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Dynamism and Disinterest: the Materialist Reader and Diderot's Dream

Natania Meeker

in Voluptuous Philosophy: Literary Materialism in the French Enlightenment

If there is one eighteenth-century materialist whose work appears to stand at the juncture of literature and philosophy—a writer who most impressively seems to occupy the space where the pleasures of ... More

If there is one eighteenth-century materialist whose work appears to stand at the juncture of literature and philosophy—a writer who most impressively seems to occupy the space where the pleasures of figure intersect with a dynamic and hedonic materialist science—it is Denis Diderot. Not coincidentally, Diderot has also often been read as an exemplary Enlightenment inheritor of the Lucretian legacy, as well as perhaps the most crucial translator of a potentially archaic materialism that he animates anew with playfulness and flexibility. On the other hand, Diderot regularly turns, in his literary works, to Lucretius as the originator of an intricate and richly poetic materialist thematics.Less

Genius Obscured: Diderot

Ann Jefferson

in Genius in France: An Idea and Its Uses

This chapter considers how a link was established between genius and genius in a manner that sidelines the public. It explores arguments which claims that the public—now deemed “vulgar”—lacks the ... More

This chapter considers how a link was established between genius and genius in a manner that sidelines the public. It explores arguments which claims that the public—now deemed “vulgar”—lacks the requisite sensibility to respond to genius, and is bracketed out of a relation that now goes exclusively from genius to genius. Genius remains self-evident, but only to the man who is already endowed with it: he alone is equipped to recognize it, whether in himself or another. As the burden of recognition is shifted from reader-spectator to genius itself, the continuity between reader-spectator and genius is broken, and the self-evidence of genius begins to wane.Less

Speaking Parts: Diderot and Les Bijoux indiscrets

Steven Connor

in Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism

This chapter offers, as a kind of afterthought, a reference to Tertullian’s account of genital speech. The reference here is to Denis Diderot’s Les Bijoux indiscrets of 1748. It tells the story of ... More

This chapter offers, as a kind of afterthought, a reference to Tertullian’s account of genital speech. The reference here is to Denis Diderot’s Les Bijoux indiscrets of 1748. It tells the story of Mangogul, the bored sultan of an imaginary oriental kingdom. Diderot’s conception forms a intriguing compromise between archaic and modern conceptions of ventriloquism. During the 18th century, attention shifted away from the experience of the one possessed towards the powers of the ventriloquist who is believed to be capable of capturing others' voices through imitation and then ‘throwing’ his or her (but almost always his) imitations away from himself and into others. This is a move from a voice that enters to a voice that is thrown or projected. During the 18th century, the dominant explanation of ventriloquism as the appropriation of one’s voice by another shifted to the idea of the appropriation of another’s voice for oneself.Less

Nervous canvas

Mechthild Fend

in Fleshing Out Surfaces: Skin in French Art and Medicine, 1650-1850

This chapter looks at skin, sensibility and touch in painterly practice and the art literature on the one hand, and in medical as well as philosophical discourse on the other. It argues that the new ... More

This chapter looks at skin, sensibility and touch in painterly practice and the art literature on the one hand, and in medical as well as philosophical discourse on the other. It argues that the new medical understanding of organic substances as textured joined a special attention to brushwork in mid-eighteenth-century French art practice and theory. This conjuncture prompted attempts to imitate the skin's tissue with an appropriate facture produced by the artist’s hand. The chapter takes the medical metaphorisation of skin as a ‘nervous canvas‘ in the 1765 article ‘sensibilité‘ of Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as its guide to discuss relations between artistic and medical visions of skin in mid-eighteenth-century France. It focuses on the so-called portraits de fantaise by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and argues that the carnations in these paintings are as much about flesh as they are about the materiality and vitality of skin. Pivotal for the analysis of the interconnections between the fields of medicine and the arts, are the writings by philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot as he thought about skin, flesh and the sense of touch his reviews of the Salon exhibitions, in his writings on physiology, as well as in his fictionalised account of the latest medical theories in his Rêve de d'Alembert.Less

