Sade and the Defiance of Contractual Sense

“I accord no importance whatever to gifts, only what I take counts in my eyes.” -Juliette

“Theft is an everyday affair, of all the whims to be found in man not one is more natural.” -Juliette

With the increased rise of capitalist relations the ideal of the social contract informed political theorizing from Hobbes to Locke to Rousseau. How might Sade be considered a precursor to Nietzsche, in his favoring of the strong, in particular against all regulation and contractual relationships? As Marcel Hénaff writes, in summation of Sade’s three part attack upon the contract:

"At the first level, there is his cut-and-dried conviction (in the manner of Plato’s Callicles), that power is defined by strength alone, and that all strength establishes domination. Strength alone is real; everything else is manipulation for the sake of strength’s being recognized. Thus, if the partnership contract is not a means for the weak to capture the strength of the powerful by submitting it to the control of the majority, then it is conductive to the one-sided contract, which causes the majority to accept the control of those who are more powerful by making strength pass for the result of everyone’s agreement. In either case the contract is a sham. The libertine position, then, is to affirm naked, undisguised strength or to recognize it wherever it is obliged to operate in disguise.

"But there is another level of this rejection. It stems from the Sadean conception of exchange. According to Sade, every exchange is agonistic; every exchange is – has to be – a challenge. Reciprocity is not an amiable agreement between contracting parties who measure their mutual contributions fairly and exactly. It is not the ‘sweet commerce’ of business celebrated by Enlightenment thinkers…From this standpoint, the contractual relationship is an abdication or domestication of strength. The libertine can only oppose it with the most extreme energy…

“There remains, finally, another aspect of the Sadean rejection of the contract. This aspect has to do with the contract’s regulatory character, its capacity for blocking action, for barring the unpredictable…The goal is to have every single remaining activity or behavior defined and programmed by some article of law, and therefore establish a reciprocal balance of rights and duties.”

“Kind friends, by a single feature alone were men distinguished from one another when, long ago, society was in its infancy: the essential point was brute strength. Nature gave them all space wherein to dwell, and it was upon this physical force, distributed to them impartiality, that was to depend the manner in which they were to share the world. Was this sharing to be equal, could it possibly be, what with the fact that naked force was to decide the matter? In the beginning, then was theft; theft, I say, was the basis, the starting point; for the inequality of this sharing necessarily supposes a wrong done the weak by the strong, and there at once we have this wrong, that is to say, theft, established, authorized by Nature since she gives man that which must necessarily lead him thereto.”

-libertine Dorval, Julliette

Hénaff further abstracts the contractual to the negotiation of universally signified exchanges, placing questions of “truth” under official definitions of exchange:

This mode of exchange [contractual trade] is probably as old as mercantile relationships themselves But what the bourgeoisie did invent is the extension – or rather the generalization – of this relationship model to the whole field of economic practice, as well as the field of the symbolic relationships articulated with economic practice. What we see at work here is not just the reduction of every product to its exchange value, which hides both productive labor and the forces of production, but also the reduction of the whole order of signs and symbolic goods to their function of exchangeablity, to their capacity for remainderless signifying, with their equivalence measured against the universal standard, the abstract stand-in for every kind of value: money.

What is of interest by analogy is way that “sense” also is attempted to be established by “logic” and other modes of sense-making control, a free flowing economy of meanings where everything becomes abstracted and defined, modularly. How much of argumentation in philosophy is accomplished through rightful exchange, and how much through theft by strength? How much is the convincing argument the consequence of a legal negotiation of signs, a fair barter under a defined economy of meanings, and how much is it a theft, that is appropriated after by the contractual, much as Sade reasoned the ‘social contract’ either attempts to dominate the strong, or authenticates their strength as if a product of the contract itself? How much is sense made/stolen, and much is it imposed/authenticated?

Dunamis

i see your last paragraph as ill fitted with the rest. sade and heffner discuss social interaction from a global perspective. you discuss philosophy from a practical standpoint, and what’s more, entirely detached from both materiality and practical value, something neither of them had in mind.

you will need to ellaborate.

