Summary The Revolutionary Ideas of The Marquis De Sade | by Laura Halls | Counter Arts | Jul, 2023 | Medium medium.com
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The text discusses the well-known revolutionary ideas of the Marquis De Sade in sadism and literature, as well as his intriguing political views on class and the poor.
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Key Points
- The Marquis De Sade is known for his revolutionary ideas and sadism.
- De Sade's ideas on class and property were intriguing, considering his privileged background.
- De Sade argued that property was fundamentally formed by theft.
- De Sade believed that theft by the poor was justified.
- The author explores De Sade's ideas in-depth and encourages readers to sign up for a free account to read the full story.
Summaries
24 word summary
The Marquis De Sade's revolutionary ideas in sadism and literature are well-known, but his political views on class and the poor are also intriguing.
42 word summary
The Marquis De Sade is known for his revolutionary ideas and his exploration of sadism in literature and philosophy. However, another interesting aspect of his work is his political views, particularly his ideas about class and the poor. Despite being a nobleman
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Revolutionary Ideas of The Marquis De Sade \| by Laura Halls \| Counter
Arts \| Jul, 2023 \| Medium
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The Revolutionary Ideas of The Marquis De Sade
Revisiting the ideas of a monster
Laura Halls
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Counter Arts
5 min read
Jul 13
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Over the last couple of years that Ive been writing on here, a topic that I return to from time to time is
the ideas of The Marquis De Sade
. The great monster of the 18th century, the discoverer of sadism. No figure in the history of philosophy and literature has ever realised such a level of infamy.
Much of the literature surrounding De Sade
centers around his sadism and this is something that Ive explored myself multiple times. No doubt this is an extremely interesting topic to dive into given that this is one of the only times in literature and philosophy where we really see someone delve into these vile topics in the way De Sade does.
Something that is interesting that comes up over and over again in
De Sades work though is his politics
. He had some ideas surrounding class and the poor that are really quite interesting when you take into account the fact that he was a nobleman and obviously came from a very privileged position. For much of his life, he even lived in his own castle.
I wanted to devote a bit of time to talking about his views on these things because as stated, they are quite interesting in a number of ways.
Property and Theft
Whenever we talk about radical literature or socialist ideas from throughout history, one idea that people are often going to be familiar with is that property is theft. Many people erroneously associate this idea to Marx although its something that Proudhon, a contemporary of his said.
I say that although it was actually something that De Sade had said many years before, most notably in his 1200 page book,
Juliette
In
Juliette
, he talked about how
if we are to study the history of property and how it developed, we would eventually find the theory that property was fundamentally formed by theft.
This probably isnt a wholly controversial point to make, after all, property is not a natural phenomenon that we can find under a microscope, it is a product of human society. What is interesting is where De Sade took these ideas, in my opinion. He argued on multiple occasions that theft, at least on the part of the poor, was justified and can be quoted as saying
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602
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Written by
Laura Halls
2.2K Followers
Writer for
Counter Arts
Trans/Genderfluid writer writing whatever comes to mind
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