This essay interprets the work of the German choreographer Pina Bausch with the help of phenomenological examinations by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Martin Heidegger. Pina Bauschs choreography not only shares basic themes like the everyday, the body, and moods with phenomenology, but they also yield similar results in overcoming traditional dualist frameworks. Rather than being an instrument for expressing ideas, the body is in constant exchange with the natural elements, exhibiting vulnerability and passivity. Moods, in turn, are neither subjective nor objective; this also holds for longing, an essential constituent of Pina Bausch's work. Dance theater and phenomenology, each in their unique ways, are capable of acknowledging and accommodating the ambiguity of our human existence.

Scholars have traditionally taken the Marquis de Sade to he a straightforward advocate of immoral hedonism. Without rejecting outright this view, I argue that Sade also presents a theory of the psychology of pleasure, placing him amongst the more insightful psychological thinkers of the late 18th century. This paper outlines Sades description of the immoral will, in particular his account of how an agent can come to enjoy the humiliation, torture and murder of others. I argue for thefollowing claims: firstly, that Sade, perhaps despite himself, suggests that the sadistic will is pathological; secondly, that Sade's work gives a far less flattering view of the sadistic will than is commonly supposed.