Zeno.,

If you noticed, my small leap was signaled by the phrase, “What is of interest by analogy…”, as I did not want to make the post more extensive than necessary. One only has to see the homology of reasoning. But if you would like me to connect the dots, they are connected in this way: with the break down of the feudal order, the erosion of the supreme authority of monarchs – brought on the rise of captalist relations, but enforced by the French and American revolutions, God no longer stood as the guarantor of “truth” or “sense”, either as a metaphysical Being, or as a proxied political force. Still, chaos could not ensue permanently, so some other bound had to arise to tie society, sense and truth together, and this became both reason and the myth of the “freely entered into" contract. This worked for political order, ethical acts and the making of sense in general. Logic and reason were to become the guarantors of “sense, and the social contract, having its model in commerce was the living analogy. (And in many ways we are still under this condition). Kant above all imposed the logic of the contract and the ideally rational subject as the binding of all moral interaction. To not tell the truth, even in the smallest of ways was to erode the very fabric of what binds society. Gone is the God who in his infinity can make exception to the particular. The church can no longer negotiate the event. Sense now becomes constrained rigorously,

“Whoever tells a lie, regardless of how good his intentions may be, must answer for the consequences resulting therefrom even before a civil tribunal and must pay the penalty for them, regardless of how unforeseen those consequences may be. This is because truthfulness is a duty that must be regarded as the basis of all duties founded on contract, and the laws of such duties would be rendered uncertain and useless if even the slightest exception to them were admitted.”

  • Immanuel Kant, Grounding on the Metaphysics of Morals, with On the Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns

It is no mean leap to see that the moral tribunal binds enforced by civil authority established by rational contract are little different than the binds of sense enforced by agreed upon standards of truth, although Kant tried to base these on transcendental categories, Hume will expose as floating and contingent. The need to regulate both, stringently is perhaps even more dramatic given the break down of “natural” authorities through feudal ideology. The flaunting of Sense in the name of Strength by Sade, the naturalization of strength as the sole virtue, calls into question the nature of the social contract itself, both its imposed ethics and its imposed “sense”. If strength is what is operating through the contract, in either of the scenarios suggested by Sade, then in philosophical argumentation, one must ask “what role does theft and strength play in the production of sense?” Do the legal forms of sense, i.e. logic and other rhetorical forms, appropriate strength, after its victory/theft, authenticating it, or do they impose limits upon strength/theft that are “unnatural” to the production of true meaning. There are these and many other questions.

Dunamis

Blessfully, it will be necessary. One should not be happier than when asked to ellaborate his observations, am I right ?

One can also be curious if you and him both see the same homology.

I think the point you make is a bit simplistic (and by that I do not mean in any way you yourself are simplistic, I just mean for purposes of space bits left out that I consider important)

Firstly, it is a joyous fiction to say in feudal times monarchy held supreme authority. In many cases, various nobles were much more powerfull than their lieges in general, or their monarchs in particular.
For the record, feudalism is the social system in which individuals and groups are linked to other individuals or groups in a system of “allegiances” which are pledges of support. That system is not intrinsically hierarchical, even if it turned out to work that way. I can bring much proof to support this non hierarchical theory of feudalism, from the fact diplomatic agreements in the time were understood as mutual pledges of allegiance, either to each other or to a third to the fact marriage was understood at the time as mutual pledges of allegiance (and that is where much of what is modernly used for a marriage ceremony comes from).

Absolute monarchy is, in fact, historically, the destruction of feudalism, as a separate period in itself. By the time the archetipal revolution struck (1797ish) feudalism in France was dead as plywood, and the battle raged between the towndwellers and the absolutist crown. The object of the war
was simply the claiming by the burgeoisie of the place the nobles had and lost over the past couple centuries. Thus, considering how the purpose was at the time the return to the past, with a new group of people playing the role of aristocracy, it would be most surprising if the ensuing order, ie capitalism, were much different fundamentally than feudalism.

