Product Description

One of the key figures of the French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot was a passionate critic of conventional morality, society and religion. Among his greatest and most well-known works, these two dialogues are dazzling examples of his radical scientific and philosophical beliefs. In Rameau's Nephew, the eccentric and foolish nephew of the great composer Jean-Philippe Rameau meets Diderot by chance, and the two embark on a hilarious consideration of society, music, literature, politics, morality and philosophy. Its companion-piece, D'Alembert's Dream, outlines a material, atheistic view of the universe, expressed through the fevered dreams of Diderot's friend D'Alembert. Unpublished during his lifetime, both of these powerfully controversial works show Diderot to be one of the most advanced thinkers of his age, and serve as fascinating testament to the philosopher's wayward genius.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #257473 in Books
• Published on: 1976-10-28
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780140441734
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)

About the Author
Denis Diderot was born at Langres in eastern France in 1713. After graduating in Paris in 1732, he was nominally a law student for ten years, but was actually leading a precarious bohemian but studious existence. In the early 1740s he met three contemporaries who were of great significance to him and to the age: a'Alembert, Condillac and Rousseau, who assisted Diderot in the compilation of the Encyclopedie, which he worked on until its completion in 1773. Interested in the mind-body dichotomy, his work was a bold mixture of science and philosophy. He died in 1784. Leonard Tancock was a Fellow of University College, London and translated numerous texts for the Penguin Classics until his death in 1986.

Customer Reviews

Not Candide, but still great fun
This is probably Diderot's most widely read work in English translation. There is good reason for it. Rather than strict philosophical treatises, Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream are a series of comic dilogues which serve as vehicles to attack conventional 18th century social mores and theology. In the first book, Rameau, who is an actual historical figure, the nephew of the famed composer, runs into the narrator (Diderot) in a parisian cafe where games of chess are going on around them. Rameau is one of the great comic creations of 18th century French literature. He is a cross between Lear's fool and Dostoevsky's Underground Man. Like the fool, he gets away (until recently) with saying outrageous things to his benefactor's faces, because they tend to regard him as a buffoon. Like the underground man, he is constantly vacillating in terms of his self-image. For the most part he excoriates himself and even seems to revel in the fact that he has brought his misery upon himself. This is in fact a rather ennobling trait, and probably part of the reason that Diderot doesn't dismiss him out of hand. Rameau really doesn't blame others. He accepts resposibility for getting himself kicked out of his rich sponsor's household. He also blames himself for the loss of his attractive young wife. Diderot's descriptions of Rameau's japery is hilarious. Rameau is an accomplished mimic. He performs an entire opera there in the cafe, singing all the parts and providing his own unorthodox instrumental accompaniment. Diderot writes: "What didn't he do? He wept, laughed, sighed, his gaze was tender, soft or furious: a woman swooning with grief, a poor wretch abandoned in the depth of despair, a temple rising into view, birds falling silent at eventide, waters murmuring in a cool, solitary place or tumbling in torrents down the mountainside, a thunderstorm, a hurricane, the shrieks of the dying mingled with the howling of the tempest and the crash of thunder; night with its shadows, darkness and silence, for even silence itself can be depicted in sound. By now he was quite beside himself. Knocked up with fatigue, like a man coming out of a deep sleep or a long trance, he stood there motionless, dazed, astonished, looking about him and trying to recognize his surroundings." Yet, as Diderot the narrator acknowledges, there is method to Rameau's madness. Again like Lear's fool, truth is to be mined beneath the jester's antics. Within the context of the flippant diologue, Diderot addresses many of the philophical concerns that were coming to the fore at the time of the enlightenment. There is a groping towards a definition of evolution that predates Darwin in some respects. There is even a brief discussion of social, vs. gentetic engineering (sustitute "gene: for Diderot's "molecule"). On man's natural state, which was so integral to Rousseu's optimistic philosophy, here is what Diderot has to say: "If the little brute were left to himself and kept in his native ignorance, combining the undeveloped mind with the violent passions of a man of thirty, he would wring his father's neck and sleep with his mother." Remind you of any 20th century father of psychology? D'Alembert's Dream , the companion-piece in this edition, is less entertaining than Rameau's Nephew, but still worth reading. The conceit doesn't work quite as well and the diologue tends to get bogged down at times. For students of the history of philosophy it makes for a lot less dry reading than Hobbes or Descartes however. I was surprised at what a big influence Lucretius must have had on Diderot (something I missed when I first read this work 20 years ago - but then I hadn't read Lucretius "On the Nature of the Universe" at that point). I would definitely recommend reading Leonard Tancock's introduction to both these works, not only for an overview of the subjects that Diderot is tackling, but for the intersting family backgrounds of D'Alembert (who was a revered mathematician and a contributor, along with Diderot and Voltaire to the monumental "Encyclopedie")and Mademoiselle L'Espinasse.

