SADE BETWEEN EPICURUS AND ZENO

Abstract

In Sade's novels, we find references to two philosophical currents not only distinct but apparently incompatible. On one side, there's the electric fluid, substance whose origin dates back to the pneuma of Zeno the Stoic. On the other side, there's the materialistic metempsychosis that recaptures Epicurus' atomism. The eighteenth century was marked by experiments with electricity, presented then as an invisible fluid, capable of spreading everywhere, either in living or inert matter. In human beings, such fluid circulates inside the nerves, so as to connect brain and muscles to produce sensation and movement. At the same time, the principles transmitted by Lucretius disseminate among clandestine literature to refute god's existence as the first cause of the universe and attest the materiality of the soul, explaining all body transformations through the perpetual motion of atoms. Transmigration or metempsychosis, in its materialistic sense, would be a reorganisation of matter under different formats. This paper intends to examine how Sade transgresses the boundaries between Epicurus and Zeno in his characters' discourse.