#18th century Philosophy

[daemonicdasein]

Chronology of the Marquis de Sade’s life from How to Read Sade by John Phillips, W. W. Norton (September 17, 2005), Pages 112-114.

1740 2 June: birth of Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, lord of La Coste, Saumane and Mazan in Provence. He was brought up in the palace of the Prince de Condé, who was four years older.

1746: Sent to live with his uncle, the abbé de Sade, at Saumane in Provence.

1750: Pursues his studies at the Jesuit college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris. The Jesuits infect him with a life-long enthusiasm for the theatre.

1755: Appointed sub-lieutenant in the King’s infantry regiment. In the course of active service in the Seven Years War is promoted to the rank of captain.

1763 17 May: marriage to Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil.

1763 October: briefly imprisoned at Vincennes for allegedly whipping Jeanne Testard, a fan-maker.

1765: Liaison with Mademoiselle de Beauvoisin, an actress.

1767: Death of his father, the comte de Sade, and birth of his first son, Louis-Marie.

1768: The Rose Kellar affair: imprisoned for six months initially at Saumur, then at Pierre-Encise near Lyons for alleged acts of libertinage, sacrilege and sadism on Easter Sunday in his house at Arcueil.

1769: Birth of his second son, Donatien-Claude-Armand.

1771: Birth of his daughter, Madeleine-Laure. Briefly imprisoned for debt.

1772 17 June: the Marseilles affair: Sade and his valet are found guilty of sodomy and attempted poisoning on the occasion of an orgy in Marseilles. Both flee to Italy, accompanied by Sade’s younger sister-in-law, Anne-Prospère. Sentenced to death in absentia, their effigies are burnt publicly at Aix.

1772 8 December: arrested and imprisoned at Miolans in Piedmont.

1773 1 May: escapes and eventually returns to La Coste. Sade’s mother-in-law, the Présidente de Montreuil, embittered by the seduction of Anne-Prospère, obtains a lettre de cachet for his arrest and imprisonment.

1775: Flees once again to Italy.

1777: Fresh scandals at La Coste, this time involving young girls employed at the château.

1778: The accusations of attempted poisoning having been dismissed, the death sentence imposed by the Aix parlement is lifted, but the Présidente uses her influence to obtain a new lettre de cachet. Sade escapes but is recaptured and returned to Vincennes. He will remain in prison until the Revolution.

1781: Writes the first of a succession of plays, The Inconstant.

1782: Writes the Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man and begins The 120 Days of Sodom.

1784 29 February: transferred from Vincennes to the Bastille.

1786: Writes the greater part of his ‘philosophical’ novel Aline et Valcour.

1787: Composition of The Misfortunes of Virtue, the first novella-length version of Justine. Begins writing his collection of short stories, originally entitled Tales and Fabliaux of Eighteenth Century by a Provençal Troubadour, a selection of which will eventually be published in 1799 under the title The Crimes of Love.

1789 2 July: Sade incites the mob to riot from his cell window in the Bastille, telling them that prisoners are being murdered.

1789 4 July: sent to the insane asylum at Charenton, leaving behind a number of manuscripts, including The 120 Days of Sodom which he will never see again.

1789 14 July: the fall of the Bastille and the start of the Revolution.

1790 1 April: Sade is released following abolition of lettres de cachet by the new revolutionary government. Formal separation from Renée-Pélagie and start of a new relationship with Constance Quesnet, nicknamed ‘Sensitive’, which will last until his death. Actively involved in revolutionary politics, promoting hospital reform. Tries unsuccessfully to get his plays performed.

1791: Anonymous publication of Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue, the second version of the Justine narrative, and performance of his play The Comte d’Oxtiern, or the Effects of Libertinism.

1792: Composes various revolutionary essays, including The Idea on the Method for the Sanctioning of Laws.

1793: Publishes a pamphlet in honour of Marat following his murder by Charlotte Corday. When the opportunity presents itself, Sade, who has been appointed a judge in his revolutionary section, does not sentence his in-laws to death. Suspected of moderation and royalist sympathies, Sade is arrested in December.

1794: Sade escapes death owing to a bureaucratic error, and is eventually released at the end of the Terror, following the fall and execution of Robespierre.

1795: Penniless owing to the loss of his lands and property in the Revolution, Sade tries to stage more plays. Publishes Aline and Valcour, and, anonymously, Philosophy in the Boudoir.

1799: Anonymous publication of The New Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue, followed by The History of Juliette, her Sister, or the Prosperities of Vice, and publication in Sade’s own name of The Crimes of Love. Works as a prompt in a Versailles theatre for 40 sous a day.

