PRODUCTIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE EXPENSE IN SADE

Abstract

Sade’s refusal of limits can only be thought of in terms of its relation to the law. The latter is declined in the marquis’s works in two different ways: the law of nature and the moral law. For him, only nature has the power of law, but, to a certain extent, it is an autonomous law which escapes individuals who can execute it actively or passively: a law without norms, purely physical or mechanical, based on a balance of powers. Moral law, on the contrary, only exists to be despised, since it is from its denial that the libertine takes most part of the pleasure. From this double experience of the law, we would like to study the functioning of Sade’s erotica through the relationships it establishes between philosophical discourse and economical discourse.