Kant avec Sade

Kant avec Sade
French title	Kant avec Sade
English title	Kant with Sade
Year	1963
Text type	Philosophical essay
Mode of delivery	Oral and written
First presentation	Lecture at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 1963
First publication	Critique, no. 191 (1963)
Collected in	Écrits (1966)
Text status	Authorial text
Original language	French
Psychoanalytic content
Key concepts	Jouissance • Superego • The Law • The Other • Drive • Perversion • Ethics
Themes	Ethics and moral law; perversion and structure; subject and the Other; formalism; psychoanalysis and philosophy
Freud references	Civilization and Its Discontents • Beyond the Pleasure Principle • Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Related seminars	Seminar VII • Seminar VIII
Theoretical context
Period	Ethical / philosophical period
Register	Real • Symbolic

“Kant with Sade” (Kant avec Sade) is a psychoanalytic essay by Jacques Lacan, first published in the journal Critique in 1963 and later included in his collection Écrits (1966). The essay explores the structural and ethical relation between Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy and the libertine writings of the Marquis de Sade, arguing that Sadean perversion renders explicit the unconscious fantasy that underpins Kant’s categorical imperative.

Lacan's core claim is that Sade presents “the truth” of Kantian morality by exposing the jouissance—a form of excessive, transgressive enjoyment—that secretly supports the moral law. In this reading, Sadean perversion is not a rejection of morality but its obscene double, the hidden underside of Kant’s formalism. Through this provocative juxtaposition, Lacan rethinks the superego, the Law, and the function of desire within both ethical and clinical structures.

The essay is closely aligned with Lacan’s Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–1960), in which the figures of Kant and Sade are used to articulate the psychoanalytic stakes of ethics, the nature of the Thing (das Ding), and the subject’s relation to the Real. “Kant with Sade” is one of Lacan’s most influential and widely debated texts, notable for its complex engagement with philosophy, its reformulation of Freudian sadism and masochism, and its contribution to the theory of perversion in psychoanalytic practice.

Historical and Philosophical Context

Lacan’s return to ethics

“Kant with Sade” belongs to a period in Lacan’s teaching in which he re-centers ethics as a central problem in psychoanalysis. In The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (Seminar VII), delivered from 1959 to 1960, Lacan argues that psychoanalysis is not merely a technique of healing or adaptation, but a confrontation with the moral law as such—a law that is fundamentally linked to the subject’s desire and its structural impossibility.

This ethical turn coincides with Lacan’s broader effort to return to Freud by distancing psychoanalysis from ego psychology and therapeutic normativity. Lacan insists that psychoanalytic ethics does not consist in normalizing the subject, but in allowing the subject to confront the truth of their desire, even when it transgresses moral or social norms.

Kantian formalism

Lacan’s principal philosophical reference in this context is Immanuel Kant, especially the formulation of the categorical imperative in Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Kant’s moral law is universal, non-empirical, and detached from any particular content or desire. Its famous formulation—“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”—represents for Lacan the limit-case of moral formalism, where duty becomes entirely self-referential.

Kantian ethics privileges autonomy, the self-legislation of the rational will, and opposes it to heteronomous desires and inclinations. But it is precisely this disjunction between law and desire that Lacan probes by introducing Sade.

The Marquis de Sade and Enlightenment transgression

The writings of the Marquis de Sade, such as The 120 Days of Sodom, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Justine, represent a radical inversion of Enlightenment rationality. Sade’s libertines embrace cruelty, sexual violence, and perverse excess as the fulfillment of nature’s laws, defying conventional morality. For Lacan, Sade is not simply a scandalous literary figure but a thinker of desire, whose rigorous formalism of jouissance parallels Kant’s rigor of duty. Sade constructs elaborate, rule-governed systems of transgression that expose the structure of the moral law itself.

By juxtaposing Kant and Sade, Lacan seeks to expose the libidinal underside of ethics—where the moral law functions as a command to enjoy.

Lacan’s Thesis: Kantian Ethics and Sadean Fantasy

Sade as the “truth of Kant”

Lacan’s central thesis is that Sade’s system of transgression expresses, in its perverse form, the truth of Kantian ethics. This “truth” lies in the way both Kant and Sade elevate an abstract law above all other considerations: for Kant, it is the moral law as universal form; for Sade, it is the law of the libertine’s own sovereign desire.

In Sade’s writing, the libertine performs crimes and atrocities not out of impulsivity, but in accordance with a formalized set of principles. His transgressions are rational, systematic, and justified by appeals to nature, reason, or freedom. This rationalization mirrors the structure of Kant’s ethics, which demands that the subject obey the law without regard to pathological inclinations. Lacan provocatively suggests that Sadean perversion is the flip side of Kantian moral rigor—that the obscene command to enjoy is already encoded in the superegoic force of the categorical imperative.

