Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade
1740–1814 · French Enlightenment · Renowned
Sade was a French aristocrat who wrote most of his books behind bars, in the Bastille and later in an asylum. A hard doctrine runs under the pornography: matter moves itself, there is no God, no soul and no afterlife, and death hands you back to a nature that takes no interest in you. He drew a full amoralism from this. Good and evil are conventions with no footing in nature, and free will is an illusion.
Signature
The position de Sade is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Immanence
- Highest Good
- Pleasure
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- Meaning
- strongly leans Constructed (10 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Immanence (0 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (25 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or de Sade refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Pleasure
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Social Invention
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Agency
- Hard Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos
What is the origin of reality? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death?