Search

"Organization" is a concept widely employed in Sade's philosophical novels. The meaning of the term, however, seems to change according to the character's theory. Such a polysemy is not an invention of Sade, since in philosophical works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we can discern at least five different meanings for the concept, in the field of natural philosophy: a synonym for a Cartesian machine, a specific disposition of matter that enables life (Cyrano), the form in which living matter is arranged in a continuous whole (Ménuret), a mere geometrical arrangement of particles (Diderot), a property of matter (Robinet). The purpose of the present article is to clarify problems of interpretation of Sadian novels referring to the use of the organization concept by the characters. In order to do this, we must first examine the main meanings of the concept in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then assign the different meanings to the speeches of the libertines. We must analyze how the concept's plurality in the Modern age extends to the Sadian novel and how a specific notion of organization modifies theories about the same subject or connects discourses on different subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]