The Realm of Reason

Stephen Gaukroger

in The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760

In the course of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy began to take on a new cultural standing, emerging as the paradigm bearer of, and the standard for, cognitive values. It was Fontenelle who ... More

In the course of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy began to take on a new cultural standing, emerging as the paradigm bearer of, and the standard for, cognitive values. It was Fontenelle who had established the standing of natural philosophy in France as a worthy and useful form of inquiry, but it was Voltaire who had elevated its standing further by making it into the model for cognitive grasp per se. In d'Alembert's preliminary Discours to the Encyclopédie, a more elaborate statement of the archetypal role of natural philosophy in cognitive enquiry was set out.Less

Coda: Instituting the French Enlightenment: Diderot and d'Alembert Encyclopédie

in The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment

Too many historians have recognized Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as the defining text of the French Enlightenment. Just as many have argued that the project's initial ... More

Too many historians have recognized Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as the defining text of the French Enlightenment. Just as many have argued that the project's initial publication, scandalous reception, and eventual prohibition were the key catalysts in the formation of the Enlightenment as a French social movement. What has not often been stressed, however, is that these undeniably transformative events also completed a half-century process of intellectual and social change in France. This coda proposes, not a reinterpretation of the history of the Encyclopédie, but a retelling of this familiar story in ways that highlight how it served both as the climax of Isaac Newton's reception in eighteenth-century France and, seamlessly, as the final stitch between this reception and the beginning of the French Enlightenment.Less

Biology, atheism, and politics in eighteenth-century France

Shirley A. Roe

in Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins

During the eighteenth century, the specter of atheism was a major concern among many intellectuals (known as philosophes) in Europe. Many of the leading figures of the period such as François-Marie ... More

During the eighteenth century, the specter of atheism was a major concern among many intellectuals (known as philosophes) in Europe. Many of the leading figures of the period such as François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778) refuted atheism at every turn. These debates centered on living organisms, particularly questions about generation (reproduction). Efforts to explain the process of generation raised biological, religious, and political questions. One popular theory put forward to address the question of generation was preformation, the belief that “germs” had been in existence since God created the world. This chapter first discusses the rise of preformationist thinking in the late seventeenth century before turning to the biological evidence that challenged preexistence in the mid-eighteenth century and analyzing the reaction it triggered among the preformationists. It also examines the work of Voltaire and Denis Diderot to illustrate how the generation debates are linked to the materialism question. The chapter concludes by showing how these controversies about nature and biology became entangled with politics in eighteenth-century France.Less

French Vital Materialism

John H. Zammito

in The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling

The stimulus of French vital materialism was decisive in provoking key developments in German life-science. The paradigm shift associated with the ideas of Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot and La Mettrie ... More

The stimulus of French vital materialism was decisive in provoking key developments in German life-science. The paradigm shift associated with the ideas of Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot and La Mettrie around mid-century dramatically re-oriented the focus of natural inquiry in the direction of a non-mathematical physical science, or experimental Newtonianism. Crucial in this was the “Buffonian Revolution” in natural history, which aimed to elevate inquiry into life forms from the descriptive and classificatory approach of traditional natural history to the explanatory ambitions associated with natural philosophy. Diderot and Maupertuis were crucial allies of Buffon in this revolution and La Mettrie carried it into metaphysical arenas by proclaiming the ascendancy of the médecin philosophe who alone could resolve traditional philosophical issues based on a physiological understanding of human nature. There would be no room for supernatural explanations in such inquiry. This naturalism was linked to Epicurean materialism and “Spinozism,” alarming the conservatives of the day in France. Such metaphysical provocations proved as pivotal to the conflict between Buffon and Réumur over the future of natural history as did their methodological differences.Less

Gestures and Tableaux

Elisabeth Le Guin

in Boccherini's Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology

This chapter examines the peculiarities and visuality of Luigi Boccherini's works. It uses Denis Diderot's works and Gasparo Angiolini's descriptions of pantomime dance to uncover the pictures in ... More

