Rameau's Nephew Research Articles

Satire and Sensibility: Rameau's Nephew

Abstract: This essay offers a new interpretation of Rameau's Nephew , often regarded as one of the most perplexing pieces by Denis Diderot, that attends to the interconnectedness of his works. When considered in light of Paradox of Actor which reads as a companion piece to Rameau's Nephew alongside Elements of Physiology and Diderot's political writing, LUI's tearful behaviours reveal a sensibility sensitive to the suffering that took place in mid-eighteenth-century France. This sensibility helps reveal LUI as an exemplar of both the clavecin-philosophe discussed in D'Alembert's Dream and the "fanatical philosophe" in Observations on the Nakaz . Hovering between genius and mediocrity, LUI also emerges as a pretended fool who fools his spectators with theatrical illusions: despite showing an antihero appearance, he ironically, by unmasking falsehood, comes closer to resembling a sentimental bourgeois hero (albeit one with a satirical spirit) in a tyrannical society where no one triumphs as a truth-telling hero. Living in the shadow of his famed uncle, he also demonstrates that the basis of noble sensibility lies not in noble titles. Rameau's Nephew ultimately unfolds as not just a satire but also a comédie larmoyante , for it, as Paradox puts it, deals not only "with a tartufe" but "with the Tartufe," an idea that can be traced back to Molière's play Tartuffe which presents Tartuffe as an archetypal figure who epitomises moral and religious hypocrisy.

Rameau's Nephew: A Multi-Media Edition

Rameau's Nephew: A Multi-Media Edition

Retreat from Politics: The Cynic in Modern Times

This essay examines contemporary diagnoses of cynicism, issuing from scholars such as Peter Sloterdijk, Frederic Jameson, and Slavoj Zizek, to distill a clear concept of cynicism and its social and political consequences. In particular, it seeks to call into question accounts in which cynicism suddenly bursts onto the scene as a response to recent, post-1960s political disappointments and the corrosive philosophy of postmodernism. Instead, by turning to Denis Diderot's perplexing dialog Rameau's Nephew, I demonstrate that the impulse toward cynicism may lie buried much deeper in modernity, in the thought of enlightenment itself. This longer perspective helps us to understand the conditions for the emergence of cynicism today, while problematizing hard and fast distinctions between enlightenment and postmodernism. I conclude by warning against excessively moralistic denunciations of cynicism, demonstrating that such denunciations harbor the very same anti-political tendencies which they locate in cynicism. Instead, I argue we must find a form of politics appropriate to an increasingly cynical age.

'THOUGHT DISORDER': A DISTINCT PHENOMENOLOGICAL CATEGORY?

ABSTRACT A meditation on the nature of thought disorder, including a review of aspects of Bion's Grid and a celebration of Rameau's Nephew.

Medieval Virginities by Anke Bernau , Ruth Evans , Sarah Salih (review)

