ABSTRACT
In a letter to his wife, the marquis de Sade professed his devotion to the radical philosophers of his time, and in particular to the baron d'Holbach, with superlative emphasis: if necessary, he would be ready to suffer 'martyrdom' for d'Holbach and his ideas. The need for rational justification of norms and truth-claims, a need neglected by de Sade and scorned by Friedrich Nietzsche, was at the centre of what eighteenth-century philosophers understood as the Enlightenment project. It is true that the marquis often pays lip-service to Radical Enlightenment ideas. Therefore it is not completely absurd to posit that there was a slippery slope which, beginning with the Radical Enlightenment, via de Sade and Nietzsche, finally led to the anti-humanist ideologies of the twentieth century. However this charge against the Radical Enlightenment is based on an entirely superficial reading of de Sade, and presumably motivated by an anti-modernist ideological stance.