The libertine as executor of the law

Lacan describes the Sadean libertine as the “agent of the law”—not its violator. The libertine's actions, while monstrous in content, reveal the form of pure duty divorced from affect or empathy. In this sense, Sade embodies the executioner of Kant’s law, carrying it out to the letter, but revealing its hidden jouissance.

What is at stake is not merely a moral judgment of Sade, but an analytic of the superego: that internal agency which demands that the subject enjoy beyond measure, masked as a moral injunction. The Kantian subject of pure reason thus gives way to a Sadean subject of pure drive, in whom duty and enjoyment converge in an imperative that brooks no exception.

The Superego, Jouissance, and the Law

The paradox of the superego

Lacan’s interpretation of the superego diverges significantly from earlier Freudian formulations. Whereas Freud initially cast the superego as a moral agency internalized from the father and cultural norms, Lacan insists that the superego is not a force of moderation or repression, but one of excess and enjoyment. The superego commands the subject to enjoy, often at the cost of suffering and guilt.

This command is not derived from pleasure (in the Freudian sense of the pleasure principle), but from jouissance—a kind of traumatic enjoyment that exceeds regulation. The superego is thus the obscene reverse of the moral law: it appears as duty, but its satisfaction lies in transgression and punishment.

In this framework, the Sadean libertine does not oppose the law but becomes its purest servant, exposing the hidden link between ethics and enjoyment. The superego and Sadean perversion share a structural logic: both elevate formal law over human desire and empathy, and both derive satisfaction from the very impossibility of that law’s fulfillment.

Jouissance and the Thing

Lacan associates this dynamic with the Freudian concept of das Ding—the Thing—as developed in Seminar VII. The Thing represents a primordial object, a source of prohibited satisfaction that the subject is barred from accessing but cannot cease to circle around. In Lacan’s reading, both Kant and Sade position themselves in relation to this Thing: Kant by erecting the law that prohibits it absolutely, and Sade by staging its impossible realization in the fantasy of unlimited transgression.

Jouissance is the name Lacan gives to this paradoxical satisfaction: it is the pleasure-in-pain, the enjoyment derived from suffering, prohibition, or excess. It is what animates the Sadean subject’s insistence on pushing the law to its most perverse conclusion.

Kant, Sade, and the Function of the Real

Lacan’s triangulation of Kant, Sade, and the moral law culminates in his conception of the Real—the register of experience that resists symbolization and disrupts imaginary and symbolic consistency. In “Kant with Sade,” Lacan locates the Real at the point where the subject encounters the impossibility of jouissance and the limit of the moral law’s signifying power.

For Kant, the moral law is grounded in pure reason, beyond empirical contingency. For Lacan, this very disconnection from the empirical marks the law’s proximity to the Real—the unrepresentable limit that structures desire. The categorical imperative becomes the voice of the superego not because it expresses moral truth, but because it evokes an unrelenting demand that cannot be satisfied.

In Sade’s writings, this Real is staged in the form of repetitive, mechanical rituals of cruelty—rituals that attempt to embody the inhuman core of jouissance. These acts do not lead to resolution or catharsis but endlessly reproduce the gap that structures perversion: the fantasy of accessing the Thing without limit or loss.

Perverse Structure and the Moral Imperative

The structure of perversion

In Lacan’s structural theory of clinical types—neurosis, psychosis, and perversion—perversion is not defined by behavior but by the subject's position in relation to the Other. The pervert, according to Lacan, does not simply enjoy transgressing the law; rather, he places himself as the instrument of the Other’s enjoyment, staging fantasies that fulfill the Other’s will to the letter. In Kant with Sade, the Sadean libertine is a paradigmatic pervert—not merely because he violates norms, but because he embodies the moral law in its most rigorous form.

The Sadean subject occupies the position of the object-cause of jouissance (objet petit a), instrumentalizing others (usually victims) in a fantasy scenario in which enjoyment is systematized, ritualized, and justified in the name of a “higher” principle—be it nature, reason, or duty. This fantasy is not private or idiosyncratic but has a formal structure: it scripts the subject’s position relative to the Other’s desire, in this case taking the form of lawful transgression.

Moral law as fantasy framework

Lacan demonstrates that the categorical imperative can serve as the formal framework for a perverse fantasy, where the subject submits to a law that commands enjoyment beyond the pleasure principle. In this sense, Kantian ethics is not simply a rational ideal but is structurally compatible with the perverse superego, which enjoys in commanding the impossible.

