Dialogue between a priest and a dying man
The dialogue between a priest and a dying man is a short essay that Donatien Alphonse François de Sade wrote in prison in 1782 , the late Enlightenment period .
In this philosophical dialogue, de Sade affirms his libertinism and his atheism through the figure of the dying who rejects penance. The former is an atheist and contradicts the priest who wants to convince him that he has to admit the necessity of the existence of God . The dying insists on the impossibility of rationally proving the existence of God.
The end of the dialogue shows the rhetorical victory of the dying over the clergyman who dies in the arms of women.
The dying thinks rationally and materialistically . He contradicts obscurantism and criticizes the credibility of miracles and the correctness and objectivity of historically transmitted religious writings. But in contrast to de Sade's later writings, in which the libertines advocate unbridled egoism , sadism, and amoralism , the dying advocates the golden rule as a principle of morality .
The work was first published in 1926 by Stendhal et Cie in France .
Director Luis Buñuel stated that a scene in Nazarín (1959) in which a priest speaks to a dying man was inspired by and paid homage to de Sade's text.