This chapter examines the peculiarities and visuality of Luigi Boccherini's works. It uses Denis Diderot's works and Gasparo Angiolini's descriptions of pantomime dance to uncover the pictures in Boccherini's music. It analyzes some of the music's stylistic features, in particular its evocations of serious opera and of Madrilenian musical cultures. It suggests that Boccherini's career is particularly interesting for the course he took and for the philosophical issues that swirl in his wake. Issues of text and performance, authority and permeability and the limits of the legible are most interestingly demonstrated in his relation to his own virtuoso status as a performer.Less

Code, Truth, or Ruse? The Vapors in the Republic of Letters

Sabine Arnaud

in On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 and 1820

Men and women of letters used the description of vaporous fits to exemplify the relationship between body and mind irrespective of medical concerns. This chapter examines how the Republic of Letters ... More

Men and women of letters used the description of vaporous fits to exemplify the relationship between body and mind irrespective of medical concerns. This chapter examines how the Republic of Letters itself adopted and challenged the theme of vapors. In works by Diderot, La Mettrie, C.J. de B. de Paumerelle, Le Camus, and Chassaignon, vapors and hysteric affections were called upon to name inner turmoil, distress, embarrassment, and physiological disorders. These terms were also ways to consider modernity, the human species, women, or even literary creation. Because of their spectacular symptoms, the vapors are repeatedly invoked in these texts as an ideal tool to manipulate either the sufferer’s entourage or his or her own faculties, which are pushed into unexplored domains. The force of the vapors is made to exemplify or stimulate the role of the body in sensibility and creativity. Using these notions, men and women of letters were participating in a move to fashion sensibility and acknowledge contradictory conceptions of physiological phenomena.Less

Depopulation and the Revival of Pronatalism in the Eighteenth Century

Leslie Tuttle

in Conceiving the Old Regime: Pronatalism and the Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern France

Eighteenth‐century French writers became convinced that France was depopulating; this public concern was the context in which the French royal government would revive its pronatalist policy to reward ... More

Eighteenth‐century French writers became convinced that France was depopulating; this public concern was the context in which the French royal government would revive its pronatalist policy to reward fathers of large families between 1760 and 1789. This chapter begins by surveying the evolution of thinking about population and of reproductive behavior since the seventeenth century. By the mid‐eighteenth century, French writers increasingly noted that large families were rare. They wrote nostalgically about the natural, rustic family values that contraceptive practices had corrupted. The second part of the chapter examines the royal government's renewed interest in rewarding large families during the last four decades of the Old Regime. During this period, royal administrators distributed tax reductions and payments to hundreds and perhaps thousands of fathers with many children every year, to households that ranged from the very poor to comfortable noblemen.Less

Relating Fits and Creating Enigmas: The Role of Narrative

Sabine Arnaud

in On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 and 1820

The fifth chapter examines the increasing role, from the 1750s, of literary and medical narratives in inscribing physiological disorders into a coherent progression. In novels by Lennox, Godwin, and ... More

The fifth chapter examines the increasing role, from the 1750s, of literary and medical narratives in inscribing physiological disorders into a coherent progression. In novels by Lennox, Godwin, and Diderot, the body’s manifestations appear as a code, a truth, or a manipulation, depending on the author’s specific narrative demands. They are presented as a language of the body, marking turning points in the progression of feelings, and function as a means to question the relationship between identity and representation. In narratively structured manuscript reports by correspondents of the Société Royale de Médecine and observations published in medical treatises, hysteria is often presented as a fascinating, at times a bewildering, pathology. Toward the end of the century, the observations increasingly become a place to see the pathology as a testament to the patient’s education, way of life, and emotions. Such narrative claims not only to identify the diagnosis, but also to make it intelligible, grounding the diagnosis in the patient’s past emotional and physiological experiences.Less

Human Dignity before Kant: Denis Diderot’s Passionate Person

Remy Debes

in Dignity: A History

Most modern discussions of human dignity give historical pride of place to Immanuel Kant and his idea that dignity is grounded in human rational agency or autonomy. This chapter challenges this ... More

