Sadism collapses when flesh resists instrumental use, reverting to desire

Evidence

Nevertheless sadism too—like blind indifference and like desire—bears within itself the cause of its own failure In the first place there is a profound incompatibility between the apprehension of the body as flesh and its instrumental utilization. If I make an instrument out of flesh, it refers me to other instruments and to potentialities, in short to a future; it is partially justified in its being-there by the situation which I create around myself, just as the presence of nails and of a picture to be nailed on the wall justifies the existence of the hammer. Suddenly the body’s character as flesh—that is, its unutilizable facticity—gives way to that of an instrumental-thing. The complex “flesh-as-instrument” which the sadist has attempted to create disintegrates. … But when the incarnation is achieved, when I have indeed before me a panting body, then I no longer know how to utilize this flesh. No goal can be assigned to it, precisely because I have effected the appearance of its absolute contingency. It is there, and it is there for nothing. As such I can not get hold of it as flesh; I can not integrate it in a complex system of instrumentality without its materiality as flesh, its “fleshliness” immediately escaping me. I can only remain disconcerted before it in a state of contemplative astonishment or else incarnate myself in turn and allow myself again to be troubled,‘so as to place myself once more at least on the level where flesh is revealed to flesh in its entire “fleshliness.” Thus sadism at the very moment when its goal is going to be attained gives way to desire. Sadism is the failure of desire, and desire is the failure of sadism. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 998

Categorization

• XREF: Completes the Sartrean dialectic of desire/sadism/masochism that Beauvoir’s reading assumes; the failure-in-completion structure parallels the for-itself’s general project of appropriating the other. — connects to: Sadism is an illusory attempt to capture freedom through flesh; Sadism originates in desire’s failure to sustain reciprocal incarnation; Sadism seeks to capture an unconditioned freedom within a determined technical mechanism — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 996 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Sadism fails because the victim’s transcendent freedom fundamentally escapes capture #expands (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 999
• Sadism seeks to capture an unconditioned freedom within a determined technical mechanism #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 996