Philosophy in the Boudoir by Marquis de Sade

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Synopsis

Taken from the forward by James Havoc: The Marquis de Sade (1740—1814) was a self-proclaimed libertine. His doctrine of libertinage as expounded in "Philosophy in the Boudoir"—his masterpiece—now reads like a blueprint for those manifestos drawn up will over a century later by Andre Breton; indeed "Philosophy in the Boudoir" has often been regarded as being amongst the first Surrealist texts—the others also being works by De Sade. In the course of this book—erotic, comical, and terrifyingly bleak in turn—he contrives to heap scorn on Christianity, God, and the Church, religion in general, history, marriage and the nuclear family, morality, all love other than sexual love, faith, hope and charity, parenthood, vaginal sex; i.e. all forms of humanity and virtue. At the same time, he advocates atheism, murder and reflexive crimes, torture, cruelty, abortion, all kind of sexual perversion, incest, adultery, self-abuse, ad infinitum; his sexually violent visions mark him as a precursor of modern psychology.

The modern imagination starts here.