considered Sade's masterpiece
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This collection of the Marquis de Sade's writings includes "Justine" and "Philosophy in the Bedroom". The latter is a "dialogue" about a teenage virgin girl's indoctrination into the ways of sex, basically. Some hands-on lessons soon turn this young innocent into a well-trained debauchee. Next, we have the novel "Justine." In this story of virtue vanquished by vice, "good girl" Justine leaves the convent to find herself molested by a wicked outside world of cruelty and perversion. The over-arching idea or message that Sade was trying to get across here was: doing good only leads to bad consequences, and besides, it's more fun to be evil and perverted. I don't believe in Sade's philosophy because even his apologists and sympathizers will admit that it is all about completely unleashing the beast within us, and the 20th century more than any other has taught us that that can only lead to total anarchy, and end in total annihilation. It is a doctrine of extreme nihilism based on selfish and compassionless self-gratification. Another problem is that all of Sade's villains are the same--their sexual proclivities, their philosophies, their social status, etc etc. Not much variety. Another fault some have found is that his plots are quite predictable and repetitous (same thing over and over: Justine meets a man who first seems good and decent on the outside, but turns out to be a real villain, which she only discovers after he has taken her to his secluded mansion, monastery, or some other place from which there is no escape for her). Of course, virtue is always punished by vice, and each time Justine begs for mercy, she is paid back for it with violent abuse and lust. In Sade's works, he makes it look like 9 out of 10 people, particularly men, are wicked, perverse, violent beasts. Also, there is a strong undertone of misogyny, sodomy, sadomasochism, and the hatred of all standard morality. Sade's ideas often have a seemingly convincing evil logic, but they are the thoughts and fancies of a clever and philosophical madman or serial killer, weakened at times by inconsistencies, contradictions, and platitudes. Sade writes from the perspective of a gifted writer who has been babied and pampered all his life, who has never worked, who has been able to satisfy his every desire, who has spent most of his life in jails and an asylum, and thus has lost touch with reality and the human race (and this shows clearly in his writings which are usually much more implausible than realistic), who has lived in complete comfort even in his confinement. Even the food which his wife had sent to him and which he ate behind bars would have suited a king. I believe Sade was an unfeeling, heartless wretch because his mother abandoned him at a very very early age, and he never learned love in childhood, so was unable to give it in adulthood. I give this book 5 stars for its intellectual daring and originality as a documentation of the philosophy of evil, and because it is more or less well-written. I believe Sade's writings can give many insights into the thoughts and behavior of evil, and are important reading for theologians, psychologists, and criminologists. (...)
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First of the greats
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When I read Justine ou Les Malheurs de Virtue, I lost my appetite. That's how intense it is. However, I loved it. Only the Marquis de Sade could have come up with such sordid tales. Many people believe his books are erotica, pornography, and even Satanic. I believe that throughout this work and all his others there is an obvious show of existentialism. De Sade is one of the first modern nihilists. When you think of existentialism, one of the first you name is Camou, but when someone asks me to name an existential I think of de Sade. The book is fascinating. It might seem like a show of wanton libertines, in fact, I would have to say, this book is about how man is inherently savage and animalistic; that innocence and virtue are nothing more than hopes created by hopeless people. Justine is one of them. She believes Man is by nature divine and pure. But throughout her journey she sees the contrary. Its called the Misfortune of Virtue because Justine never realizes at any time that Man is utterly sinful and completely unsaveable. She continues to find misfortune because she holds true to her hope and faith in Man and God; the two characters de Sade completely abhors. To de Sade Man is an animal equal to pigs and rats and therefore they have no true value except for what pleasure they can bring themselves in life. Personally if you have never read any of de Sades works, you should read his biography first. His books take alot of their inspiration from the marquis' own life. By the way, if you wonder why I gave this book a 4 and not a five, it is because I felt that the end was too abrupt and didn't have the climax I had hoped for. This book also has several short pieces by him of which the one I favor most is "Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man". That will is definitely serious but in the end you can't do anything else but laugh.
