The Marquis de Sade on Orthodoxy

A short entry about orthodoxy before I post the second part of the analytical essay on Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 next week. 

While reading a short story entitled “Augustine de Villeblanche or Love’s Strategy” by the Marquis de Sade (not exactly a historical figure you would go to for moral rectitude), I came across the following fascinating passages on why human beings feel the need to judge, condemn, and censor others who hold different beliefs and values from them:

The most foolish thing of all … is to blush about the penchants that Nature has given us. And to make fun of anyone, simply because his or her tastes are unusual, is just as barbaric as railing against someone who was born lame, or blind in one eye. But trying to convince fools of these reasonable concepts is like trying to halt the stars in their courses. People seem to take a kind of prideful pleasure in mocking “defects” that they themselves do not possess, and they apparently derive such enjoyment – especially the halfwits – from this sport … It serves as a pretext for maliciousness, witticisms, and poor puns; and society, that is, a collection of people whom boredom has brought together and stupidity has molded, enjoys nothing better than spending two or three hours talking without saying anything, it delights in appearing brilliant at the expense of others, in making a point of censuring a vice from which it thinks itself free… (129)

The “Nature” that the narrator above, a lesbian character, has in mind is the very Nature that radical Christians and Muslims refer to when making a case against the “abomination” that is homosexuality. On this subject, the character says:

If you think about it carefully, you will see that all these imaginary losses (the failure to reproduce – my addition) are completely indifferent to Nature, that not only does she not condemn them but, on the contrary, she demonstrates by a thousand examples that she wishes and desires them. Why, if these losses irritate her so, would she tolerate them in thousands of cases? Why, if the problem of progeny is so essential to her, would she have limited the length of time a woman can bear children to only a third of her life? And why would Nature dictate that half of those creatures to whom she gives birth leave their mothers’ hands with a clear distaste for producing offspring, contrary to what we have been taught are Nature’s demands. I shall go even further: Nature allows the race to multiply, but she does not demand it and, thoroughly convinced that there will always be more people than her needs require, she has no desire whatsoever to oppose the penchants of those who refuse to conform to society’s demands to procreate and will have no part of it. Ah, let Mother Nature work her ways, let us be quite convinced that he resources are immense, that nothing we do will outrage her… (127)

The Marquis might not be the writer to quote when it comes to moral issues, but in this supposedly enlightened age when there are still religions and cultures around the world that condemn and execute those who do not conform, his words ring truer than ever. The irony is: if a Frenchman writing towards the end of the 18^th century could embrace such liberal thoughts, why is it some of us still insist on living in the dank cave of orthodoxy?

  

All page numbers refer to the 2000 Arcade edition of The Mystified Magistrate and Other Tales, translated by Richard Seaver.