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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Peter Cryle, Stephen Gaukroger, Anik Waldow, and Rebecca Young.
Notes
1. Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761); Émile, ou de l’éducation (1762); Du contrat social (1762).
2. Justine, ou les Malheurs de la vertu (the second version of Justine, 1788, published 1791); La Philosophie dans le boudoir (1795); Histoire de Juliette, ou les Prospérités du vice (1797–1801). Les cent vingt Journées de sodome, ou l’École du libertinage (1785, published 1904), while perhaps the most (in)famous of all Sade's texts, it is, in terms of the presentation of Sade's philosophical “system,” less representative than the 1791–1801 texts on which this paper will be based.
3. Lever, Catalogue de La Coste, 2:618–619; Sade, “Reflections on the Novel,” 105.
4. For example, see Deprun, “La Mettrie et l'immoralisme sadien,” 127–132; and Warman, Sade.
5. Aline et Valcour, ou le Roman philosophique (1788, published 1795).
6. For further, more detailed discussion of the relationship between the period's philosophical anthropology and the prevailing literary or aesthetical forms see Lloyd, “Discourse of Sensibility.”
7. See Warman, Sade.
8. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 217; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 34. This response by Eugenie is repeated identically elsewhere: see Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 217.
9. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 257; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 72.
10. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 257; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 72.
11. “Sometimes it is as pleasant to discuss as to undergo [sensations]; and when one has reached the limit of one's physical means, one may then exploit one's intellect.” Sade, Juliette, 60; Sade, “Histoire de Juliette,” 234.
12. Diderot, “Éloge de Richardson,” 211–227.
13. Ibid.
14. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 266–313; O'Hagan, Rousseau, 83.
15. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 294.
16. Ibid.
17. Jaucourt, “Sensibilité, (Morale),” 15:52.
18. Fouquet, “Sensibilité, Sentiment (Médecine),” 15:38–52.
19. Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology, 80.
20. For more on Montpellier Vitalism, see Rey, Naissance et Développement du Vitalisme en France, 38:2–3; Wolfe and Terada, “Animal Economy,” 540; Reill, Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment; Gaukroger, Collapse of Mechanism and Rise of Sensibility, 387–420; Kaitaro, “Can Matter Mark the Hours?,” 583; Wolfe, “Introduction: Vitalism without Metaphysics?”
21. Williams, Cultural History of Medical Vitalism, 124–138.
22. Ibid., 147.
23. Fouquet, “Sensibilité, Sentiment (Médecine),” 15:40.
24. Ibid., 15:38.
25. Diderot, “Epicuréisme ou Epicurisme,” 5:782.
26. “Une propriété qu'ont certaines parties de percevoir les impressions des objets externes.” Fouquet, “Sensibilité, Sentiment (Médecine),” 15:38.
27. “Sens est une faculté de l'ame, par laquelle elle apperçoit les objets extérieurs.” “Sensations (Métaphysique),” 15:24; “Les sensations sont des impressions qui s'excitent en nous à l'occasion des objets extérieurs.” “Sensations (Métaphysique),” 15:34.
28. For a fuller explication, see Lloyd, “Sensibilité, Embodied Epistemology, French Enlightenment.”
29. Le Camus, Medecine de l'esprit. The first edition of the text was published in 1753.
30. Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology, 81. See also Rey, Naissance et Développement du Vitalisme en France, 252–255.
31. See Vila Enlightenment and Pathology, 44; Suzuki, “Anti-Lockean Enlightenment?,” 336–337. Suzuki argues that Locke becomes heavily influential on medical discourses in the late eighteenth century though not earlier. See also Vermeir and Deckard, “Philosophical Enquiries into the Science of Sensibility,” 9, 12.
32. Le Camus, Medecine de l'esprit, 1:10.
33. Ibid., 1:15.
34. Ibid., 1:19.
35. Ibid., 2:84.
36. Fouquet, “Sensibilité, Sentiment (Médecine),” 15:39.
37. Ibid., 15:49.
38. Shapiro, “Instrumental or Immersed Experience,” 265–285. See especially 274.
39. See Wolfe, “Sensibility as Vital Force or Property.”
40. Jaucourt, “Sens moral,” 15:28.
41. See Irwin, Development of Ethics, 354, 362, 419, 679, 682–684; and Norton and Kuehn, “Foundations of Morality.”
42. Singy, “Huber's Eyes,” 54.
43. Senebier, L'art d'observer, 2:161–321.
44. Ibid., 2:279–321.
45. Ibid., 2:201–266. See also Ménuret, “Observateur,” 11:311–312.
46. The relationship between moral sense theory and the sentimental novel has been much commentated on. See Keymer, “Sentimental Fiction,” 1:578–579; Brewer, “Sentiment and Sensibility,” 22; Ellis, Politics of Sensibility, 9–14; and Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability.
47. For example, see Warman, Sade.
48. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 274–283.
