The Marquis de Sade, and not Jean-Jacques Rousseau, may be the truer voice of the Enlightenment. In this compelling reading of the canon of Enlightenment thinkers from Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot to Rousseau and Sade, Pierre Saint-Amand uncovers the hostility that lurks beneath the philosophers’ progressive rationality.
Society and sociability take center stage in Enlightenment texts and in current interpretations, but Saint-Amand reveals that reciprocity, the principle behind sociability, is always based on imitation, which inevitably degenerates into competition and rivalry. Probing the excesses of the Enlightenment, he exposes at its heart a crisis of law founded on violence. His book specifically addresses the bad faith of the Enlightenment philosophers in their refusal to consider the violent origins of society. As an alternative, The Laws of Hostility emphasizes the antagonisms and conflicts in the representation of social life and the understanding of human experience.