186 Reviews Literary parasites themselves are parasitic, and plagiarism is endemic. Michel Serres's Le Parasite is a constant source of reference. A telling example is the proliferating battening on to Maupassant's mystifyingtale 'Le Horla'. In terms of lan? guage, purists have always fretted over the amount of parasitic words in others' discourses: tautologies, quotations, impurities, borrowings?infections of all kinds, foreign bodies in the text. Indeed, even for the latitudinarian Barthes and William Burrroughs, language itselfis totally riddled with parasitism; Finnegans Wake demon? strates this fact of life ad nauseam. The parasite, a figure,however repellent, of desire, is obviously of fascination not only to creative writers but also to the dernier cri of theorists. But it is not so much undecidable, even when enigmatic, as uncontrollable, interminable, protean. (Intriguingly, there lurks a Mormon parasite in an anonymous French text of 1650.) As Diderot said of Rameau's Nephew: 'Rien ne dissemble plus de lui que lui-meme'. J.Hillis Miller wrote of 'the perpetual reversal of parasite and host'. In French, of course, as in Latin, hote/hospesis bivalent: host/guest. How parasitic is this book, is all literary history and criticism? It is a richly de? tailed, close-teamwork, labour of love (and distaste), thought-inciting on the whole vital question of dialectical dependency. There is, however, much reduplication of material; the book keeps restarting, rather like the film Groundhog Day. Overall, nevertheless, it productively clings on to its subject, like a leech. University of Reading Walter Redfern Medieval Virginities. Ed. by Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 2003. xiv + 296 pp.; 9 plates. ?40 (pbk ?15.99). ISBN 0-7083-1763-4 (pbk 0-7083-1762-6). As Anke Bernau notes, 'Virginity always stands for something other or more than itself?it is a metaphor par excellence' (p. 220). The essays in this volume deploy a variety of approaches to the interpretation of virginity in medieval culture, but all are alert to the complexity of the central concept. The 'Introduction: Virginities and Virginity Studies' (pp. 1-13), by Sarah Salih, Anke Bernau, and Ruth Evans, summarizes scholarly work to date on medieval virginity and tracks the key elements of each of the essays which follow. Salih's 'When is a Bosom Not a Bosom? Problems with "Erotic Mysticism"' (pp. 14-32) is a useful opener. It problematizes scholarly tendencies to see erotic language in religious texts as either entirely metaphorical and theological or entirely sexual, and examines a number of mystical and hagiographic texts to demonstrate more nuanced ways of negotiating these potential meanings. Juliette Dor focuses on an apparently very differentsubject in 'The Sheela-na-Gig: An Incongruous Sign of Sexual Purity?' (pp. 33-55), but also shows how shifting approaches to the interpretation of these sculptures demonstrate 'the impossibility of the representation of either "woman" or "virginity"' (p. 49). Jane Cartwright's 'Virginity and Chastity Tests in Medieval Welsh Prose' (pp. 5679 ) examines a variety of texts which position fertility,pregnancy, and piety as the key characteristics for married women, and which give virginity particular value in the marriage market. The later medieval English legal texts examined by Kim M. Phillips in 'Four Virgins' Tales: Sex and Power in Medieval Law' (pp. 80-101) are also shown to highlight the social value of premarital virginity. John H. Arnold's 'The Labour of Continence: Masculinity and Clerical Virginity' (pp. 102?18) assesses a number of later medieval popular narratives and concludes that 'there is a threat to male virginity, and it lies in the problematic and permeable relationship between "inside" and "outside"' (p. 113). Joanna Huntingdon, in 'Edward the Celibate, Edward the Saint: Virginity in the Construction of Edward MLRy ioo.i, 2005 187 the Confessor' (pp. 119-39), tracks changes in the presentation of Edward's virginity through the eleventh- and twelfth-century Latin vitae of Edward. In Alchemy and the Exploration of Late Medieval Sexuality' (pp. 140-66), Jona? than Hughes stresses the centrality of female sexuality, and the interrelationship of reproductive heterosexuality and virginity, in alchemical medicine, and goes on to propose that the hermaphrodite is 'yet another figure of the virgin' (p. 161). Evans...

The Senecan Moment: Patronage and Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century