49. Fouquet, “Sensibilité, Sentiment (Médecine),” 15:39–40.
50. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 266–313.
51. See Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 304–305; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 119.
52. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 257; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 72. Note that Sade elsewhere uses the descriptor “délicieuse tête” in a similar circumstance: in the Grove Press, the standard and widely available English translation of Sade, it is also translated as “mind.” For other examples of this usage, see Sade, Juliette, 883; Sade, “Histoire de Juliette,” 978.
53. Clavier, “Esprit,” 659.
54. Descartes, Passions of the Soul. See especially articles 32 and 33.
55. Clavier, “Cœur,” 16:30–31.
56. Fouquet, “Sensibilité, Sentiment (Médecine),” 15:40. This is also the case for Senebier, L'art d'observer, 2:201–266.
57. Jaucourt, “Sens moral,” 15:28.
58. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 266; Rousseau, Emile, ou de l’éducation, 320. See also O'Neal, Seeing and Observing, 67–68.
59. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 269–270 (italics added); Rousseau, Emile, ou de l’éducation, 324–325.
60. Le Roy, “Homme (Morale),” 8:275. Rousseau argues that it is sensibility which is innate, not ideas: Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 290.
61. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 273–279. It is worth noting that the division between knowledge of the head and that of the heart is similar to, though it does not match exactly, John C. O'Neal's division in modes of Rousseavian perception between “seeing,” understood as the “kind of perception that leads to recognition of one's fellow human beings” and often associated with the heart, and “observing,” where perception “stops at the level of the senses [ … ] at most providing intellectual data for reason.” Seeing and Observing, 6. See also 32. Although O'Neal relies on a close reading of Rousseau's oeuvre in the tradition of Starobinski and does not engage with the broader context of sensibility, he is attentive to the epistemological questions I am invoking. For O'Neal:
From an epistemological standpoint, those who “observe,” because of the very limited tendency of their world view, can only have limited knowledge of themselves, their fellow men and women, and their environment. Those who “see,” on the other hand, are constrained on both the ethical and epistemological level only by their contact with people who observe. The latter become a stumbling block not only to the attainment of virtue, but also to the attainment of knowledge. (15. See also p. 61.)
62. Condillac, “Treatise on the Sensations”; Condillac, “Traité des sensations.” The question of whether it is appropriate for Condiallc to read Locke this way is a topic that is outside the scope of this paper.
63. For example, see Plato, “Phaedrus,” 250d.
64. For example: “Here above all is a little tongue-shaped thing – that is the clitoris, and there lies all a woman's power of sensation.” Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 204 ; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 21.
65. And for d'Holbach and Helvétius.
66. Condillac, “Treatise on the Sensations,” 177, 242.
67. Ibid., 242.
68. Ibid., 183.
69. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 231. See also pp. 292–293. Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 48.
70. Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis. For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Moore, “Invention of Sadism?”
71. Condillac, “Treatise on the Sensations,” 238.
72. It is worth noting that the period does not take heightened sensibility to be without problems: see Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology.
73. d'Holbach, Système de la nature, 1:14.
74. Ibid., 100; d'Holbach, System of Nature, 86.
75. d'Holbach, Système de la nature, 12–14; d'Holbach, System of Nature, 18.
76. d'Holbach, Système de la nature, 40–42.
77. Ibid., 88–89, 94; d'Holbach, System of Nature, 78, 81. See also d'Holbach, Système de la nature, 91, 92; and d'Holbach, System of Nature, 79, 80.
78. d'Holbach, Système de la nature, 110.
79. Sade, “Justine,” 606.
80. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 252; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 67. See also Sade, Juliette, 340–341; Sade, “Histoire de Juliette,” 482.
81. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 208; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 26.
82. See also Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 286.
83. For example, when Mme de Saint-Ange explains that a foetus owes its existence only to a man's sperm, the womb “furthers creation without being its cause” and this is why a child owes filial tenderness to the father alone. Eugénie responds, “it is in my heart I find confirmation of what you tell me, my dear, for I love my father to distraction, and feel a loathing for my mother.” Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 206; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 24. A detailed study of the various operations of the head/intellect and the heart/moral sense in Sade would include a discussion of the relationships Juliette has with Olympe, the Princess Borghese who appeals to Juliette's intellect, and Honorine, the Duchess Grillo who appeals to Juliette's heart. See Sade, Juliette, 659; Sade, “Histoire de Juliette,” 770.
84. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 340; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 154.
85. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 341; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 155.
86. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 342; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 156.
87. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 342; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 156.
88. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 215; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 32.
89. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 217; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 34. See also Sade, “Justine,” 491, 661–662.
90. In particular, see Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology.
91. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 255; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 70.
92. Sade, “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” 255; Sade, “La Philosophie dans le boudoir,” 70.
93. See Haakonssen, “History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy.”
94. See Astbury, “Sade and the Sentimental Tale”; and Durante, Sade ou l'ombre des lumières.
95. Diderot, “Éloge de Richardson.”