Sade's electrical philosophy

• Grant number: 12/13956-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: January 01, 2013
• End date: December 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Clara Carnicero de Castro
• Grantee: Clara Carnicero de Castro
• Host Investigator: Michel Delon
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris 4), France

Abstract

This research intends to study the connection between the electricity and the organic exposed on the philosophical theories and the orgiastic practices of Sade's characters. References to electricity are recurring in the Marquis' novels and identify man as an electric machine. In the eighteenth century, experiments with energy establish a connection between material and living bodies, fascinating the people of the period. Electricity was then presented as an invisible fluid capable of spreading everywhere, inside and outside of organisms. In the human being, such a fluid circulated through the nerves and warned the brain of everything that happened to the body, acting on each of the senses. Capable of influencing both the physical and the mental, the so-called electric fluid, also known as nervous or neural fluid, imposes itself as a key aspect of the marquis' thought. To him, all sensations arise from the commotion caused on this substance: the greater is the agitation of the nerves' electric particles, the greater is the pleasure. Therefore, everything depends upon the movement of electricity throughout the body and the influences it receives from the outside world's objects. (AU)