In Les sacrifices de l'amour (1771), the novelist Claude-Joseph Dorat defines the XVIIIth century as a time when men seek to seduce women "for the right to despise." Such a comment is surprising: today, we are used to hearing eulogistically about the libertines of the Enlightenment, which would have broken the moral and religious corset that repressed sexual desires. But must we really associate "libertinage" and "liberté"? This book would make a speech on this point, the writers of the XVIII thcentury. Their writings suggest that, in order to understand the issues of libertinism, it must be placed in the long time of a clash between the two sexes that has lasted since the dawn of humanity. The Enlightenment Eros corresponds to a strategy implemented by men to exert on women an undivided domination. Under the pretext of inviting women to take their part in amorous pleasures, seducers set a trap for the female sex: libertine sophistry strives to make every woman a happy slave, enslaved to the omnipotence of men, made available to thank you and forced to recognize for one and only master, the phallus--Translation of page 4 of cover.