24,656
edits
Changes
no edit summary
{| style="line-height:2.0em;width:100%;text-align:justify;border-spacing:8px;margin-bottom:10px" id="toc" align=center class="toc" width="100%" summary="Contents" margin-bottom=20px| style="line-height:2.0em;width:100%;text-align:center;border-spacing:8px;margin-bottom:10px" align=center width="100%" style="font-size:100%;word-spacing:50%;line-height:2em; padding: 0.2em 2.2em 0.2em 2.2em; margin: 0.5em 0 1em 0;" | Author: [[Jacques Lacan]]<BR>Translator: James B. Swenson, Jr.<BR>Source: October, Vol. 51 (Winter, 1989) pp.55-75|} <poemstyle="border: 2px solid #d6d2c5; background-color: #f9f4e6; padding: 1em;">
That the work of Sade anticipates Freud, be it in respect of the catalogue of perversions, is a stupid thing to say, which gets repeated endlessly among literary types; the fault, as always, belongs to the specialists.
Against this we hold that the Sadian bedroom is equal to those places from which the [[schools]] of ancient [[philosophy]] took their [[name]]: Academy, Lyceum, Stoa. Here as there, the way for [[science]] is prepared by rectifying the [[position]] of [[ethics]]. In this, yes, a ground-clearing occurs which will have to make its way through the depths of taste for a hundred years for [[Freud]]'s path to be passable. Count sixty more for someone to say the [[reason]] for all of that.
If Freud was able to enunciate ‘’his’’ [[pleasure]] [[principle]] without even having to worry [[about]] marking what distinguishes it frotn its function in traditional ethics, even without risking that it should be heard as an echo of the uncontested prejudice of two millenia, to [[recall]] the attraction which preordains the creature to its [[good]], along with the [[psychology]] inscribed in various [[myths]] of goodwill, we can only credit this to the insinuating rise across the pineteenth nineteenth century of the theme of "[[happiness]] in [[evil]]."
Here [[Sade]] is the inaugural step of a [[subversion]], of which, however amusing it might seem with respect to the coldness of the man, [[Kant]] is the turning point, and never noted, to our [[knowledge]], as such.
Of phat Sade is lacking here, we have [[forbidden]] ourselves to say a word. One magsense it in the gradation of the ‘’Philosopy’’ toward the fact that it is the curved needle, dear to Buñuel's heroes, which is finally called upon to resolve a girl's penisneid, and quite a big one.
Be that as it may, it appears that there is nothing to be gained by replacing Diotima with Dolmancé, someone whom the ordinary path seems to frighten more than is fitting, and who-did Sade see it?-closes the affair with a ‘’Noli tangere matrem’’. V . . . ed and sewn up, the mother remains forbidden. Our verdict upon the sybmission submission of Sade to the Law is confirmed.
Of a treatise truÏy truly about desire, there is thus little here, even nothing.
What of it is announced in this crossing taken from an encounter, is at most a tone of reason.
R. G. September 1962
The editors would like to thank Jacques-[[Alain]] [[Miller]] for the permission to publishthis text.
This text should have served as a preface to “Philosophy in the Bedroom”. It appeared in the journal Critique (no. 191, April 1963) as a review of theedition of the works of Sade for which it was destined. <ref>For which it was destined on commission. I add here, because it's droll, that they put themselves in the position of having to re-commission it from me when the success of [[Ecrits]] rendered it plausible ( . . . to the person who replaced me?)
</ref>
