In flesh and in Eros

The obscenity of libertine novels has long discredited them. Wrongly so: the pornographic writings of the Enlightenment freely and joyfully disseminated philosophical theses and questioned the social norms of the Ancien Régime.

In his new opus, Colas Duflo extends the remarkable outline of Sophie’s wanderings into a novel (The Adventures of Sophie. Philosophy in the Eighteenth-Century Novel, CNRS Editions, 2013) by exploring the libertine side. Why on earth does Sophie seek adventure with pornographers? That literature is philosophical, we readily admit concerning Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire but also Prévost or Marivaux. More and more interdisciplinary works, carried out in particular by the “Litt&Phi” team of the University of Paris Nanterre, highlight a “narrative philosophy” in particular in this golden age of the confusion of genres that is the XVIIIe century. Erotic works and banned philosophical books flirt on the same booksellers’ lists and under the same cloaks. However, despite this common clandestine network of distribution, the pornographers’ pretension to philosophize still lends itself to smiles. Their obscenity discredits what would be nothing more than a philosophy of chaos.

Philosophy of Mess

And yet, “dirty novels” think! This is what Colas Duflo demonstrates in a convincing presentation rich in examples. Described indifferently as “erotic”, “pornographic”, “libertine” or “licentious”, the heterogeneous corpus mobilized is unified by the alternation between sexual frolics and textual debates. Tongues are loosened and proselytizing speeches fly during the time of the rest of the bodies. The pornographers thus work as propaganda for the “heterodox Enlightenment”. They disseminate and flood with striking images theses freely inspired by Spinozism, Epicureanism or clandestine philosophy. However marginal they may seem next to official works such as theEncyclopediathese “heterodox” theses are nonetheless of considerable importance in the history of thought. Libertine stories give literary flesh to the secularization of morality, to hedonistic materialism, to the role of experience, to the assimilation of God and nature… A supporter of a rehabilitation of the obscene writing of the Enlightenment, Colas Duflo refuses to let its seductive packaging prevent it from being taken seriously philosophically, considering that it is time to open our eyes to what was for a long time a “largely blind spot” (p. 11) for both historians and specialists in Enlightenment literature. Far from offering only anecdotal philosophical digressions, these sulphurous books undertake to deeply shake bodies and minds in the same movement. Eros philosopher and philosophy eroticizes itself according to a circle, virtuous for some, vicious for others.

With the tone of “the joyful laughter of a shaker” (p. 19), pornographers turn upside down the codes of Ancien Régime society and the unnatural norms imposed by religious and political authorities. This weapon of mass subversion fuels the novelistic frameworks and attests that “philosophical questions are likely to become story starters” (p. 21). In the form of a “what if…”, the possibility of another morality and its anthropological underpinnings are proven by experiencing themselves. These fictional memoir-novels, these confessions or these stories of conversion to pleasure rely on the intimate relationship that is formed between the characters and the reader to whom the work is addressed. An authentic “exercise of critical thinking through the story and, in this sense, a narrative philosophy” is then played out (p. 28). There are many figures of “philosophers” who, men or women, make themselves known from the title (Thérèse the philosopher, Confessions of a courtesan who became a philosopher, The Anti-Thérèse or Juliette the philosopher…). When they are not assimilated to worldly mockers, these masters of free thought call upon us to renounce the vain speculations whose chimeras the sensitive novel peddles (love à la Plato, natural equality and pity defended by Rousseau and castigated by Sade…). However, these narratives do not aim to hinder the critical mind of the reader, paralyzed by the ambient obscurantism. At the confluence of fictional immersion and critical distance, the libertine novel relies on a form of “programmed instability” (p. 34). It is up to each person to appreciate as they see fit this fabric of heterogeneous, polyphonic and sometimes dissonant discourses, which are cheerfully dynamited by ironic, parodic and satirical processes. Nothing forces us to fall into cynicism, skepticism or any form of moral philosophy.