This piece examines place of patronage in eighteenth-century thought and specifically Diderot's analysis of Seneca's philosophy of art of graceful giving and grateful receiving.1 Patronage, in Burke's definition, is the tribute which opulence owes to genius.2 However, patronage of thought has been rarely discussed by political theorists, and when mentioned favorably by thinkers such as Rousseau or Burke, their accounts were not a central theme of their work. When patronage was a central theme, such as Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield or D'Alembert's Essai sur la societe des gens de lettres et des grands, practice is deprecated as obsolete.3 Thinkers who pride themselves on their independence of thought have usually been reluctant to declare their dependence upon patrons. However, most of thinkers of eighteenth century who preached intellectual independence depended upon royal or aristocratic patronage.4 Indeed, one might say that ideal of intellectual autonomy was forged in conditions of intellectual dependence on royal or aristocratic patrons.Francis Bacon wrote that such as are worthy of name of books, ought to have no other patrons but truth and reason. Yet Bacon's Advancement of Learning, dedicated to James I, is forthright in admitting that most scholars are not independently wealthy and thus must court rich and must submit to powerful. In same work Bacon denounced Seneca as a Trencher Philosopher who served and supped well at a royal court.5 Seneca's De Benefits, classic text on patronage, was often translated into English and French in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries6; and it was highly regarded by eighteenth-century thinkers, such as La Mettrie, Lagrange, Rousseau, D'Holbach, Hume, Smith, and Diderot.7 Since Rousseau shared Hume's admiration for Seneca, Hume concluded his account of Rousseau's ingratitude for Hume's patronage, Expose succinct de la contestation que s'est elevee entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau, with a quotation from Seneca's De Beneficiis8 Diderot's Essai sur la vie de Seneque le philosophe, sur ses ecrits, et sur les regnes de Claude et de Neron and Essai sur les regnes de Claude et de Neron et sur les Moeurs et les Ecrits de Seneque were unique among eighteenth-century thinkers in providing an extended defense of patronage. Diderot's work is a sustained analysis of Seneca's important treatise on arts of graceful giving, graceful receiving, and graceful requiting, three graces that made world go around.In Rameau's Nephew Diderot and Rameau agreed that everyone has to get into unnatural postures and jump through hoops to please their patrons. But, Diderot added, there is one human being who is exempted from this pantomime. That is philosopher who has nothing and asks for nothing.9 Diderot seems to celebrate self-sufficient Cynic Diogenes who lived from nature: Whom does savage beg from? The earth, animals and fishes, trees and plants and roots and streams. But Diderot knew that Diogenes was not one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's self-sufficient savages; Diogenes lived by begging from his fellow citizens and taking what he needed from others-for all property is common for wise man. Indeed, honest Diogenes lived much as did truth-telling sponge, Rameau. Moreover, Diderot agreed with Rameau's form of Epicureanism-not that money is chief good but that money is essential for life's vital pleasures. Diderot wrote: am far from despising sensual pleasures. I have a palate too and it is tickled by a delicate wine or dish as well as by beautiful women and drunken parties with his friends.10In short, Diogenes's life would not have satisfied Diderot. The more useful model of philosophic life was immensely rich Stoic, Seneca. Diderot devoted two of his last and longest works to a justification of life of Seneca, and place of patronage in living a philosophic life. …

The Philosopher as Tramp and Female in the Writings of Graffigny

Throughout her writings, Françoise de Graffigny explores the material and emotional pressures facing women who, like herself, confront the challenges of financial and social instability. In her plays Cénie (1750) and La Fille d'Aristide (1758), Graffigny blends the potent sentimentality of the popular new comédie-larmoyante with a troubling critique of the opportunities for female economic survival in eighteenth-century France. Like Rameau's nephew, tramp philosophers such as Zilia and Cénie bring added complexity to Enlightenment conceptions of who and what makes a philosophe.

The Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 465 Coudert and Taylor Corse's new translation of Anne Conway'sPrincipia philosophiae (to be published by Cambridge University Press), or anthologies with full critical apparatus , such as that being prepared by Eileen O'Neill for Oxford University Press. Having waited so long already, why should we be rushed? SARAH HUTTON University of Hertfordshire Mark Hulliung. The Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes. Cambridge : Harvard University Press, t994. Pp. xiii + 293. Cloth, $45.oo. Arguing that studies of the Enlightenment have tended to ignore Jean-Jacques Rousseau and that accounts of Rousseau have typically overlooked his debts to the Enlightenment , Mark Hulliung convincingly portrays Rousseau as both a creature and a critic of the Enlightenment. Rousseau emerges from this immensely learned study as an "autocritic" of Enlightenment, expert in the conventions of eighteenth-century thought, who turned the weapons forged by the Enlightenment onto the movement itself. The great service of this book lies in its revealing the fundamental philosophical disagreements that lay at the heart of a quarrel that, by the end of Rousseau's life, had degenerated on both sides into ad hommem attacks. For Hulliung, the battle of Rousseau and the philosophes becomes nothing less than a debate on the nature, limits, and promise of the Enlightenment itself. Much of the book is devoted to a meticulous demonstration of the extent to which Rousseau's critique spoke to longstanding concerns of Enlightenment thought. When the philosophes attempted to reconcile interest with virtue, Rousseau confirmed their worst fears, arguing that in societies ruled by self-interest, civic virtue withered. When they wrote histories that focused on culture, rather than politics, Rousseau countered by emphasizing the centrality of political history for any understanding of contemporary culture. They called for a separation of church and state; he argued that republican virtue required civic religion. He used the Enlightenment's own natural histories to argue that the philosophes' views on social progress were hopelessly naive. Even his withdrawal from Paris, ridiculed by those who saw the city as the epitome of civilized society, is viewed by Hulliung not as a repudiation of the ideal of Enlightenment but rather a gesture that questioned what it meant to be enlightened: "By implication all who stayed in Paris were obstacles to enlightenment properly understood" (76). Hulliung is slightly less convincing when he insists that Rousseau's aim was to rescue rather than repudiate the Enlightenment. His case hinges on the argument that Diderot, Duclos, and D'Alembert had misgivings about the project of Enlightenment that converged with Rousseau's more emphatic critique. To the extent that Hulliung can show that Rousseau was simply stating explicitly and publicly the conclusions that some of the leadingphilosophes had reached more hesitantly or--in the case of Rameau's Nephewmin works that would appear only posthumously, then his portrait of Rousseau as an autocritic rather than a renegade rings true. While Hulliung makes a compelling case that some of the arguments Diderot 466 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 offered in Rameau's Nephew called into question his long-held conviction that "even in a society as poorly ordered as ours.., there is no better path to happiness than to be a good man," Hulliung tends to assume too quickly that the Nephew's attacks on this belief carry the day (99). Diderot did, after all, eventually provide the Nephew's antagonist with some responses and, while these may not always convince us, it is somewhat rash to assume that Diderot himself viewed them as completely empty. Further, while Hulliung carefully shows us what Rousseau found lacking in the philosophes' Enlightenment , it is not entirely clear whether the arguments he offered inJulie, Emile, and the Social Contract really constitute a "positive program for an alternative enlightenment" (2~5). Readers may leave the book still questioning whether Rousseau shared anything with his former colleagues other than their most troubling doubts. The tension between the promise announced in the book's title and the more precise focus delineated in the subtitle captures what is at stake rather nicely: in what sense does the quarrel between "Rousseau and the Philosophes" constitute an "Autocritique of...

Le rôle des motifs socratiques et platoniciens dans la structure et la genèse du Neveu de Rameau de Diderot

Mihály Szívós : The role of socratic and platonic motifs in the structure and genesis of Rameau's nephew. Although Diderot gave up the idea of a play on Socrates's death, he nevertheless did not abandon the idea of dealing with the theme of the Greek philosopher's moral conduct, as can be seen from the many Socratic and Platonic motifs in Rameau 's Nephew. For musical themes Diderot links the figure of Rameau the nephew to Socratic motifs, and for moral themes to anti-Socratic motifs. By drawing parallels between Socratic and Platonic motifs in the dialogue and in other works by Diderot one can understand more clearly the genesis of Rameau 's Nephew. Diderot also included in this part of his thoughts on Socrates, which is why it contains important elements of the background to its own genesis.

Nouvelles recherches sur la musique dans le Neveu de Rameau

Jean-Christophe Rebejkow : New work on music in Rameau 's Nephew. Questions of musical aesthetics are at the heart of Rameau 's Nephew. This article places certain aspects of the theories of Jean-Francois Rameau, who is here Diderot 's mouthpiece, in their musical context. After relating the nephew's theories concerning stress and declamation to the debate on French and Italian music, with the help of Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique, we show how they were mainly inspired by Praetta (Sofonisba in particular) whose type of declamation was adapted by Philidor or Gréty to the resources of the French language. But French airs that the nephew sings is not a complete invention ; it can also be seen in Voltaire and echoes a type of comic opera to be found in the théatre de la foire and in ballet-comedies, in particular in Jean-Philippe Rameau (L'Endriague).

Diderot selon Pierre Larousse

Raymond Trousson : Diderot according to Pierre Larousse. Pierre Larousse, a disciple of Michelet, Proudhon and Auguste Comte, accorded Diderot an important place in his Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. In his preface, he specifically presents himself as the Encyclopaedist's heir and claims his patronage for his own undertaking. He considered Diderot to be the most important and innovative of the « philosophes », far ahead of Voltaire and Rousseau, and he presents him as a precursor of the Revolution « from the point of view of politics, philosophy and literature ». Diderot was already concerned about an authentic social revolution and was philosophically the most daring and original thinker of his time, a pioneer of the experimental method and a genius who looked forward to the discoveries of modern science. In literature, Larousse rehabilitated Diderot's plays and above all paid homage to the powerful originality of Rameau 's Nephew. This long article, written five years before the beginning of Assezat's publication of the Complete Works, was a prelude to the celebration of Diderot's centenary in 1884, orchestrated by the Positivist school.

Reason, Fools and Rameau's Nephew

In the autumn of 1993, I found myself called upon to give the concluding address to a conference in Stockholm—jointly sponsored by the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden, the Royal Institute of Technology, and the Swedish Center for Working Life—entitled: “Skill and Technology: on Diderot, Education and the Third Culture”. One focus of the conference was Diderot’s Dialogue, Rameau’s Nephew, my appreciation of which has, I hope, been properly enhanced as a result of having sat through not only a dramatisation of it in German but also an operatic version, by a Finnish composer, with a Swedish libretto.Nobody knows for sure whether or not Denis Diderot had a conversation with Jean-Francois Rameau, nephew of the composer, in the Café de la Régence in Paris, in April 1761. Nor does it matter. Diderot certainly wrote the first draft of the Dialogue in that year, reworking it in 1773, 1778 and 1782, the year before he died. The history of this short text (less than seventy pages in the Flammarion edition) is so extraordinary that one almost suspects Diderot himself of having somehow arranged it.Although it has been described as “the very centre of his writing” and has provoked a still burgeoning library of commentary and interpretation, the Dialogue was never published or referred to by Diderot in his lifetime, and it first saw the light of day in a German translation, done by an admiring Goethe from a French manuscript which he had been lent by Schiller, who seems to have obtained it from a German officer in St Petersburg. Goethe’s translation appeared in 1805.

Bakhtine et Diderot : à propos du Neveu de Rameau

Anthony Wall : Diderot and Bakhtin. With Reference to Rameau's Nephew. Diderot's dialogue Rameau's Nephew contains an implicit theory of dialogic exchange which should have attracted more attention in the cultural philosopher Mikhail Baktin's writing on dialogue. The dialogue in Diderot's text profoundly challenges the assumption that dialogue is squarely founded on language alone, as Bakhtin seems to believe. One of the extraverbal dimensions that Diderot provocatively highlights lies in the corporeal realm of the written voice. Whereas Bakhtin argues that Dialogism as such can only be activated in the novelistic text which is read in silence, the bodily dimension of Diderot's dialogue can only be rendered by a voice which performs out loud.

The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia (review)

346Philosophy and Literature many of whom turned out to be self-serving farceurs) to the concluding pipe dreams about an "Anarchist University," there is here more than a touch of what Marxists righdy deride as Utopian socialism. David Hume's sound remark on other-worldly men of his day speaks even more pointedly to this-worldly activist-Utopians of our own: "A delicate sense of morals, especially when attended with a splenetic temper, is apt to give a man a disgust of die world, and to make him consider the common course of human affairs with too much indignation." Rumson, New JerseyWill Morrisey The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, by Bernard Suits, with drawings by Frank Newfeld; 178 pp. Boston: David R. Godine, 1990, $10.95 paper. Philosophers are not generally known for fine writing, but once in a generation or two a book appears out ofnowhere, unclassifiable, inspired, amazing, mesmerizing, wonderful, classic. What books are these? Well, Alice in Wonderland and Through tL· Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, and Either/Or and Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard, four of the greatest philosophy books of the nineteenth century. Before that there was Candide by Voltaire and Rameau's Nephew by Diderot, and in our own century there are Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Bachelard's TL· Poetics ofSpace. These are books that shock, entertain, instruct, and edify, that can be reread many times for profit (how do they do it?) and pleasure (they do it so well!). Do what? For one thing, in a book in this class the intensity of its author's vision is sustained at its highest peak throughout. You read it the way you watch a tightrope walker, with a great, contented sigh when the end is reached, as perfecdy balanced as the beginning. These are usually marginal books, in the French sense, if not wayward philosophically , at least out of the way, as is, for example, another tour de force, Willie Master's Lonesome Wife by William H. Gass. Occasionally one, say Nietzche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, or the Tractatus, careens into the lead on philosophy's autobahn to be pursued madly by lesser vehicles for awhile. Many have trouble finding a publisher. In 1978, having been rejected by a dozen other publishers (including Oxford University Press, whose guardians "almost" took it but in the end found it unsuitable), TL· Grasshopper by Bernard Suits was released by the University of Reviews347 Toronto Press. It was received with a few rave reviews and mosdy silence, and soon went out of print. But though such books often die, they also rise again, and now that marginal if not wayward (but possessed of impeccable taste) independent publisher, David R. Godine, who prints always only what he likes, has resurrected TL· Grasshopper. Good. TL· Grasshopper is in the form of a Socratic dialogue, only more so. When Prudence asks near the end, "And do you really believe, Grasshopper, that there w some Agency which controls our destinies?," the Grasshopper replies, "More specifically, I believe that there is some Author who writes our dialogue." And when Skepticus suggests that this Author is playing the game ofPirandello with them, the Grasshopper responds drily, "I think he is writing a treatise on the philosophy ofgames." And so he is: "To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs (prelusory goal), using only means permitted by rules (lusory means), where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means (constitutive rules), and where the rules are acceptedjustbecause they make possible such activity (lusory attitude) . . . playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" (p. 41). One need not be a philosopher to rise and cheer at the succinct elegance of that summation after 41 pages of feinting to get there. But then the counterexamples begin: the annoying triflers, cheats, and spoilsports; the batde to worse than death between Ivan and Abdul; the sexual act; the frustrations of Sir Edmund Hillary who would climb a mountain for sport; the adventures of Porphyryo Sneak, the greatest spy in the world, and of Bartholomew Drag, the greatest bore; the counsel of the therapist Dr. Heurschreck; and...

Rameau's Nephew, Godard, andMona Lisa: Uncovering the Veil of Gender in the Undergraduate Classroom

<i>Rameau's Nephew</i>, Godard, and<i>Mona Lisa</i>: Uncovering the Veil of Gender in the Undergraduate Classroom

Michel foucault, rameau's nephew, and the question of identity

michel foucault, rameau's nephew, and the question of identity

Notes for "Rameau's Nephew"

To me it's a true talking picture. It delves into the implications of that description and derives structures that can generate contents that are proper to the mode. It derives its form and the nature of its possible effects from its being built from the inside, as it were, with the actual units of such a film, i.e., the frame and the recorded syllable. Thus its dramatic development derives not only from a of what may involve us generally in life but from considerations of the nature of recorded speech in relation to moving light-images of people. Thus it can become an event in life, not just a report of it. Echoes reverberate to language, to representation in general, to in the sound cinema, to culture, to civilization. Via the eyes and ears it is a composition aimed at exciting the two halves of the brain into recognition.

Rameau's Nephew: 'A Study of Diderot's "Second Satire."

Rameau's Nephew: 'A Study of Diderot's "Second Satire."

Rameau's Nephew, a study of Diderot's "Second Satire"

Rameau's Nephew, a study of Diderot's "Second Satire"

Rameau's Nephew, a Study of Diderot's 'Second Satire'

Rameau's Nephew, a Study of Diderot's 'Second Satire'