Sade’s critique exposes Kant’s moral law as a groundless fact

Evidence

On the other hand, the work of the Marquis de Sade, like that of Nietzsche, constitutes the intransigent critique of practical reason, in contradistinction to which Kant’s critique itself seems a revocation of his own thought. It makes the scientistic the destructive principle. Of course Kant had so far cleansed the moral law within me of all heteronomous belief, that respect for Kant’s assurances was a mere natural psychological fact, just as the starry heavens above me were a natural physical fact. Kant himself called it a “fact of reason,” and Leibniz’s term for it was “un instinct général de société.” But facts have no validity when they simply are not there. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 83

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how Adorno reads Kant’s ‘fact of reason’ — the moral law as an unverifiable given that Sade reveals as empty.
• XREF: Connects to the Burke/Kant ‘starry heavens and moral law’ trope and to critiques of reason from the Enlightenment’s own margins.