An erotic propaganda of the heterodox Enlightenment

These general reflections by Colas Duflo are the starting point for detailed studies of significant works: History of Dom B…, porter of the Carthusians, written by himself by Gervaise de Latouche, Thérèse the philosopher or Memoirs to serve the history of Father Dirrag and Miss Éradice by Boyer d’Argens, Indiscreet Jewels from Diderot to the Sadean exception, passing through the libertine constellation of clandestine novels. We then grasp the importance of a corpus too quickly put on the index. His most famous works far exceed in number, editions and readers those that are today considered classics of this period. Thus, where the Bougainville’s voyage supplement by Diderot only has about fifteen copies around the last quarter of the century, The Porter of the Carthusians was printed in thousands of copies from the beginning of the 1740s. This libertine firebrand benefited from a more general movement of printing banned books which, until then, had only circulated in manuscript form. With a marked taste for transgression, the filthy language of the “Porter of Subversion” flouts prohibitions and propagates a praise of homosexuality, incest and more generally of experience and nature. This innovative reflection announces theses that will be found in Diderot or d’Holbach, for example. By its original form, Dom Bougre also illustrates to what extent “the pornographic scene is not only a diversion proposed for the enjoyment of the reader but is an integral part of the narrative philosophy device. It comes to show how the contradiction between Christian ideas on morals and the demands of the time is inscribed in bodies” (p. 65). The defense of these heterodox theses of the Enlightenment founds “the possibility of a new romantic aesthetic” (p. 107) where erotic and philosophical education merge and are told in the first person.

Like the Indiscreet Jewels Diderot’s clandestine novels relay fashionable intellectual and literary debates (opposition between Cartesians and Newtonians, between Lully and Rameau, continuation of the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns, etc.). Imaginary experiences of decentering allow a critical look at the society of the Ancien Régime by encouraging the reader to put himself in the place of an ingenuous person uninitiated in European customs such as Imirce or the daughter of nature in Du Laurens’ novel. Contrary to popular belief, libertines do not unanimously defend the most unbridled license and atheism. With the wide success of Therese Philosopherit is “a complete course of heterodox philosophy” which is put into circulation. Now, if according to its naturalist ethics, pleasures are exonerated and if religion is denounced as an imposture, the “philosophy of common sense” developed by Boyer d’Argens calls for respect for the laws and morals of the society in which one lives.

The Sadean Final Fist

In every way singular, it is precisely against honest libertinism, against the defense of the “virtuous deist” (p. 121) and more generally against the link between morality and happiness that Sade’s work is positioned. In the continuity of a corpus from which he stands apart, Sade, to whom Colas Duflo devotes several separate chapters, draws the consequences of a radical materialism to the extreme to promote an absolute immoralism. Existing theses in support (Voltaire, d’Holbach, Fréret…), the provocative speeches of the characters who use them are nevertheless weakened by their inconsistencies: by wanting to maintain the annihilation and promotion of crime, the negation and profanation of God, the praise and hatred of nature, the philosophical scope of the works of the divine marquis is weakened. According to Colas Duflo, there is here, compared to the pornographers who preceded him and who have nevertheless interested much less criticism, a real “diversion of heritage” (p. 231) so much does it seem that the power of Sadean subversion limits his philosophical ambition. The fact remains that the revolutionary context necessarily singled out the end of story from the corpus of libertine literature of XVIIIe century. Certainly, one cannot reproach Sade for the rejection of systematic thought that he shares with his peers, but by persisting in massacring all possible morality, he drowns the philosophy of pornographers in a bloodbath.

Because freedom of thought and critical thinking are never acquired once and for all, the epilogue affirms the ever-renewed need to keep the legacy of the Enlightenment alive. To devalue erotic narrative philosophy is to go against this perpetual movement of liberation. With this inaugural work, Colas Duflo contributes to “another history of the Enlightenment” (p. 283) nourished by its subversive ramifications. The philosophy of pornographers embodies a “power of its own liberation” (p. 286) of the mind and morals. The history of the Enlightenment will be all the more fruitful if it is based on a multidisciplinary approach and takes seriously the ability of libertine novelists to state and formalize other possible moralities. One more effort, if you want to be historians!