 Sade is the epitome of maniacal passion dedicated to the project of cruelty. Because he takes full responsibility for his choices, he must be credited with choosing freedom and accepted as being authentically ethical. This does not, however, make him either an ethical or moral figure; for his choices destroy the intersubjective bonds of humanity. Though his account of the power of cruelty provides a convincing critique of our social, political and personal hypocrisies, it does not critique the ways that cruelty is a perversion of freedom and an exploitation of the vulnerability of the flesh. Thus his descriptions of the powers of cruelty and the meaning of torture are incomplete and inadequate. The case of the Marquis de Sade makes it clear that authenticity, assuming responsibility for one’s choices, is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of an existential ethics of freedom. 