The Dialectic of Kant's Duty and de Sade's Rights

Abstract

Based on Lacan's work "Kant avec Sade", I will compare the two categorical imperatives of Immanuel Kant and the Marquis de Sade. They differ because Kant's imperative is based on duty, while the Sadien imperative is based on law. Both have their relationship with freedom: Kant's freedom from "pathological interests" is opposed to de Sade's freedom, which is based on the infinite enforcement of these interests. This also raises the question of how the two imperatives relate to Freud's Oedipus complex: Kant's imperative certainly refers as a rule to the symbolic stage, whereas de Sade's imperative reflects the imaginary-phallic stage. Thus, Sade's imaginary imperative recalls the repressed past of Kantian rules. I will postulate that a catastrophe at the individual and societal level can only be avoided if de Sade is strictly linked to Kant. The article concludes with reflections on the freedom of the ego, which is neither dominated by the superego, the id nor the external world. This extime zone of the ego, from which we make our decisions, is called the subjective “Site of Freedom”.