “sadism” did not develop under a single, unchanging definition.
| Problem | Main thinkers |
|---|---|
| Aggression, overpowering, the exercise of power | Freud |
| Activity/passivity of drives | Freud |
| Destructiveness, the object | Freud, Abraham, Klein |
| Freedom, the body, the other | Beauvoir |
| Atheism, norms, drives | Klossowski |
| Reason, apathy, negation (1949) / repetition, language (later work) | Blanchot |
| Prohibition, transgression, death, sovereignty | Bataille |
| Law, desire, jouissance | Lacan |
| Institution, contract | Deleuze |
| Articulation, ordering, the founding of language | Barthes |
In nineteenth-century sexology, sadism was first a classification of sexual perversion. Freud drew from it aggression, the exercise of power, the direction of drives, and destructiveness, and Abraham and Klein extended these into development and object relations. In postwar thought, meanwhile, Sade himself became a device for thinking about freedom and the other, prohibition and transgression, law and desire, negation and language.
It is therefore incorrect to understand “the intellectual history of sadism” as a history in which a philosophy affirming cruelty grew gradually more sophisticated. It is better understood as the history of a word that started from the problem of “pleasure in making others suffer” and branched out into other clusters of problems: power, the other, freedom, law, destruction, death, desire, and language. Nor is this change a single story of progress. Beauvoir’s freedom and the other, Bataille’s transgression, Lacan’s law and jouissance, and Barthes’s system of language are not older and newer answers to the same question. Each is a different set of problems that intersected by passing through the extreme world of Sade’s works.
How Do Sadism and Masochism Differ in Theory?
The relationship between sadism and masochism itself also changed over the course of intellectual history. Nineteenth-century sexology organized the two as paired concepts, inflicting/suffering and active/passive, and Freud introduced into this their mutual conversion and coexistence within one person. In 1913 Isidor Sadger published “On the Sado-Masochistic Complex” (“Über den sado-masochistischen Komplex”), a clear example of early psychoanalysis treating the two as a complex[1]. Later, Deleuze criticized the very idea of unifying Sade and Masoch as two sides of a single drive.
To simplify greatly, the differences are: Krafft-Ebing = pairing as opposites; Freud = mutual conversion and coexistence; early psychoanalysis = treatment as a complex; Deleuze = critique of the complex itself. The everyday contemporary either/or of “Are you an S or an M?”, used as a kind of personality diagnosis, is therefore a separate matter from the theories of sadism and masochism in intellectual history.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a single philosophy of sadism?
No. “The philosophy of sadism” is a convenient expression, but no unified system called a “philosophy of sadism” has ever existed historically. This article distinguishes the psychoanalytic history of the concept of sadism from the history of twentieth-century thought’s reception of Sade, and summarizes both.
Did Freud think of sadism as “pleasure in making others suffer”?
Not only that. In Freud’s 1915 account in particular, what matters in early sadism is violence or the exercise of power against another, and inflicting pain is not itself treated as the original aim of the drive. Later, the theory itself changed with the introduction of the death drive and primary masochism.
Is the death drive the same as sadism?
No. The death drive is a more fundamental theoretical concept of late Freud, and sadism is positioned in relation to it through externalization, destructiveness, the sexual function, and so on.
Did Bataille affirm sadism?
That cannot be said simply. Bataille used Sade as an extreme case for thinking about prohibition, transgression, death, eroticism, and sovereignty. This does not mean that he morally recommended, as such, the crimes and acts of cruelty in Sade’s works.
Did Lacan say Kant was a sadist?
No. “Kant with Sade” is not an essay diagnosing Kant as a sexual sadist. It is an argument comparing the Kantian moral law and the Sadean command to jouissance from the standpoint of the form of law that acts upon the subject.
Did Deleuze consider sadism and masochism to be entirely separate things?
Deleuze criticized the explanation that groups the two together as the active and passive sides of a single drive. He emphasizes their different structures, such as institution on Sade’s side and contract on Masoch’s. This does not mean, however, that he proved medically that “both tendencies never exist in the same person.”
Summary: Sadism Expanded from “Cruelty” to Questions of the Other, Law, and Desire
The intellectual history of sadism is not the history of “a philosophy that affirms making others suffer.” Sadism, which became a category of sexual perversion in the late nineteenth century, was reworked by Freud into questions of aggression, overpowering, the exercise of power, activity/passivity, and destructiveness. Abraham and Klein extended it further into pregenital development, infantile phantasy, and object relations.
Then, from around the 1940s, separately from the medical concept of sadism, Sade as a writer became an important problem for twentieth-century thought. Klossowski reread Sade in terms of norms and desire, Blanchot in terms of negation and language, Beauvoir in terms of freedom and the other, Bataille in terms of prohibition and transgression, Lacan in terms of law and jouissance, Deleuze in terms of institution and contract, and Barthes in terms of the founding of language, articulation, and ordering.
As a result, the questions surrounding “sadism” spread out: sexual perversion → aggression and the exercise of power → drives and destructiveness → freedom and the other → prohibition and transgression → death and sovereignty → law and jouissance → institution, repetition, and language. This is not, however, the history of one line of thought developing step by step. It is the result of different thinkers in different eras using Sade and sadism for different questions.
