Libertine is the name given to certain political or social groups active in Europe in the 17th century. Libertinism was a form of freethinker philosophy, and was first derisively applied to a Dutch Anabaptist sect in the 16th century that rejected many of society's established mores, and advocated a community of goods and of women.

Libertine has come to mean one free from restraint, particularly from social and religious norms and morals. The philosophy gained new-found adherents in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly in France and England. Notable among these were the Marquis de Sade and Aleister Crowley. In modern times, libertinism has been associated with sado-masochism, nihilism and free love.

Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons, 1782), an epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, is a trenchant description of sexual libertinism. Wayland Young argues that "…the mere analysis of libertinism… carried out by a novelist with such a prodigious command of his medium… was enough to condemn it and play a large part in its destruction." (Young, 1966, 246)

The Libertine is the name of a 1969 film (Matriarca, La).

References

• Young, Wayland, Eros Denied: Sex in Western Society, New York:Grove, 1966; originally published 1964.

See also

• Antinomianism
• Rake