Following the above line of reasoning, the burgeoisie, in their desire to be the new aristocracy, would have copied the principles of feudalism (ie a social system in which individuals and groups are linked to other individuals or groups in a system, but having to account for the changed matters of fact (ie, the fact aristocracy had significantly fewer members than the townfolk were, and also the fact support against hostility was no longer the main problem of humanity at the time, being ecclipsed by the exchange of goods) they modified the system from “allegiances” ie pledges of support to “contracts” ie pledges of exchange. Now that in fact this system also turns out in practice to create hierarchy should surprise no one. However, it was not intended for the purpose of hierarchy.

It is here that I found your post most superficial. Just because at some point in it’s development feudalism looked a certain way to the untrained eye, does mean in fact little. Especially considering that by that point it was really no longer alive. On close study of the facts, we see how both feudalism and capitalism are really applications of the same model, with the same results, by different social groups at different times in history. They differ in size and coloration, they do not differ in shape or purpose.

And you are right, Kant is in fact the superior ideologue of the new order of his time, but that does not change the fact that in classical feudalism, telling a lie was just as dimly regarded. Lieing was dishonorable, and being dishonored is being punished by the group of your peers for your evil deeds. There are no tribunals in feudal times, or should i say that which accomplishes the exact same function a tribunal accomplishes, in the same exact way, was not at the time called a tribunal.
The only real difference is that which was implicit before is explicitly stated now. This is a progress of the written word, but is by no means to be considered a progress of society, I don;t think.

I will insist the distinction between natural and whatever else is unfounded. While something called by historic accident natural law was the basis of societal organization in feudal times, the principles of capitalism and the moral rationality of kant are just as much natural law. in both cases, the laws appear “natural” to the respective people, the only difference is the fact social needs (ie the very nature) have changed. While being chivalrous was natural to the chevallier, being logical is natural to the rationalist philosopher. there is no fundamental difference between the two, outside of a matter of taste.

I do not know if you are aware of Sade’s biography (I can dig it out for you if you want.). He, as a noble, managed to avoid prosecution for his socially unacceptable antics about half the time for decades before the french revolution. By the time monarchy fell, he was already wanted for hanging. The revolution saw him as a monarchy opposer, and he even took a minor office. Within another decade, he was confined by the new powers that be, to a sanatorium this time. (Amusingly fitting, what with all the joyous rationalism going on at the time)

Note that his position seems to be unacceptable for both worlds. The reason it is so, is because the two worlds have something in common, whether its called pledge or contract, a speciffic sort of social organisarion based on agreement, which really means taking the other into consideration. Sade refuses to do so, and because of it, he is refused by both ways of organizing the society.

Because, fact of the matter remains, while we can have a society of the strong, we can’t at the same time have a way to convince the weak to stay there.

However, all this has strictly to do with the world of objects. The problem is not strength, as it is pain and suffering. If one can not inflict pain and suffering on another, something fundamental has changed, and examples born in the world of objects do not float well in the world of ideas. Which is why i rejected your homology.

Consider the situation on this forum. In real life, i would whip future man into an obedient slave, simply because he doesn’t see quite far enough, quite fast enough. In the marvelous world of ideas, as it is wonderfully typified by forums and the internet, i can not do so. Therefore he is a free roaming idiot, and i do not attempt to yoke him to my buggy.

You would see then, why i see your last paragraph as ill fitted with the rest, because sade and heffner discuss social interaction from a global
perspective, while you discuss philosophy from a practical standpoint, and what’s more, entirely detached from both materiality and practical value, something neither of them had in mind.

PS. I think this thread is worth of the essays and thesises section ?

Zeno,

Firstly, it is a joyous fiction to say in feudal times monarchy held supreme authority.