Most modern discussions of human dignity give historical pride of place to Immanuel Kant and his idea that dignity is grounded in human rational agency or autonomy. This chapter challenges this practice by articulating a “second story” about dignity—a story that also unfolded during the Enlightenment, but which grounded dignity in human passionate agency. Thus it is suggested that a range of thinkers, including Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Smith’s French translator, Sophie De Grouchey, all seemed to have inclined in this new direction. However, above all others, this chapter lauds Denis Diderot’s contribution to this second story of human dignity. Correspondingly, the essay culminates in an examination of Diderot’s wide-ranging inquiries into human nature, politics, and social theory.Less

The Single-Use Hoax: Diderot’s La Religieuse

Christopher L. Miller

in Impostors: Literary Hoaxes and Cultural Authenticity

Denis Diderot designed and executed a literary hoax or mystification that was aimed at only one person, a friend who had left Paris, to induce the friend’s return. Diderot wrote a fake first-person ... More

Denis Diderot designed and executed a literary hoax or mystification that was aimed at only one person, a friend who had left Paris, to induce the friend’s return. Diderot wrote a fake first-person narrative from the point of view of a nun (Suzanne Simonin) held in a monastery against her will. Later published as a novel, the text retains its ability to fool readers, unless they read the préface-annexe (not included in all editions), which is a blueprint of the hoax and its implications. The novel is also an enduring cry for liberty.Less

Revenge of the Magicians

Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm

in The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences

This chapter takes as its starting point various figures—from Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton—who have been blamed for the rise of instrumental reason and the disenchantment of nature, and it ... More

This chapter takes as its starting point various figures—from Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton—who have been blamed for the rise of instrumental reason and the disenchantment of nature, and it demonstrates their respective magical projects. It then recovers two moments often seen as the watershed of modernity—Francis Bacon’s formulation of the scientific method and the French philosophes’ publication of the Encyclopédie—to demonstrate that neither embody the disenchantment usually attributed to them. In so doing, it separate the putative “birth of science” from the death of magic, and shows that the enlightenment project was initially articulated not in terms of a confLict between religion and science or faith and reason, but as a divine science. Nevertheless, it sees in both movements the roots of occult disavowal in the myth of modernity as the end of superstition.Less

Making Music Speak

Andrew H. Clark (ed.)

in Speaking of Music: Addressing the Sonorous

This chapter examines the manner in which music was seen in the eighteenth century as a common good. In both religious and secular communities it was envisaged as a strategic means to effect and ... More

This chapter examines the manner in which music was seen in the eighteenth century as a common good. In both religious and secular communities it was envisaged as a strategic means to effect and potentially control the public (usually through its effect on a listening body) and to create a sense of shared sentiment, purpose, and citizenship. It explores the ways in which three well-known eighteenth-century Europeans who wrote on music and its effects—Denis Diderot, Johann Mattheson, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—theorize dissonance in their social therapies and make music speak for specific sociopolitical goals or cures. For each, bodies possess a certain kind of musical instinct that makes them particularly responsive to music. Musical metaphors, such as “dissonance,” were harnessed to articulate and potentially control unspeakable forces and relations visible in animal and social bodies. Whereas writers such as Mattheson and Rousseau tried to minimize dissonance in their social therapies, others such as Diderot saw it as important.Less

Introduction: Idle Nation

Pierre Saint-Amand

in The Pursuit of Laziness: An Idle Interpretation of the Enlightenment

This introductory chapter illustrates individual instances maintaining their distance from the eighteenth century's prevailing trends. In contrast, at the threshold of industrialization, there is a ... More

This introductory chapter illustrates individual instances maintaining their distance from the eighteenth century's prevailing trends. In contrast, at the threshold of industrialization, there is a series of characters set against the grain of utility and functionality, repeatedly contesting the universality of labor and activity. The chapter reconstitutes an other discourse of laziness, a contradictory and oppositional vision that defies what Michel Foucault might call the techno-disciplinary model of mercantile society. Through a number of portraits of homo otiosus, mined from the underside of the laborious eighteenth century, various figures of idleness as a positive value will come to light: the journalist of Marivaux's youthful writings and his philosopher bum, Rousseau as a writer belatedly proclaiming laziness in his final years, and Diderot's famous parasite, Rameau's Nephew.Less