The Reinvention of Pythagoreanism during the Eighteenth Century: Sade?s Libertine Strategy

ZORRILLA, NATALIA LORENA

Aix-en-Provence

Conferencia; British Society For Eighteenth Century Studies Postgraduate and Early Career Conference; 2018

Most Platonic and Neoplatonic authors of Classical Antiquity represented Pythagoras as a semi-divine figure, surrounding him with an aura of mystery. In order to counter the Pythagorean-Platonic immaterialism and its prominence in the history of philosophy, Eighteenth century atheists deployed different strategies. While some, like d?Holbach, openly excoriated Pythagoras, claiming that his philosophical proposals were nothing but a series of eccentric fables, others, like Maréchal, created a literary character out of him to spread the idea that the esoteric teachings of Pythagoreanism consisted merely in the veneration of nature. In this paper, I focus on Sade?s way of revisiting Pythagoreanism. I propose to consider Braschi, the libertine Pope in Sade?s L?Histoire de Juliette (1801), as an ironic personification of Pythagoras and interpret his materialist and atheist discourse as a satirical montage of Pythagoras? allocution in the Fifteenth Book of Ovid?s Metamorphoses. Braschi reclaims Pythagoras? naturalist spirit while at the same time dismissing and refuting some of his ?extravagant? and allegedly unjustified immaterialist beliefs ? mainly ?metempsychosis?, the immortality of the soul, and the ensuing prohibition of murder. In broader terms, my study inquires into Sade?s position concerning the role that materialism plays (and/or should play) in the history of philosophical ideas.