Libertine

A libertine is a person questioning and challenging most moral principles, such as responsibility or sexual restraints, and will often declare these traits as unnecessary, undesirable or evil. A libertine is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour observed by the larger society.

The values and practices of libertines are known collectively as libertinism or libertinage and are described as an extreme form of hedonism or liberalism. Libertines put value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, Cyrano de Bergerac, and the Marquis de Sade.

The term libertine was first used pejoratively by John Calvin in 16th-century Geneva to describe opponents of his strict church discipline, particularly the faction led by Ami Perrin. In England, some Lollards also embraced libertine views, such as dismissing adultery as sin. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the term became strongly associated with debauchery and excess, exemplified in literature like Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses, as well as the broader French libertine novel tradition that combined eroticism, anti-clericalism, and anti-establishment themes. In philosophy, libertinism was linked with freethinking circles like the libertinage érudit in Baroque France and with Hobbesian materialism. Over time, the figure of the libertine came to be associated with a wide range of rulers, writers, and cultural figures—from Caligula and Louis XV to Casanova, Lord Byron, and Jim Morrison.