a member of the family
Rameau's Nephew is one of the the world's best books. It is a supremely entertaining and profound examination of the puzzling capacity of human beings to simultaneously contain both vile selfishness and the ability to self-sacrifice, and why corruption and dishonesty often seem to have the upper hand. Diderot's triumph is that he manages to eschew didacticism for an artistically well-rounded study of one of the greatest characters - whose honest venality calls forth a sympathetic response from all of us - ever to appear in a work of fiction.

Taking the philosophical dialogue form as its structure, the book presents an extremely vivid conversation (often sublime, sometimes crude) between 'I', a philosopher presumably based on Diderot himself , and 'He', Rameau, the nephew of a famous musician in France around the middle of the eighteenth-century. The philosopher represents many of the best aspects of the 'enlightenment' - honesty, hard work, patriotism, concern for his fellow-man, while Rameau is precisely the opposite - he is a sponger, a parasite who lives off - when he can - the rich and corrupt members of society, utterly disdaining work (though he has intelligence, some musical gifts and a near-supernatural talent for mimicry and impersonation) unless driven to it by imminent starvation. He throws away his self-respect to toady to the idle bourgeois who keep him in funds, food and clothing, only occasionally letting his true feelings be seen.

As the novel begins, Rameau ('one of the weirdest characters in this land of ours where God has not been sparing of them') meets the philosopher in a public garden, where chess is being played, and tells him the sad state of his affairs - he has in an ill-timed moment been cruel to another of his 'patron's' hangers-on, and as a result is now back on the street with no money and no prospects. The conversation shifts to a discussion on the subject of genius, the philosopher arguing artists who have achieved great works can be forgiven dissolute habits and viciousness, while Rameau is mainly interested in the fact that (rare) artistic success usually brings in money, something he truly loves, along with 'good wine...luscious food...a tumble with lovely women...soft beds. Apart from that the rest is vanity'.

The topics covered in this book seem endless: music, literature (in one wonderful section Rameau tells how reading the 'moralists' has taught him to lie and deceive more effectively!), virtue, wisdom, fame, reputation, children, education - yet we always return to the woeful amount of corruption in society, for whom Rameau's ideas, claims 'I', 'are so exactly made to the measure of'.

On rare occasions the tone is a little too dry, the discourses on current political and musical controversies go on too long, yet these contribute verisimilitude to the outrageously honest remarks by Rameau: 'the rascal by nature only offends now and again, but the evil-looking person offends all the time', and his difficult to believe behaviour, particularly when he, in rapid succession, totally loses himself in imitation - both physically and vocally - of opera and other musical forms, characters of all ages and from all walks of life, in virtually every possible human situation, and all the sounds of nature - coming down from these performances exhausted, to find himself surrounded by people he had been utterly unaware of. The writing is still fresh and innovative today.

