This famous French erotic novel is based on the scandalous trial of the Jesuit priest, Juan Bautista Girard, famous for his career as a preacher and spiritual director, who turned Marie-Catherine Cadiere, a penitent who aspired to sainthood, into a victim of racketeering that They took the girl to have ecstasy and feel stigmas, however, that "spiritual journey" became dangerous. When the health of the young woman, after scourges, fasting and sacrifice, is complicated to the point of fearing for her life, the Jesuit gets rid of her by sending her to a convent, where her new spiritual guide, prior of the Carmelites and Jansenites, It motivates him to denounce Girard and it doesn't take him long to discover the concrete way in which he directed his sheep and the innocent young woman towards sainthood. The denunciation of the facts did not take long to acquire incredible proportions that, in addition to the very detailed descriptions of the erotic games (here narrated) to which Girard indulged with his earring, was animated by the confrontation between the order of the Jesuits and the Jansenites .

The work was published under the strictest anonymity due to the lurid nature of the matter and the religious people involved in the process that fascinated France. For a long time the authorship of this divertissement was attributed to Diderot due to the discussions, explanations and philosophical teachings it contains, as well as the numerous differences to the supreme being. However, in the 20th century, paternity was awarded, with certainty, to the Marquis Jean-Bapuste de Boyer, son of Pierre-Jean Boyer d'Argens, who recreated in Teresa the Philosopher a picture of eroticism from Enlightenment France, mixing eroticism, debauchery and meditations, becoming a clear precedent, due to its mixture of erotic scenes and reflection, of the works of the Marquis de Sade.

This classic of erotic literature, based on a story that occurred in Provence in 1731, has the necessary elements to raise different levels of reading. We are facing Teresa's sexual education, which in the midst of all the erotic scenes shows that moral good and evil are locked up in human existence. This makes the erotic work become something more than eroticism, about it Sade said: "Enchanting work of the Marquis d'Argens, which pleasantly united lust to impiety..."