The key insight is that law and transgression are not opposites, but two sides of the same symbolic structure. The Sadean subject “obeys” a law that legitimizes cruelty, suffering, and domination—but this law is experienced as necessary, even universal. Hence, Sade is not immoral in the conventional sense; he is hyper-moral—a “moralist of evil,” whose acts are justified by the very structure of lawfulness.

Clinical and Ethical Implications

Working with perverse structures

Lacan’s analysis of Sade has direct implications for psychoanalytic clinical practice. In contrast to earlier Freudian approaches that viewed perversions (sadism, masochism, fetishism, exhibitionism, etc.) as regressions or failed developmental resolutions, Lacan argues that perversion is a structural solution to the problem of desire and castration. The pervert seeks to embody the law for the Other, staging scenarios that allow the jouissance of the Other to be fulfilled or mirrored.

Clinically, this means the perverse subject is not primarily motivated by guilt or repression (as in neurosis), but by a scripted relation to enjoyment, often stabilized through repetitive rituals or fantasies. Rather than challenging the law, the pervert becomes its executor—interpreting the law in a way that authorizes enjoyment and provides a consistent subject position.

This challenges adaptationist models of clinical practice that aim to normalize or moralize the subject. Instead, the analyst must attend to the fantasy structure that sustains perversion, and how it stages the subject's relation to the superego and the law.

Ethics beyond normativity

Lacan’s linking of Kant and Sade also transforms the ethical stakes of psychoanalysis. Rather than offering moral guidance or corrective therapy, psychoanalytic ethics concerns the subject's relation to truth and desire. The goal is not to realign the subject with a social ideal, but to allow them to confront the limits of their jouissance, the structure of their fantasy, and the function of the law in their psychic economy.

Psychoanalytic ethics thus suspends moral judgment, focusing instead on what Lacan calls the “desire of the analyst”—a position that neither gratifies nor condemns, but supports the subject in traversing their fantasy. In this context, Sade is not a model to follow or reject, but a figure through whom the obscene underside of ethics is rendered visible.

Scholarly Interpretations and Critiques

Žižek and the obscene underside of the Law

Slavoj Žižek has extensively drawn on Kant with Sade to theorize the relation between ideology and jouissance. According to Žižek, Lacan reveals that every moral system contains an obscene supplement—a hidden underside that licenses transgressive enjoyment in the name of duty or justice. In this view, the Sadean structure is not limited to perverts or libertines but pervades political, religious, and bureaucratic authority, wherever law becomes enjoyment in its own right.

Žižek applies Lacan’s insights to figures like Stalin, Robespierre, and Christian ascetics, showing how moral purity often conceals a sadistic drive. In doing so, he radicalizes Lacan’s thesis: the Sadean imperative to enjoy is not marginal but central to the functioning of power in modernity.

Copjec and the ethics of difference

Joan Copjec, in Read My Desire, emphasizes that Lacan’s reading of Kant and Sade resists both moral relativism and liberal humanism. Instead, it reveals that ethics must confront the impossible, the point where desire meets its limit. Copjec also argues that Lacan, unlike Foucault, preserves the intransitivity of desire, insisting that the moral law and perverse enjoyment are formally identical but not morally equivalent.

For Copjec, Lacanian ethics affirms the non-equivalence of jouissance and knowledge, insisting that the subject’s confrontation with the Real cannot be historicized, normalized, or instrumentalized.

Feminist and critical responses

Lacan’s identification of the phallus, the Law, and jouissance with Kantian formalism has drawn criticism from some feminist theorists, who argue that his reading marginalizes the specificity of feminine sexuality and bodily experience. Others, such as Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler, challenge the universalizing logic of Lacan’s formalism, seeing it as reproducing the patriarchal valorization of abstraction over embodiment.

Nevertheless, some feminists have productively engaged Lacan’s reading of Sade to theorize the politics of desire, sexual violence, and the limits of liberal ethics. The question of whether Lacan merely “exposes” or “repeats” Sadean fantasies remains a live point of debate.

Legacy and Cultural Influence

Since its publication, Kant with Sade has become one of Lacan’s most widely cited and controversial essays. It is frequently anthologized, taught in psychoanalytic training programs, and referenced across disciplines including philosophy, literature, film theory, and political theory.

In cinema, the Lacanian pairing of Kant and Sade has influenced interpretations of films by directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michael Haneke, and David Lynch, where moral authority and perverse enjoyment are shown to cohabit the same symbolic space. In cultural theory, the essay underpins critiques of authoritarianism, religious asceticism, and ideological violence, all of which Lacan’s logic shows to involve a hidden demand to enjoy.

The essay’s enduring relevance lies in its capacity to deconstruct morality without collapsing into nihilism, and to reveal that ethics, desire, and law are not cleanly separable domains but interwoven structures.