I would not say they held supreme authority, no more than God held supreme authority. The general chain of authority was vertical though, based in the feudal oath, above to below, and the oath symbolized the alliance. This to a large degree was mirrored and grounded at on the ideological level from the parish to the diocese. It is difficult to generalize between Charlemagne and Louis XIV, but land was held in power by name, and name in power by oath in a vertical symbolic fashion.

Now that in fact this system also turns out in practice to create hierarchy should surprise no one. However, it was not intended for the purpose of hierarchy.

The bourgeoisie created nothing, relations create the bourgeoisie. The model of the contract, stemming from guilds and mercantile associates was I agree not meant in a hierarchy of powers.

Especially considering that by that point it was really no longer alive.

I telescoped centuries of events so as to give context to the writings of Sade. But I disagree that feudalism was no longer alive at all. There are theorists that see it living today. The point really is not germane to the point made by Sade, unless at a rather linguistic level of the signified and the signifier perhaps.

And you are right, Kant is in fact the superior ideologue of the new order of his time, but that does not change the fact that in classical feudalism, telling a lie was just as dimly regarded.

Talk about over-simplification. :slight_smile: The nature of the regard is in question, the nature of the “superiority”. A lie in “classical feudalism”, a feudalism which never existed, was a violation between two parties, a momentary alliance of two powers. It was “dimly regarded” by the violated party, but happened all the time. In Kant the lie is abstracted to such a complete and destructive force as to tear at the fabric of all social intercourse. This certainly was not the case in feudal times, or really any other time in history.

While something called by historic accident natural law was the basis of societal organization in feudal times, the principles of capitalism and the moral rationality of kant are just as much natural law.

This is my point. Sade seeks a layer of nature not a product of “historic accident”, just as does Nietzsche.

I do not know if you are aware of Sade’s biography (I can dig it out for you if you want.). He, as a noble, managed to avoid prosecution for his socially unacceptable antics about half the time for decades before the french revolution.

I’ve read four biographies of Sade.

Sade refuses to do so, and because of it, he is refused by both ways of organizing the society.

Sade makes this clear with nearly every single page he has written. And it is this raw and fundamental refusal that I point to.

If one can not inflict pain and suffering on another, something fundamental has changed, and examples born in the world of objects do not float well in the world of ideas.

You’re missing the point being made. The social contract, in one form or the other is the author of “sense”, but Sade suggests that the contract itself is a farce and that the economy of meanings is just a cloaking of strength. If that is so, then sense produced within contracts of meaning, is produced perhaps in surplus to those highly restricted pretensions of defined rationality. It is either stolen rhetorically, and then ratified later as authentic, or it is cordoned off as irrational and undefined, yet harvested by sense production. There are many ways of inflicted pain, and ideas are objects, just as much as objects are ideas. The fundamental order of the contract lies beneath their exchange:

“Let’s try to understand the logic of this entire method of compensation; it is strange enough. And equivalence is provided by the creditor’s receiving, in place of material compensation such as money, land, or other possessions, a kind of pleasure. That pleasure is induced by his being able to exercise his power freely upon one who is powerless, by the pleasure of faire le mal pour le plaisir de la faire, the pleasure of rape. That pleasure will be increased in proportion to the lowiness of the creditor’s own station; it will appear to him a delicious morsel, a foretaste of a higher rank. In “punishing” the debtor, the creditor shares a seigniorial right. For once his is given a chance to bask in the glorious feeling of treating another human being as lower than himself – or in case the actual punitive power has passed on to a legal “authority”, of seeing him despised and mistreated. Thus compensation consists in a legal warrant entitling one man to excersize his cruelty on another”

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“And in my view the value of the virtuous sentiment further deteriorates when I remember not only that it is not a primary natural impulse, but that by definition, it is a low, base impulse, that it stinks of commerce: I give unto you in order that I may obtain from you in exchange.”

Sade, Juliette

In real life, i would whip future man into an obedient slave, simply because he doesn’t see quite far enough, quite fast enough. In the marvelous world of ideas, as it is wonderfully typified by forums and the internet, i can not do so.

