Les Crimes de l'amour del Marchese de Sade : l'implosione del sentimentalismo

The aim of the article is to show that Les Crimes de l'amour, a collection of short stories published by Sade in 1800 in his own name, represents an important part of his philosophical reflection on emotion. Sade's work focuses on a lucid reconstruction of the theory of emotion on the basis of sentimentalist philosophy; this reconstruction, however, aims at a refutation of sentimentalism itself. This process of textual and conceptual ‘perversion' ends by the ‘implosion' of sentimentalist ethics through his own expressive instruments (the edifying fiction) and his own theoretical assumptions (the pathetic and the doctrine of sympathy). [Editor's text]