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November 16, 2004
I'm still on the road. I've been puzzling about the Enlightenment in Australia in the light of my re-reading de Sade through Klossowski's text.
As I understand it, from 1788-1850, when European Australia was formed, the tradition or discourse in the colonial culture that shaped and gave direction to the conduct of everyday life, drew heavily on the 'world view' of the European Enlightenment.
This discourse was understood along the lines of society's problems being solved by the exercise of reason, and that if such a path took place, then improvement and progress would follow.
This still largely determines the way politics is conducted. For the left social betterment comes through the state serving its citizens through careful planning and the cultivation of improving institutions (schools, gaols and hospitals). For the right progress comes throughh the economic growth as laid down by Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment.
Both anabranches drew heavily of the Bethamite utilitarian strain of the Enlightenment, which used the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number to achieve social reform based on order an uniformity.
So de Sade can be read as rupturing this upbeat utilitarian discourse from within, thereby providing another voice to the romantic and Christian voices of dissent.
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I think you mean the medievalist faction in Christianity, because, for example, there's a traditional association between Protestantism and Capitalism, or, in a more general form, a Christian drive for social change/awareness which differs from that of the Enlightment mainly in motivation.