This is what you don’t get, on a forum one can be whipped into an obedient slave, rhetorically, through philosophical argument. Future man can flex his Sadean muscles, if any. If the basis of exchange is abstracted and made subtle does not mean that it no longer functions. In fact it may function more signficantly, that is more pervasively.

You would see then, why i see your last paragraph as ill fitted with the rest, because sade and heffner discuss social interaction from a global perspective, while you discuss philosophy from a practical standpoint, and what’s more, entirely detached from both materiality and practical value, something neither of them had in mind.

What you don’t see, I suppose, due to my failing, is that there is no such thing as “philosophy from a practical standpoint”. The manufacture of sense is political, and the social interaction and global effects that surrounded Sade’s writing have as much to do with philosophy now as they did then. The power relations of the world, condition – are not entirely detached from –, “practical value”. The are established upon those very fiduciary issue exchanges of truth that occur every day.

I think this thread is worth of the essays and thesises section ?

No. Just a midnight thought. Thank you though.

Dunamis

that is, then, the reason we can not discuss. I do not agree philosophy can, has, ever could, or ever had any sort of practical implication whatsoever. I suppose our disagreement stems more from that personal view of mine rather than from anything you have said, in particular.

Zeno,

" I do not agree philosophy can, has, ever could, or ever had any sort of practical implication whatsoever."

It’s not that philosophy is ‘practical’, but that the ‘practical’ is ideational. Take Nietzsche’s point. Do you imagine that the pleasure that is received in exercising one’s "seigniorial right’ in a philosophical discussion, that is as a creditor of “truth”, punishing an opponent (a debtor who owes you truth) with rhetorical and logical abuse, is any different than the pleasure a creditor under legal warrent feels when reducing a debtor, either physically or in court? The thread that binds the relationship of ideas, legality, and economic “reality”, is immensely ‘practical’, because one’s relationship to ‘objects’ is ideational. Even their constitution as ‘objects’ per se is ideational, i.e. constituted by ideas and beliefs.

You do not believe that Locke or Marx had any practical effect on history, for instance?

Dunamis

you mix things.

i don;t think a creditor derives any pleasure from reducing a creditor, regardless of what he thinks. if you have a rotten tooth and you go to the shaman who casts a spell and your tooth stops acheing, you still HAVE NOT BEEN CURED. it feels like a cure, it looks like a cure, it is not a cure. hell, you may never have any more problems with that tooth ever, it still aint cured.

similarly, i dont think marx’s or anyone else’s phylosophy had any practical effect whatsoever. they themselves, their personalities, voices, speeches and whatnot might have had.

in proper form, you represent ideas as archetipal objects, i represent ideas as transcedental. thus we can’t really discuss about ideas.

Zeno,

“similarly, i dont think marx’s or anyone else’s phylosophy had any practical effect whatsoever. they themselves, their personalities, voices, speeches and whatnot might have had.”

I see we are at great divergence here. You do not imagine that their “ideas”, such as were found in their writings, had a ‘practical’ effect? When China has a Marxist revolution, what exactly is happening there? Voice (long dead)? Personality (long dead)? Or idea?

If ideas and beliefs have no practical effect, what does?

Dunamis

just because you will be reading the words “just because” does not prove you read what i have written. similarly, the state of affairs in china does not prove anything about marx’s ideas.

matters of deduction can only be proven or disproven by logic. matters of induction can be proven or disproven by the scientific method. the two ways of proving have little in common, and thus to mix deduction and induction is sick, yet sometimes fruitfull.

however, you can’t claim china’s political set up is any more a result of marx than of martians.

ideas have no practical effects, beliefs do. but ideas and beliefs are not the same (as i know you know :slight_smile: )

Zeno,

“however, you can’t claim china’s political set up is any more a result of marx than of martians.”

I was not attempting to prove anything. I see though, that I might as well be speaking to someone on Mars. I won’t push the issue further. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the responses you did give.

Dunamis

was fun while it lasted :smiley: