6/14/2023 0 Comments 120 days of sodom pdf![]() This pessimistic notionhelps to explain the relative absence of fraternal sympathy in hiswork and the self-interest that alone motivates his libertineprotagonists, and it represents a self-conscious inversion ofRousseau’s belief in Man’s innate sociability and fellow-feeling. Noirceuil in Juliette expresses this ideasuccinctly, when he declares that ‘all creatures are born isolated andwith no need whatsoever for one another’. Particularly original and certainly striking is histheory of ‘isolisme’, according to which each human being is utterlyalone in the universe. ![]() Despite these plagiarisms, however,Sade adds elements to this materialist philosophy that arepeculiarly his own. (Letter to his wife, late November 1783)Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, he took wholepassages from The System of Nature more or less verbatim andplaced them in the mouths of his libertines as they attacked onereligious dogma after another. One would have to be completely ignorant of the workings of Nature Martyr of atheism not to recognize that it operates on its own and without any primary cause, and that so-called primary cause, which explains nothing and which on the contrary requires explanation, is naught but the nec plus ultra of ignorance.
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