Sadism seeks to capture an unconditioned freedom within a determined technical mechanism
Evidence
For the sadist the object realized is ambiguous, contradictory, without equilibrium since it is both the strict consequence of a technical utilization of determinism and the manifestation of an unconditioned freedom. … At the moment of the abjuration the result sought is attained: the body is wholly flesh, panting and obscene; it holds the position which the torturers have given to it, not that which it would have assumed by itself; the cords which bind it hold it as an inert thing, and thereby it has ceased to be the object which moves spontaneously. In the abjuration a freedom chooses to be wholly identified with this body; this distorted and heaving body is the very image of a broken and enslaved freedom. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 996
Categorization
- XREF: The sadist’s paradox captures freedom through determinism echoes the master-slave dialectic and Ovid’s Philomela motif. — connects to: What the sadist really seeks to appropriate is the Other’s freedom, not the flesh.; Sadism is an illusory attempt to capture freedom through flesh; Sadism fails because the victim’s transcendent freedom fundamentally escapes capture — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 999 (+5 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The ambiguity of a freedom that wills its own enslavement inside necessity is dense — the body as ‘image of a broken and enslaved freedom’ is a striking condensation.
Broader Connections
- Sadism is an illusory attempt to capture freedom through flesh
#expands(0.90) - Sadism is the attempt to reverse grace’s relation, making facticity contain hidden freedom.
#expands(0.88) - Sadism fails because the victim’s transcendent freedom fundamentally escapes capture
#qualifies(0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 999 - Sadism founders because enslaving another’s freedom is inherently self-contradictory.
#qualifies(0.80)