So the most accurate answer to the question “What is the philosophy of sadism?” is this: the philosophy of sadism is not one philosophy. It is an intellectual history in which, through the concept of sadism and the writer Sade, the limits of human desire, violence, freedom, the other, law, death, and language have been questioned again and again.
About the Research for This Article
This article does not assume a single system of thought called “sadist philosophy.” It distinguishes the history of the concept of sadism in sexology and psychoanalysis from the history of Sade’s reception, mainly in twentieth-century French thought. For the history of the concept of sadism, it focuses on the changes from Krafft-Ebing to Freud, Abraham, and Klein. This does not mean that the history of the concept ended with Klein; in order to show the shifts in thought, the article concentrates on the range needed for its purposes.
For Freud, the theories of 1905, 1915, 1920, and 1924 are not treated as identical. In particular, the article distinguishes the point that in 1915 the infliction of pain is not itself the original aim of the drive, with violence and the exercise of power coming first, from the point that in 1920–24 the genetic position changes with the introduction of the death drive and primary masochism. For Klein, infantile sadism in 1930 is not conflated with the depressive position from 1935 onward or with the paranoid-schizoid position and projective identification of 1946.
For twentieth-century thought, the period around 1947 is treated as an analytical boundary at which Sade comes to the fore as an intellectual device. It is not, however, presented as a “starting year” that would deny earlier receptions of Sade. The article also distinguishes Klossowski’s 1947 edition from the 1967 revised edition, Blanchot’s 1949 arguments from those of 1965 and 1969, and Lacan’s first 1963 version from the 1966 Écrits version, and avoids direct quotation where the pages or edition differences of the original texts have not been fully established.
Notes
- On Freud’s theory of sadism/masochism, see Sigmund Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie [Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality], 1905, revised in later years; “Triebe und Triebschicksale” [Instincts and Their Vicissitudes], 1915; Jenseits des Lustprinzips [Beyond the Pleasure Principle], 1920; “Das ökonomische Problem des Masochismus” [The Economic Problem of Masochism], 1924. For attributing passages of the Three Essays to the 1905 first edition, priority is given to the critical-edition research on the first edition by Van Haute, Westerink, and others, rather than relying solely on English translations of later editions. On the “sado-masochistic complex” in early psychoanalysis, see Isidor Sadger, “Über den sado-masochistischen Komplex,” Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, vol. 5, 1913.
- Karl Abraham, “A Short Study of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders,” 1924. Melanie Klein, “The Importance of Symbol-Formation in the Development of the Ego,” 1930; “A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States,” 1935; “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms,” 1946. Freud’s 1913 discussion precedes Abraham in naming the anal-sadistic organization.
- Pierre Klossowski, Sade mon prochain, 1947, revised 1967. Maurice Blanchot, Lautréamont et Sade, 1949; “L’Inconvenance majeure,” 1965; L’Entretien infini, 1969. Placing the boundary of postwar Sade reception around 1947 is an analytical arrangement and does not denote a strict “starting year of the philosophical reception of Sade.” Important earlier receptions include Max Horkheimer / Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, 1944, and its 1947 published edition.
- Simone de Beauvoir, “Faut-il brûler Sade?”, Les Temps modernes, 1951–1952; later in Privilèges, 1955. Beauvoir’s central problem is organized here as the question of freedom, the body, the other, and reciprocity as approached through Sade.
- Georges Bataille, L’Érotisme, Paris: Minuit, 1957; La Littérature et le mal, 1957. Transgression in Bataille is treated not as simply abolishing prohibition but as a relation that presupposes prohibition and crosses its boundary. Bataille’s own notion of “sovereignty” is not attributed directly to the thought of Sade himself.
- Jacques Lacan, “Kant avec Sade,” Critique, no. 191, 1963; later in Écrits, 1966. Because the 1963 first version and the 1966 version differ, the edition must be specified for any rigorous direct quotation. “Kant with Sade” is not an essay diagnosing Kant personally as a sadist.
- Gilles Deleuze, “De Sacher-Masoch au masochisme,” Arguments, no. 21, 1961, pp. 40–46; after a 1963 broadcast and discussion concerning Masoch, Présentation de Sacher-Masoch: Le froid et le cruel, Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967. The 1967 book deals with the critique of the complementary unity of sadism/masochism and the contrast between institution on Sade’s side and contract on Masoch’s. This argument is not, however, a medical demonstration.
- Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, 1971. Barthes treats Sade, Fourier, and Loyola as “logothètes” (founders of languages) and organizes the operations of founding a language into four: s’isoler, articuler, ordonner, and théâtraliser. Terms such as “classification” and “combination” used in the body of this article are explanatory labels for this reading. Detailed literary form is dealt with in “What Is the Literature of Sadism?”
References and Principal Sources
- Sigmund Freud. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. 1905; revised in later years.
- Sigmund Freud. “Triebe und Triebschicksale.” 1915.
- Sigmund Freud. Jenseits des Lustprinzips. 1920.
- Sigmund Freud. “Das ökonomische Problem des Masochismus.” 1924.
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Translated from the Japanese original, “サディズムの思想とは？｜サド、フロイト、バタイユ、ラカン、ドゥルーズまで解説”. Quotations from Japanese sources are our own translations.