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exquisite filth
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whether you loved him or hated him, we must all admit that the most controversial authors around the world owe their corrupted souls to de sade. after reading this collection of work, it is easy to understand why so many could've been offended but i can also understand how reading his work can greatly benefit mankind scientifically and pyschologically. while certainly not for all tastes, his books provide the reader with an unflinching look at some of the most vile behavior that humans have ever exhibited both in and out of the bedroom. de sade left virtually nothing to the imagination to chew on in the annals of graphic detail here but gave us more than we could handle in the lines of philosophy and, yes, science. this may very well not be his greatest volume of work but perhaps it's a fine place to start for those not quite accumstomed to the de sade writing style. it's sinful, wicked, and i'm literally a greenish envy that i could not have written even a small portion of what the marquis wrote. each nook and cranny is seething with debauchery, lust, and over powering desire. if the marquis were to spare us a few moments with any of these topics, he then waves his fist to pound any organized religion. try and avoid him if you might but i strongly believe his message to the world was not avoid our strange desires but to understand the why behind them. the dialogue between a dying man and a preacher will raise some eyebrows but it does bring up quite a few questions for us to ponder and undoubtedly has been debated throughout the years. i daresay my favorite portion of the book has to be the philosophy in the bedroom which rmeinds me somewhat of dangerous liaisons only much more explicit and definately will turn off many a reader.
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JUSTINE: The Amoral Morality Play
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When the Marquis de Sade was locked up in the Bastille for various crimes that ranged from sexual abuse of prostitutes to flagellation of young boys, he found that he had the time to write at length in novel form a series of books that have come to stand for his belief in the utter joy of inflicting pain on the virtuous: sadism. For the next few centuries, philosophers and literary critics have debated whether his works deserve the attention normally given to serious works of literature or whether they are simply the ravings of a mind unhinged. There is a current trend to rehabilitate his reputation, a trend which includes analysing his canon with the same set of standard literary tools that are used on mainstream authors. The reader new to de Sade might well wish to begin with JUSTINE. It is here that he delineates a world that is composed of two categories of people: those of vice and those of virtue. With the former, de Sade presents a very nearly exclusive male dominant protagonist, one who is wealthy, middle-aged, possessed of a castle or subterranean dungeon, and has a proclivity to speak at great length on the superiority of vice over virtue. With the latter, De Sade, as he does in JUSTINE, gives the reader a young, well-shaped, nearly indestructable female whose sole purpose is to suffer a non-stop series of assaults both on her body and to her mind. Each assault is a carbon copy of its predecessor. Justine (called Therese) is kidnapped or tricked into entering the lair of a rich and dissolute monk or nobleman who promptly lectures Justine/Therese on the inevitable triumph of Vice over a feckless Virtue. Each time this Vice figure rapes and sodomizes Justine, he tells her, "You see, my dear? If there were truly a virtuous God watching over innocent lambs like you, then I would surely be struck down by a bolt of lightning." Typically, Justine's only reply is, "But Moniseur, surely you can allow your hard heart to be softened by my plight." As if to punctuate the superiority of his position over Justine's, her tormentor simply increases the pace of his ravagings. What becomes clear well before the half way point is that both the tormentor and his victim are allegorical stick figures from the morality plays with which de Sade was undoubtedly quite familiar. And just as those figures of morality from the Middle Ages were sure to point to a victory of virtue over vice, de Sade was determined to reverse the results. JUSTINE, as well as his later JULIETTE and 120 DAYS OF SODOM, all point to the same nihilistic end; either there is no God or what is worse, there is one but this deity has so arranged his cosmos that the universal deck is stacked against those who seek to live the good and pure life. Today, as the modern reader plows through the thousands of pages of de Sades' canon, that reader will find that the real titillation lies not in the finite ways that a female body can be corrupted but rather in the more nearly infinite ways that this corruption can be justified. Few writers have made this point more clearly--or more horribly--than de Sade.
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Overrated
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Despite the fact that de Sade's works have become virtually cult classics because of their raw descriptions of sex, I found these books to be sort of boring. Although the obsession with various and sundry sexual proclivities does add to the overall interest and weirdness factor, it's not enough to save these books, either. Basically, when it comes to sex, for de Sade it comes down to the "four B's"--somebody is always being ..., buggered, blown, or beaten. Big deal. You can get this on videotape. You can probably get it in an R-rated movie these days. Some of the political philosophy is interesting in the historical context of the time, but if you want real philosophy, instead of parlor-level simplifications, I suggest you read works of real political philosophy, such as Plato's Republic or Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, for example, instead of an amateur's afternoon thoughts. Unfortunately, de Sade seems to be at his most profound when his pants are around his ankles (or should I say pantaloons?) Anyway, de Sade and the emperor Tiberius would have made an interesting sexual "tag- team" for Masters and Johnson to research, perhaps, but a profound author he's not. I will say one nice thing about de Sade, which is that he does know how to turn a literary phrase once in a while, but that's about it. Give this over-heated and libidinous libertine the cold shoulder.
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