In his superb introduction, Leonard Tancock (also the translator) states: 'The most profound issues raised by the two men in their discussion are certainly the moral ones. The crucial problem which each of the great eighteenth-century French writers tried to solve in his own way, and which none of them solved quite satisfactorily, is this: in varying degrees each was committed to a materialistic philosophy, and this means determinism. But they were equally committed to an emotional faith in progress, civilization, the social virtues of public spirit, kindness, unselfishness. But the logical end of determinism is cynical opportunism, for how can there be moral responsibility if our lives are predetermined by the laws of chemistry and physics?'

Tancock further on adds: 'Finally there is a long discussion of the familiar theme: is happiness possible without virtue? Rameau ingeniously begs the whole question by saying that happiness comes from living according to nature, *one's own nature*. This turns one of the most cherished ideas of some eighteenth-century thinkers upside-down - the notion that nature is right because she is pure, simple, undefiled. Human nature, such people say, is essentially good, and has only been corrupted by evil political forces and social exploitation. Yes, says Rameau, nature is indeed always the best guide, and she counsels free rein for such perfectly natural human traits as sloth, lies, hypocrisy, greed, sensuality. Look at a natural animal or child and deny that if you can'.

Though Rameau (who on this subject as on all others is capable of adopting vastly inconsistent positions and opinions) certainly suggests nature counsels absolute selfishness, does this mean Diderot believes one cannot suggest with equal vigour that nature also counsels unselfishness and virtuous action? Certainly, it is the philosopher who, regarding children, says: 'If the little brute were left to himself and kept in his native ignorance, combining the undeveloped mind of a child in the cradle with the violent passions of a man of thirty, he would wring his father's neck and sleep with his mother'. Yet Rameau sounds entirely reasonable as he argues: 'just let the little brute go his own way and told him nothing, he would want to be expensively dressed, eat sumptuously, be popular with the men and loved by the women, in fact to gather round him all the pleasures of life'. These desires are so normal and common we forget for one moment Rameau means to satisfy them not by any hard work, but by flattery, trickery and any other unscrupulous method opportunity presents. Still, the point remains that Diderot is perhaps not as condemning of human nature as Tancock implies.

In the passage of the novel in which Rameau blames his 'stars', his 'blood', his 'molecule', his 'nature', his 'heredity' for what he has become, it is possible Diderot the literary artist is - with a great deal of irony - facing the facts about human beings in a way Diderot the philosopher perhaps never could. If so, the message would be: 'Moral' responsibility should more accurately be termed 'natural' responsibility. Human nature is at the same time both essentially good and essentially bad. If we claim that we can remove the bad from humanity - or at least suppress it - in order to maximize the good, instead of recognising that each of us has been randomly allotted fixed quantities of these attributes - then to the degree we believe this we are deceiving ourselves.

What the philosopher, and the religious person, with their insistence on abstract notions of human perfectibility (or depravity) will at best merely tolerate, I like to think Diderot is indicating the artist can wholeheartedly - notwithstanding some sadness born of disillusionment - accept and embrace.

Waiter, theres a Gadfly in my Perrier
If ever there was a cafe novel this is it though it is not really a novel as it consists mainly of dialogue or a dialectic between(perhaps) the two sides of Diderot himself. It is very funny and its all very staged to be that way of course. It makes fun of what passes for reason as this was The Age of Reason and so it has been called a precursor to the romantic movement but still what it most values is cleverness and that seems to fit very well with the age it comes from. Chock full of witty chat, and anti establishment(accepted views) banter in the Candide to Celine tradition of French letters, Rameau's Nephew plays devils advocate to an entire epoch . What is most appealing about this is the earthy idleness which is the center the wandering intelligence(s) roam around. It is a liberating feeling to read a book which challenges a whole societys agenda and self view. It is interesting to see that this is the tradition Celine and Beckett inherited and furthered(well, used) in their own way. A sort of gleeful anti utopian pessimism seems the attitude to adopt if one wants to keep ones dignity in the face of society's sometimes ludicrous efforts to maintain the appearance of civilization . Of course the greatest cafe novel is Man Without Qualities but that is just too long to read at one sitting. Check please, garcon.