Diderot. Correspondance et morale

Abstract

Geneviève Cammagre : Diderot, correspondence and morality. Diderot was haunted by the dream of writing a moral treatise. The impossibility of this undertaking may have led him to envisage publishing his private correspondence as an edifying account of his own moral experience. For the letter writer stages in this apparently changing relationship, behaviour which is dictated by his ethical reflection and mainly consists of sentimental utilitarianism. The letters are a theatre for the representation of the self, dressed as a father, lover, friend, philosopher. They help to create an exemplary life ; the appearance gives form to the being, and the recipient is called on to be, like the sender, a seductive and seducced model who will influence posterity. Yet this model is built on unstable und complex foundations which the writer explores in an indirect way, for the feeling of what escapes him is food for reflection on the complexity of the human being.