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Principles of Long Baseline Stellar Interferometry Edited by Peter R. LawsonPaperback 338 pagesMichelson Fellowship Program ... Read more

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In defense of the Marquis deSade
You might be able to get a good sense of who the Marquis de Sade was by just reading Simone de Beauvoir's philosophical analysis of him and his works. When I picked up this book, I did not know who he was, nor did I read any of his books, and only remembered his name from history classes in school.

In Must We Burn Sade?, de Beauvoir puts aside any initial emotional response you may have toward him, or any aspect of his life and work, and examines him with a philosophical angle. She writes:

"In the popular mind, sadism means cruelty. The first thing that strikes us in de Sade's work is actually that which tradition associates with his name, beatings, bloodshed, torture, and murder." (p.31)

This left me wondering WHY did he frequently engage in debauchery throughout his life, and write tall tales of violence, debauchery, and everything in between?De Beauvoirdiscusses his relationships with his family a little bit, but his childhood history is unknown. We can only imagine how he came to be the way he was. She does, however, suggest that he never seems to have known the experience of emotional intoxication:

"Never in his stories does sensual pleasure appear as self-forgetfulness, swooning or abandon...The male agression of the Sadist hero is never softened by the usual transformation of the body into flesh. He never, for an instant, loses himself in his animal nature; he remains so lucid, so cerebral, that philosophic discourse, far from dampening his ardour, acts as an aphrodisiac. We see how desire and pleasure explode in furious attacks upon this cold, tense, body, proof against all enchantment....As a result of this immoderateness, the sexual act creates the illusion of sovereign pleasure which gives it its incomparable value in de Sade's eyes." (p. 33)

In regards to his mental and physical cruelty to others in life and on paper, consider what de Beauvoir writes in his defense:

"If the entire population of the earth were present toeach individual in its full reality, no collective action would be possible, and the air would become unbreathable for everyone. Thousands of individuals are suffering and dying vainly and unjustly at every moment and this doesn't affect us. If it did, our existence would be impossible. De Sade's merit lies not only in his having proclaimed aloud what everyone admits with shame to himself, but in the fact that he did not simply resign himself. He chose cruelty rather than indifference.... De Sade drained to the dregs the moment of selfishness, injustice and misery, and he insisted upon its truth. The supreme value of his testimony is the fact that it disturbs us. It forces us to reexamine thoroughly the basic problem which haunts our age in different forms: the true relation between man and man." (pp. 88-89)

At least with this man, Simone de Beauvoir has saved you some trouble with her exhaustive examination of him!Although I do not feel compelled to read his work in the near future, her analysis makes for a fascinating read. At the end of the book, there is also A Brief Chronology of the Marquis de Sade that provides colorful, and sometimes gruesome, details of his activities and historical events. I wonder if she would have defended him had she lived during his lifetime? He certainly would have given her many opportunites to do so, given how many times he got in trouble! ... Read more