fastmustache:

it’s a very graphic, disturbing and appropriately disgusting depiction of the paradox of pure animal freedom. a (sad, ugly, frightening) masterpiece depicting the drama of human intersubjectivity. it deals with the problem of the true relation between man and man, the problem of the Other in its most extreme terms. it is a parable of authentic ethics, a symbolic allegory of a politics of rebellion. cruelty reveals us to each other in the particularities and ambiguities of our conscious and fleshed existence — the sublime ambiguity of being as consciousness made flesh (or flesh made consciousness) and the reality of being for and with others. the tyrant and victim are a genuine couple. we are all united by the bonds of the flesh and freedom. unfortunately (for our human fantasies of order and meaning) the myth of human “morality” is a conceit of the creative/rational animal mind and existential ethics are not quite as tidy and simple as we (living in a so-called “christian nation”) would hope to believe. the natural animal world is nothing if not ambiguous, relative and vicious. sade just happened to possess the genius to see and tell this (very disturbing) truth at an early (too early?) point in our conscious development. it is not truth but an allegorical glimpse of our deepest human/animal reality.