1801: Sade arrested at his publishers in April for authorship of ‘obscene’ writings, and imprisoned at Sainte-Pélagie.

1803: Transferred to Bicêtre, then to Charenton.

1804: Sade’s continued detention justified by the invention of a new medical condition, ‘libertine dementia’.

1807: Confiscation of the libertine novel The Days at Florbelle, or Nature unveiled, begun in 1804. The manuscript will be destroyed at the behest of his younger son after his death.

1808: Organizes theatrical performances, using asylum inmates and professional actresses.

1812-13: Writes Adelaide of Brunswick, Princess of Saxony, The Secret History of Isabelle of Bavaria and The Marquis de Gange, all conventional historical novels.

1813-14: Affair with the sixteen-year-old laundry-maid Madeleine Leclerc.

1814 2 December: Sade’s death, followed by interment in the Charenton cemetery with full religious rites.

[siriplaymastery]

Nude in the hammock (1892). Life Size Carrara Marble, Antonio Frilli.

Antonio Frilli (?) - 1902 ). He was a Florentine sculptor specializing in marble and alabaster statues. Two years after the sculptor's death, his son Umberto, brought this work to the United States to the Louisiana Trade Fair, where the piece won the Exhibition's Grand Prix and six gold medals.

[enlitment]

In case you're wondering like I was: the reason why a lot of the 18th-century philosophers can't seem to stop making Cato the Younger references (Voltaire talks about Cato at least 6 or 7 times in Letters on England which is a lot because it's by no means a long text. Mandeville too of course — hi bestie!)

is because there was a play in the early 1700s about Cato (Addison's Cato, a Tragedy to be precise) which seemed to have had the cultural impact of early seasons of Game of Thrones

Catoo! this actor is from an 1800s production but still. Look at that facial expression. The sad wet cat energy. The pain in his eyes. It's all there!

Oh, and by 'cultural impact of Game of Thrones' I don't mean an increase in theatre subscriptions or of Cato action figures sales (though that would have been awesome!)

I mean it had a pretty significant influence on many of the American Revolutionaries (and French too most likely, since, cultural osmosis and all that). A lot of these nerds sure loved to quote it!

[diemelusine]

Portrait of Denis Diderot (1767) by Louis-Michel van Loo. Musée du Louvre.

[coldalbion]

[IMAGE ID: Tweet from Twitter user CAFFSTRINK on !st August 2024 Ppl gotta stop seeing testosterone and estrogen as male and female hormones bc every single human produces them just in different amounts /END ID]

And I'll actually go further: the systems of measurement are not unbiased - they have their roots in assumptions that are kin to, if not directly identical to those made by eugenicists and scientific racists.

Because they are artefacts of a classification ethos that is, at best, merely 300 years old. Before that, guess what, the so called West didn't automatically categorise in binaries, or fit things in boxes. A text on snakes would include things that were associated with snakes as well. Remedies for bites would sit next to folklore on snakes, info about their habitat, ways to care or avoid them etc, as but one example. What we have now is a product of colonial attempts to systematise and codify the world as a result of shock at the sheer diversity of existences and varieties of life. That is, to capture and create an over-arching episteme and claim its universality. To dominate knowledge construction and say that this is the only way. It is not. There are other knowledge systems and epistemologies. Note: this isn't saying SCIENCE=Bad. But is saying that claims of universality and the assumptions of universality which undergird the so-called Western episteme have biases that need noticing and interrogating.

[thepaintedchateau]

..."the world of reality has its limits...the world of imagination is boundless"...

~Rousseau

[monsieurle6]

This 18th century art by Fuseli goes incredibly hard. "Rousseau pointing at Voltaire, astride humanity, with justice and liberty on the gibbet."

[a-book-is-a-garden]

“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep woman in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a plaything.”

- Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”

[women-throughout-history]

