Ethics, not morality: Footnote on literature's receptivity to evil

The question of Sade may be a limit case of texts being worthy of study and containing 'truths' regardless of the moral status accordable to author -- or text itself. Literature's ethical inquiries are not moral, but political. Because they do not present images of characters and stories/actions for imitation, as in the Platonism that lies behind every attempt at censorship, they don't tell us what we ought to do and even less not do, but help us understand our world, and therefore to think about how to live. They are such a thought.