Marquis de Sade and Continental Philosophy

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.

• Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Godlessness, Purity, and Simulacra; 2. The Terror of Writing; 3. Apathy, Energy, and Transgression; 4. Ethics and Modernity; 5. Sadism as Formalism; 6. Literature and the Clinical; Conclusion; Bibliography; Endnotes.

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.