Overview

He might be best known for sex and violence, but Lode Lauwaert shows that the Marquis du Sade sits at a crossroads of surprisingly disparate branches of western culture: abstract art, Tom and Jerry, gnosticism, Kant's moral philosophy, romanticism, scholasticism, stoicism and more. To explore these links, Lauwaert reads six interpretations of Sade in French postwar philosophy - looking specifically at Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes and Gilles Deleuze. Lauwaert shows how these interpretations of de Sade can be read as a lively introduction to a postmodern way of thinking that is often considered inaccessible, but which dominated the French intellectual scene after the Second World War.

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9781474430692

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Reviews

"A much needed survey of an important body of work ... Lauwaert usefully provides a reliable text that will surely open the French literature on de Sade to a wider readership ... Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy is a valuable and useful volume that leaves room for further engagement with an intriguing body of work.--Mihail Evans, New Europe College ""International Journal of Philosophical Studies"" According to Lauwaert, many French thinkers wrote about Sade's work in relation to recurring themes and ideas in their own oeuvres. [...] He sees each of their engagements with Sade as embedded within some thematic concern in each of their own works, and thus posits that a stronger link can be established between Sade's ideas and post-War French philosophy.-- ""Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal"" Often acknowledged as having exercised a profound fascination on French thinkers in the 20th-century, but rarely, if at all, recognised for its far-reaching significance, Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy explores the reception of de Sade's seductive writings in Bataille, Blanchot, Klossowski, Lacan, Barthes and Deleuze. Lauwaert's singular achievement is to have examined the complex ways in which critical themes in the development of these French thinkers - desire, sexuality, violence, language, Humanism, sacrifice and the sacred, the unconscious, God - passed through their respective confrontation with de Sade, as if thinking for or against Sade represented a rite of passage to philosophy itself. In addition to illuminating and informed treatments of these key moments in de Sade's reception, Lauwaert presents a perspicuous argument for why, as Apollinaire foretold, the divine Marquis came to dominate the 20th-century and its postmodern beyond.-- ""Nicolas de Warren, Penn State University"" Writing with great clarity, erudition and insight, Lode Lawaert has produced a fascinating study of the interpretations of de Sade by Klossowski, Blanchot, Bataille, Lacan, Barthes and Deleuze. Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy is an invaluable introduction to post-WWII French philosophy via Sade.-- ""Leonard Lawlor, Penn State University"""

Author Information

Lode Lauwaert is Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer in the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Leuven. He has been a visiting scholar at Boston College, Stellenbosch University and the University of Vienna. His research focuses on war, technology, and continental philosophy. He teaches, among others things, philosophical anthropology and philosophy of technology.

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