*Must We Burn Sade?* by Simone de Beauvoir, Shanghai Translation Publishing House

* Rehabilitating Sade, defending Sartre, and tolling the bell for the privileged

* In the solitude of his cell, Sade realized the dark night of an ethics. He forces us to re-examine the essential questions of our time, which entangle us in other forms, namely, the true relationship between people.

* How can the privileged reflect on their own situation? One question, two perspectives, questioning life, questioning oneself.

Originally titled "Must We Burn Sade?", this collection includes two essays. The first defends Marquis de Sade, an 18th-century French erotic writer, from whom the term Sadism originates. Beauvoir begins by discussing the privileged class's perception of its own situation, using the former aristocracy as an example: nobles defended their rights but did not question their legitimacy. Sade, born into nobility, courageously embraced his nonconformity, defying the moral standards followed by the aristocracy. In the most extreme way, he demanded that his own pleasure be an absolute law. Although he ultimately failed, his flamboyant actions revealed that the egoism of the privileged class could only be wishful thinking, unable to legitimize itself in everyone's eyes.

The second essay, "Merleau-Ponty and Pseudo-Sartreanism," also starts from the perspective of the privileged class. In the French environment of the 1950s and 60s, some intellectuals sided with those in power, attempting to conflate universal interests with bourgeois interests, leading to a debate with Sartre. Beauvoir defended Sartre by writing this article.