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

In Sade's Histoire de Juliette, the libertine pope Braschi develops a dissertation on Nature and murder in which he displays a materialist and atheist view of the universe. I propose to understand Braschi as the embodiment of the philosopher Pythagoras, the main source of his characterization being Pythagoras's portrayal in Ovid's Metamorphoses. I argue that Braschi reclaims Pythagoras's naturalist spirit while refuting some of his "extravagant" immaterialist beliefs: metempsychosis, the immortality of the soul, and the ensuing prohibition against murder. Accordingly, I examine the historico-philosophical implications of Sade's libertine strategy: was he a radical philosophe, or a figure of the Counter-Enlightenment?