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was a trailblazing writer and passionate advocate for women’s rights, whose ideas were far ahead of her time. Her most famous work, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ is considered to be one of the earliest texts advocating for gender equality, making her a key figure in the history of feminism. She argued that women, like men, are rational beings and deserve equal education. This belief stemmed from the idea that for society to progress, both men and women need the tools to contribute intellectually and socially. Born in 1759, Wollstonecraft didn’t come from a wealthy or influential family, but her personal drive and intellectual curiosity pushed her to become a self-educated thinker, reading texts such as the Bible, of ancient philosophers, Shakespeare, and Milton. At age 24, she started a girls’ school with her sisters and friend, Fanny Blood, in Newington Green, which played a crucial role in shaping her ideas about education and equality. Her first work, ‘Thoughts on the Education of Daughters’ (1786), laid the foundation for her later writings on women’s liberation. She firmly believed that if women were denied the same education as men, society would suffer as a whole. Wollstonecraft’s life was marked by her fierce independence. As a writer in London, she became part of a group of political radicals known as the Rational Dissenters. Her social circle included figures like William Godwin, whom she later married. Living through the tumultuous French Revolution, she closely followed the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and political liberty, principles that greatly influenced her work. Her ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’ (1790) was a response to Edmund Burke’s critique of the revolution and aristocracy. It set the stage for her later arguments for women’s equality. In 1794, she had a daughter, Fanny, with American entrepreneur Gilbert Imlay, but their relationship ended in heartbreak. She attempted suicide twice, first in May, then in October 1795. Wollstonecraft eventually found happiness with philosopher William Godwin, with whom she had her second daughter, Mary Shelley—who would go on to write ‘Frankenstein’. Sadly, Wollstonecraft died shortly after giving birth in 1797. Despite her short life, Wollstonecraft’s legacy is enormous. She laid the groundwork for future generations of feminists, emphasising that women deserve the same educational and intellectual opportunities as men.

Mary Wollstoncraft’s Writings: A Vindication of the Rights of Women Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

[majimemegoro]

I AM ONCE AGAIN ASKING IF

[a-complete-aesthete]

Faith / Trust in God (1835)

This sculpture was made by Italian sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini as a memorial commissioned by a widow by the name of Marchesa Rosa Poldi Trivulzio. The artist's phenomenal neo-classical, purist masterpiece was a testimony of the countess' faith in God after her husband's death. This sculpture was highly praised and inspired many great literary works of the era.

For example, Giuseppe Giusti, an inspired Italian poet, wrote this sonnet two years after Bartolini's sculpture.

Trust in God - Statue of Bartolini

Almost forgetting her corporeal corpse, Enraptured in Him who willingly forgives, On her knees she abandons her beautiful body Softly, and both palms. A tired pain, a celestial calm Seems to spread throughout her body, But in the forehead that speaks with God Flashes the immortal ray of the soul; And it seems to say: if every sweet thing Deceives me, and I feel my life's troubled flight from the time I hoped for serene, Lord, trusting, to your paternal breast My soul runs, and rests In an affection that is not earthly.

Even something as dark and terrible as death can inspire bright minds, and artists to bloom the idea into something beautiful and truly great. There's a saying by Aristotle that goes;

"Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish. The artist gives us knowledge of nature's unrealized ends."

and I just think know it to be very true.

[a-typical]

In several famous passages in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon described the balance between credulity and scepticism in late classical antiquity:

Credulity performed the office of faith; fanaticism was permitted to assume the language of inspiration, and the effects of accident or contrivance were ascribed to supernatural causes . . .

In modern times [Gibbon is writing in the middle eighteenth century], a latent and even involuntary scepticism adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their admission of supernatural truths is much less an active consent than a cold and passive acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe and to respect the invariable order of Nature, our reason, or at least our imagination, is not sufficiently prepared to sustain the visible action of the Deity. But in the first ages of Christianity the situation of mankind was extremely different. The most curious, or the most credulous, among the pagans were often persuaded to enter into a society which asserted an actual claim of miraculous powers. The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events. They felt, or they fancied, that on every side they were incessantly assaulted by daemons, comforted by visions, instructed by prophecy, and surprisingly delivered from danger, sickness, and from death itself, by the supplications of the church . . .

It was their firm persuasion that the air which they breathed was peopled with invisible enemies; with innumerable daemons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every form, to terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms of horror or delight which had occupied his sleeping and his waking dreams . . .

[T]he practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the marvellous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard to future events, and their strong propensity to extend their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible world, were the principal causes which favoured the establishment of Polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition . . .

— The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan (1996)

[siriplaymastery]

Detail of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Courtly Gala Dress with Diamond Stars by Winterhalter, 1865.

[enlitment]

Walks up to a couple: Soo, which one of you is the Prussian-born monarch with emotional baggage and which is the overly dramatic French philosopher they can't help but keep throwing their money at?

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Eighteenth-century science made part of its public impact through spectacular lecture demonstrations, most famously depicted in Joseph Wright's characteristically-lit view of an experimental philosopher displaying powers of the air pump.

"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney

[oh-dear-so-queer]

Although commentators increasingly insisted there were two sexes, and only two sexes, there was a continued awareness of people known as 'hermaphrodites'. A 1718 pamphlet on hermaphrodites mostly discussed women changing into men, since it was still thought – as the Greek philosophers – that a physical body would change to improve, that a woman would become a man. What was the benefit in going the opposite direction?

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory